Discussion about this post

User's avatar
JustPlainBill's avatar

The owners of those buried Roman hoards that occasionally turn up were probably overtaken by sudden, unexpected “life reversals” that prevented them going back for their stashes. Buried items are not locked up, hence they are only safe if NO ONE knows about them. Unfortunately, if an owner suffers an unexpected demise, he takes the secret location of his stash with him to the grave.

The fact that money is useless if there is nothing to buy eludes people even today. The belief in the law of “supply and demand” is so strong that most people think a sufficiently large sum of money can coax anything one wants out of hiding, or motivate an aspiring seller into producing it. Sometimes that is just not possible.

A good example can be found in Europe today. The EU wanted to buy artillery shells for Ukraine at $2K per round. They appropriated money for the purpose, but the necessary production capacity just doesn’t exist in the West, so all that was accomplished was that the existing shells rose in price to $8K per round.

Back in high school, our Russian professor used to tell us about his annual trips to visit relatives in the old Soviet Union in the 1960s. Back then during the Cold War, it was always described to us as a poverty-stricken place. But as he explained, the reality was that people had adequate money. There just wasn’t very much in the way of consumer goods for people to buy, because most of the factories were devoted to making other things. Whenever a few scarce consumer goods became available at the local store, people would line up for hours outside, hoping to get a chance to buy one of those few items. Most came away empty-handed, despite having the money.

A final thought: it is said that gold is not the basis for our monetary system, and in the sense that none of the world’s currencies are gold-backed, this is true. But then why are central banks all over the world still so anxious to own it?

Expand full comment
Adam Flint's avatar

Very interesting article, Ugo, with significant parallels with our current civilization. I think your view on the Middle Ages is not quite accurate, though.

Following the Roman Empire (after the Roman Republic), and its final demise, the Middle Ages extended over a thousand years in Europe. More time elapsed during the Middle Ages than since the Middle Ages ended, in 1453 according to most scholars or1492 as the latest date.

The concentration of power and relative wealth (wealth inequality) was never, ever diminished during this millenium. More than relics (I don't deny that relics were a major currency), land ownership was the real marker of wealth, power and prestige during the Middle Ages, and the source of energy were animal and (often forced) human labor. During the Middle Ages, the economic system changed several times, stabilizing around the feudal system, which also describes how the whole medieval society functioned from the 9th to the 15th century, or between the 10th and the 15th century (if we consider that the central state of the Carolingian Empire doesn't qualify even with other qualifiers of feudalism), or between the 10th and the early 18th century if we include a long transition period between feudalism and capitalism. This is a matter of definition. But in any case, in a much poorer economic environment, with less technology, less sophistication and less population, the Middle Ages and within, the feudal society, operated with even more extreme inequality than the Roman Empire. Inequality was actually the visible framework and outspoken ideology and justification of feudalism, without the (partial) pretense of the later capitalistic system. We are now transitioning back to a feudal system; it is not immediate as was not immediate its demises, but we can see the signs everywhere. Adam Flint, author of the prospective fiction, "Mona."

Expand full comment
6 more comments...

No posts