Fiat only in the sense that the standard units were fixed by a matter of edict, not that they were not related to a fixed exchange rate or predominately credit/debt based mediums of exchange. So while the statement is literally true, it is misleading in our modern context of what a fiat currency is or how it functions.
The romans used price fixing (though the effectiveness is in question), the brits, AFAIK, did no such thing. It was just a matter of paying taxes.
The brits did try it at least once, and the results were about as effective.
Although I did not completely provide my reasoning, I was trying to point out that gold has never by itself led to any kind of economic prosperity.
Of course not, neither has anything else. While the chosen medium of exchange can become a burden upon the economy, it's not particularly helpful even under the best condtions. The reason is that money, be it gold or silver or paper notes, is only an
abstraction of wealth and not wealth itself. Money is the corpse of wealth, as was so well stated in the book
Cryptocromincon. The wealth of a people is the products & services that they offer, the means of exchange simply facilitates trade & specialzation of labor. Money is also the "most liquid good" which, historicly; has been gold, silver & copper. Paper worked better, so long as it was not debased, because such cash transactions had less "friction" than metal transactions. Bitcoin has less friction still, but paper currencies require trust in the issuing body. Since eventually all governments default, all fiat currencies fail. I'm not sure that bitcoin
can fail, but if so it won't be because the people have lost faith in some government agency.
That only happened after FRB and deposit notes, when the "supply" of gold expanded immensely.
Again, that's not true. I could provide a number of cases wherein FRB was not present within a gold standard & the economy at large boomed; if I were inclined to the trouble, but I'm not because I've already had enough conversations with yourself in the past to know that your worldview is as deep as dogma.
Currencies do not need to be backed by precious metals to be useful for economic growth. There is no reason that modern economies use a credit/debt based medium of exchange other than governments gave up their power to print money to private banks, so that is irrelevant.
Another falsehood. Most central banks in our modern era are truly government owned, even if the Federal Reserve of the US is not. And that is just a legal fiction anyway, necessary only because the constitution prohibits governments from issuing "debt instruments" i.e. FRN's lacking backing.
And in both cases they each became empires only by abandoning many of their early principles in favor of military and economic domination of other cultures. It is just as ligetimate to say that the debasement of each of those nations' currencies were one consequence of expansionism, not a cause, regardless of whether or not said empires are actually desireable.
Tally sticks were never debased, they were replaced by the Bank of England. Do you know your currency history, MoonShadow? Or do you think you can just sound like you do to make you sound right?
Tally sticks weren't replaced, they were
defaulted upon. When the king of England stole the gold in the valuts of the goldsmiths, the government agents would carve the "King's debt" into both sides of a stick and then break it in half. The agent kept the long end, and the goldsmith got to keep the short end as a recept of the theft, which supported the illutsion that it was a loan. Eventually the king declared the debts to be "ursury" and therefore void, and teh theft was complete. That is exactly where we get the term "left holding the short end of the stick". And you would be wise to refrain from challenging me on my knowledge of
any history, for that is one subject for which I will soundly beat you down with.
And as for the Romans, from wikipedia:
"The exact reason that Roman coinage sustained constant debasement is not known, but the most common theories involve inflation, trade with India, which drained silver from the Mediterranean world, and inadequacies in state finances.
...
Another reason for debasement was lack of raw metal with which to produce coins."
The economy worked perfectly fine with a currency whose value was determined to be much more than the content of its weight in gold, silver, or copper. It started failing because of trade deficits and
lack of metal.
This could have been solved by not constantly going to war.
That's a possible cause, but only one among many. As with anything else, the causes of the decline of the Roman Empire are many and nuanced. Still, this is not an argument, it's a conjecture with an 'appeal to authority' falacy thrown in for good measure. And I, for one, don't consider Wikipedia an authority on much, even though it's a wonderful resource.
The parallel that one can draw from that is in a free market, non-commodity based currency, governments would not have the power to do these things to debase the currency. But maybe you missed that point when your poorly founded accusations blinded you from being able to finish reading the post.
Perhaps if you didn't start your arguments with such crap, I'd be more inclined to consider further.
This is actually false, and provablely so. While the common man traded in silver and rarely (if ever) saw a gold coin, national soveriegns most certainly did trade in gold well in advance of fractional reserve lending's rise to common acceptance.
Weren't we talking about free market currency? I dunno, I got distracted there for a second by your red herring.
Not a red herring, very relevant. The trade between soverigns was a free market. Moreso than any of the markets within any particular borders, if for no other reason than there was no greater power to enforce trade regulations. As I have already noted, international trade has been a free market, as a matter of reality, up until around 1880 or later. Even then, Admarlaity law treaties really didn't have a significant effect on international trade for decades more.
Gold only became the de facto currency of trade when people could borrow it with fiduciary media.
Likewise provablely false. International trade was (arguablely) a "free trade zone" clear upt to at least 1880, and the defacto international currency of such trade was gold, even if the majority of such trades were conducted as "letters of credit".
You say provably false yet you're agreeing with me that gold was the currency of free market trade after FRB and deposit notes. Ok.
There, I did it too. A letter of credit isn't Fractional reserve banking, and it's not a deposit note. It's basicly a corporate check drawn on an international bank, or more accurately, it's the credit score that the bank is providing to the receiving company
and the check.
