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> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775143.Golden_Fetters https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775143.Golden_Fetters just wanted to note that they are using

• throw0101d 2y ago
  > just wanted to note that they are using a 20-year history window as an argument […] The troubles with a fixed monetary supply existed much earlier than that, having historically recorded issues going back almost five hundred years: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine We call the thing in the 1930s the "Great Depression", but before it occurred there was another time period that held that label, which has since been renamed: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression It's just most folks accepted that this is how things were "supposed" to be because they didn't know any better, but there was great dissatisfaction on how things were: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold_speech It took until the likes of Irving Fischer, Keynes, and FDR until the old habits could be thrown off (too late in some places, like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan): * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24945314-the-money-makers https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24945314-the-money-maker... > […] while the gold standard existed for about 3500 years before that, across very different cultures. It did not. For most people, most of the time, it was credit that was used in day-to-day life: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years And even the rich often forsook coins: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiable_instrument#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiable_instrument#History * https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/30672/1/12%20Chapter%201839%20%281%29.pdf https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/30672/1/12%20Chapter%201839%20... They earliest records of monetary transactions used credit: * https://www.sfu.ca/~poitras/jesho_UR_14.pdf https://www.sfu.ca/~poitras/jesho_UR_14.pdf * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Dynasty_of_Ur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Dynasty_of_Ur * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36854772-the-open-sea https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36854772-the-open-sea Where gold was perhaps around, most folks were too poor to deal with it. And in a lot of cultures gold was not used at all: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50358103-money https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50358103-money The use of gold was mostly concentrated around the Mediterranean. * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold The Chinese used silver (as the Spanish learned post-1492). The Incas had gold (as the Spanish happily learned) but not for currency (of which they had none) but for ornament/jewelry. Other cultures simply used other things, like non-shiny rocks: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones It is actually the gold standard—the convertibility between paper money and shiny rocks—that is the historic anomaly, existing between (depending on how you count things) between one and two hundred years: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard Even the very meaning and nature of what is meant by "money" has changed over the millennia, starting with Aristotle and continuing to the present day: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58933308-the-currency-of-politics https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58933308-the-currency-of...