All reasons that a paper currency backed by gold has never lasted long. Going to paper currency is the first step to start cheating by fudging numbers. The only money that has ever lasted is actual coins/bars of metal, precious or otherwise.
> The only money that has ever lasted is actual coins/bars of metal, precious or otherwise.
1. most physical paper has a relatively short life, so one would not expect it to last as long as metal tokens
2. paper was only available in much of the world several thousand years after the first currencies began, so it's not suprising that we have little record of paper money from very old civilizations.
3. the idea that there was no cheating by fudging numbers before paper currency is completely ahistorical. The nature and ease of the fudging may have changed, but the fudging itself existed long, long before paper currencies became common.
The entire reason coinage was even a thing was exactly this! Turns out it's pretty hard to know if a coin is actually the amount of gold it represents, if the shopkeepers scales are accurate etc etc. etc
The entire concept of marking coins with trustworthy seals was exactly to basically invent fiat currency as risk mitigation: coins bearing the seal would be honored, and from that it was a short hop to "what if I just presented an IOU with the seal of the local gold merchant?"
All reasons that a paper currency backed by gold has never lasted long. Going to paper currency is the first step to start cheating by fudging numbers. The only money that has ever lasted is actual coins/bars of metal, precious or otherwise.
> The only money that has ever lasted is actual coins/bars of metal, precious or otherwise.
1. most physical paper has a relatively short life, so one would not expect it to last as long as metal tokens
2. paper was only available in much of the world several thousand years after the first currencies began, so it's not suprising that we have little record of paper money from very old civilizations.
3. the idea that there was no cheating by fudging numbers before paper currency is completely ahistorical. The nature and ease of the fudging may have changed, but the fudging itself existed long, long before paper currencies became common.
Even coins were shaved and debased.
The entire reason coinage was even a thing was exactly this! Turns out it's pretty hard to know if a coin is actually the amount of gold it represents, if the shopkeepers scales are accurate etc etc. etc
The entire concept of marking coins with trustworthy seals was exactly to basically invent fiat currency as risk mitigation: coins bearing the seal would be honored, and from that it was a short hop to "what if I just presented an IOU with the seal of the local gold merchant?"