[HN Gopher] Monetagium - monetary extortion in feudal Europe
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       Monetagium - monetary extortion in feudal Europe
        
       Author : jpkoning
       Score  : 38 points
       Date   : 2024-08-03 19:23 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (jpkoning.blogspot.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (jpkoning.blogspot.com)
        
       | lifeisstillgood wrote:
       | And lo, Pikkety said unto the masses "This shit is why we keep
       | returns to labour higher than returns to capital. Introduceth
       | thou est a wealth tax right now or suffer ye into the third
       | generation"
        
       | tempodox wrote:
       | Today's feudal lords plaster you with advertising and
       | enshittification. Paying a ransom fee doesn't help any more.
        
         | c22 wrote:
         | The ransom is the 8 dollar a month subscription that turns the
         | ads off.
        
           | immibis wrote:
           | It turns the obvious ads off, and the quality still goes down
           | the drain.
        
       | readthenotes1 wrote:
       | "democracies have not resorted to modern version of debasement as
       | a revenue source due to the unpopularity of rising prices."
       | 
       | The USA got rid of silver in its coins in 1964 and I believe
       | copper in its pennies recently.
       | 
       | The modern version of debasement is in the feds balance sheet,
       | they've gotten so efficient there's no need to affect the
       | physical substance.
        
         | Arainach wrote:
         | The US penny switched to copper-plated zinc in 1982, so not
         | that recently (and it still contains a small percentage of
         | copper).
        
         | pavlov wrote:
         | Some democracies in the 20th century have tried a form of cash
         | debasement to fight inflation.
         | 
         | The example I'm familiar with is from Finland in 1946, when the
         | most popular and largest circulating bills were required to be
         | physically cut in half and lost 50% of their upfront value.
         | 
         | The Wikipedia article seems to be only in Finnish:
         | https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setelinvaihto
         | 
         | The idea was that the left half of the bill remained valid cash
         | (although not for long -- you needed to exchange it for a new
         | type of bill within a few months). The right half of the bill
         | became effectively a treasury note with three-year maturation:
         | in 1949 you could present it to a bank and get your money back
         | from the government, but no sooner.
         | 
         | The operation was expected to reduce inflation, but apparently
         | it didn't work out that way. It did provide the Finnish
         | government with about half of the funds loaned that year, but
         | it was very unpopular among voters and never repeated.
        
       | Mistletoe wrote:
       | Bitcoin fixes this.
        
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       (page generated 2024-08-03 23:00 UTC)