History What are some of your most contraversial takes on history?

WolfBear

Well-known member
Another unpopular opinion: While the post-World War II mass expulsions were morally questionable, they also helped create more stable borders than existed in the aftermath of World War I. While Germans were furious as hell about the Oder-Neisse Line for decades, they also eventually accepted this line once the older generations of Germans began passing away and younger generations of Germans with no memories of this line began rising to positions of political prominence. Ditto for Germany giving up its claim to the Sudetenland. I guess that good fences really do make good neighbors, eh? ;)

As a side note, the demographic issue would not be too severe even in the extraordinarily unlikely event that all of the expelled Germans and their descendants would have subsequently returned to Czechia and Poland. In such a scenario, both Czechia and Poland would have become about 20% German right now, but this wouldn't be a minority percentage that's impossible to handle, especially considering that the Germany of 2022 is much more well-behaved than the Germany of the late 1930s was. A Ukraine that was almost 20% Russian did experience a lot of problems starting in 2014 due to a more problematic neighbor, though.
 

ShadowsOfParadox

Well-known member
It isn't. Gold has intrinsic value which has been recognized by litterally every civilization that has known of its existence. It is rare, beautiful and resists tarnish.
I suppose no one's ever hyper inflated gold...


Oh wait...

You don't eat Gold, you don't drink Gold, you don't use Gold for shelter or weapons.

As for "Intristic Value recognized by every civilization".

Well, There was that group of Native Americans who valued it SOOO much the only thing they used it for was dumping it into a lake as a "sacrifice" to the gods when crowning a king and had no idea why the Spanish thought it was worth shit to people.
 

ShadowsOfParadox

Well-known member
Gold has a certain intrinsic durability in terms of shininess, but said durability does not give it the slightest inherent value. It is simply a convenient token of exchange.
Well, it was, then we figured out electricity and Gold had an actual intrinsic value as a conductor.
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
...Dude, you literally said that Gold wasn't Fiat Currency.

Except it WAS.

Uh no.
Not in the same sense as the term is normally used.
Pieces of paper printed with symbols that have value only because some government says so, are what we mean by "fiat" - the government just says "let there be another 10 billion" and money-printer go brrr.

But a government cannot just wish more gold into existence. Gold mines can go wrrr, especially here in South Africa, but that's a different thing entirely.

Now gold has been used as a means of exchange for trade for thousands of years, not only within this or that society, but across the world between totally different civilizations. If you could take a Krugerrand or a British "sovereign" back in time to Ancient Rome, they would recognize it as gold, and with the value of such. Ditto if you took it to China.

Even modern paper money was initially based on a promise that it could be exchanged for gold.

While it's true that gold as a means of exchange is just something that humanity all agrees on, and we could in principle use diamonds or gunpowder instead, it's not fiat currency at all.
 

Buba

A total creep
There was that group of Native Americans who valued it SOOO much the only thing they used it for was dumping it into a lake as a "sacrifice" to the gods when crowning a king and had no idea why the Spanish thought it was worth shit to people.
Isn't this an urban legend? Dating to the mid 1500s?
 

Simonbob

Well-known member
I don't know that one.

But, I do know that Sparta, a few thousand years ago, deliberately had money in the form of iron bars, not gold or silver.


You had to be strong to be a Spartan trader.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
Uh no. If you could take a Krugerrand or a British "sovereign" back in time to Ancient Rome, they would recognize it as gold, and with the value of such. Ditto if you took it to China.

No, it absolutely is still fiat currency. If you took a kruggerand to Ancient Rome, they would recognize that it is a strange foreign coin of unknown size and purity, and would not accept it except at a business that specialized in converting currency and could assay it.
 

Simonbob

Well-known member
No, it absolutely is still fiat currency. If you took a kruggerand to Ancient Rome, they would recognize that it is a strange foreign coin of unknown size and purity, and would not accept it except at a business that specialized in converting currency and could assay it.

They would recognise the value of the raw material, that said coin was made of.
 

Simonbob

Well-known member
Certain types of goldsmith would. No one else would, and they absolutely would not accept it in exchange for goods or services.

The whole point is that the raw material would be recognised by at least some in that society as of value beyond it's govenment mandated one.

Today, everybody can create paper, and change electronic ones and zeros. They have effectively zero value beyond what is enforced by threat of force.


And, for a trading Empire like Rome? Yes, it would be used as money, although the lack of proof on it's purity would be used to argue down it's local value.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
Some people here have absolutely no clue what fiduciary currency means. Please -- stop applying your own made-up definitions that "prove" that ACKSHUWALLY, gold is a fiduciary currency, too!!!1!

It's not.

The point of fiduciary currency, as the term implies, is that you have to take the value on faith in the issuer's fiat. Typically, the government's say-so. They give you worthless paper, you have to accept that it has a made-up value other than the market value of paper.

The point of a 100% gold standard (not the derivate, quasi-standard we had near the end, to be clear!) is that the coinage always has the intrinsic value of the gold that's in the coin (or that a banknote actually represents a physical amount of gold that's there, in the vault). And that, in fact, the value of the currency is determined by the value of gold -- not by whatever value the goverment would like gold to have.

In short: you can print fiat banknotes, you can't print extra gold. That's why gold is not a fiduciary currency. If we invent an atomic re-assembler that can instantly and cheaply turn dirt into gold, then gold becomes a fiat currency. At present, it is not.
 
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Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
In short: you can print fiat banknotes, you can't print extra gold. That's why gold is not a fiduciary currency.

I made that point to him already, but it didn't go in.

But for the sake of repetition: it's not about it being arbitrary what we use as currency. We could use wolf skulls as a means of exchange - but we'd have to have real ones.
If they started printing pictures of wolf skulls and pretending they were real, then that's fiat currency.
 

ShadowArxxy

Well-known member
Comrade
The point of fiduciary currency, as the term implies, is that you have to take the value on faith in the issuer's fiat. Typically, the government's say-so. They give you worthless paper, you have to accept that it has a made-up value other than the market value of paper.

Actual history is more complicated than simplistic first principles, as directly illustrated by the fact that supposedly "gold not fiat" Roman coins were absolutely infamous for being a de facto fiat currency because the Roman government constantly debased them. The value of a denarius was *never* the supposed actual precious metal value it contained; it was the Roman government's say-so that this was a denarius and shall be accepted.



In short: you can print fiat banknotes, you can't print extra gold. That's why gold is not a fiduciary currency. If we invent an atomic re-assembler that can instantly and cheaply turn dirt into gold, then gold becomes a fiat currency. At present, it is not.

You can't literally print extra gold, but you absolutely can fiat metal currency. Because the government can at any time redefine or simply cheat on the coinage.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
Won't work when your "the government" wants to do business with people it has no power over - such as the governments of other nations.
Even beyond that; the comparison he's making is just ludicrous. Fiduciary currency is intrinsically ultra-low value (worthless paper), whereas gold is intrinsically high-value, and can be debased... by removing the % of gold (that is... adding more % fiat to the currency).

If you only back your money supply with 50% gold (e.g. by having coins be half gold, half worthless metal) then you no longer have a full gold standard. You have a 50% gold standard, and 50% fiat. If you have no gold at all you have 100% fiat. If you have 100% gold content/backing... then you have 0% fiat.

As such, @ShadowArxxy just doesn't know what he's talking about, but doesn't want to admit he's wrong. Further debate is pointless.
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
If you only back your money supply with 50% gold (e.g. by having coins be half gold, half worthless metal) then you no longer have a full gold standard. You have a 50% gold standard, and 50% fiat. If you have no gold at all you have 100% fiat. If you have 100% gold content/backing... then you have 0% fiat.
...No? There's zero difference between metals in this case, so long as you declare it to be a consistent hard material. Gold is not at all special like this, it's expensive because it's a rare material with a distinctive appearance. Pennies in the US would be less fiat than gold is if their value was declared as a result of their copper content, because copper has abundant utility.

Gold is too rare to use. There are simply too many people around for the gold supply to have any remotely sensible utility, making it purely a store of value, making "gold-backed currencies" just a fiat currency with a bone-anchor for production. It's too rare to be used as a currency at this point, and not because of inflation, but because it's too easy to do international business these days.

The proximate cause of gold ceasing to be used was that numerous other countries called in the supposed gold backing of US currency. Which the US banking system did not actually have on hand, because for a long time people were using fractional reserves to expand the liquidity so that business could still be done. There isn't enough gold for everyone in the world to do business with it, so nobody can back a currency with it. You'd see the money supply starved out.
 

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