"what should we take as the primary reason of why currency regimes fail ?"
I'm a student of the science of money, not a teacher. I can't say there is a primary reason why currency regimes fail. Those subject to exclusively private control always end with a relatively small cohort absconding with the wealth of their community. My concern is mostly in not repeating the mistakes of the past. That's why the history of currency regimes is of interest to me.
There have been "fiat" regimes that worked, but ultimately they depend on what I call the exercise of "citizenship." That is what I find lacking today: most of my fellows in the US have no notion of what it means to be a citizen and to join in taking responsibility for the welfare of the community. So I have to admit that exercising the money "franchise" through public institutions/governments, which I believe is essential, is burdened with our failure as citizens and the prospect of continued failure.
The Greeks had a word for people who didn't participate in the political affairs of the community from which we get our word idiot.
Idios, Greek, of an individial, peculiar to one person; compare idiotes Greek, a private person. Idiot and idiocy obviously contain this root. They derive from idiotes which was the word for a private person, as opposed to a person of rank and influence holding public office in ancient Greece. Hence, it was supposed, an idiotes was ignorant and stupid. The ancient Greeks were rather free in their putdowns of common people.
One classics scholar put it to me this way:
"In ancient Greece, if you wanted to vote, you had to appear in person in a large city center such as Athens, and vote there. There were no polling stations or absentee ballots. So if you were a farmer living out on your spread some five or ten miles from town and you wanted to vote, you first of all had to drop everything you were doing on the farm—and there was always plenty to do down on the farm—and make what was probably a two to three day round trip journey while you left you wife and children at home alone to fend for themselves.
Travel in the ancient world could be a brutal experience. Remember, this was before there was anything like a police force or a highway patrol, and so there were plenty of people out there just waiting for you to come riding down the road so they could beat you over the head and rob you blind—and that was if you were lucky! And what if you had to spend the night along the way? Motels back then just weren’t what they are today—which still isn’t saying much. The technology of the lock and key had been invented, but far from perfected, so there was a good chance that if you spent the night at an “inn,” you’d wake up to find not only your shoes and clothes and money stolen, but also your horse, or donkey, or mule and whatever was hitched onto the back of it. A good mule and wagon—let alone a horse—could bring a lot of drachma on the black market. And people didn’t ask too many questions when the price was right.
So many farmers living out in the boonies just figured the heck with it and didn’t bother to risk getting robbed or worse just to drop a pottery shard into an urn with someone’s name on it. Besides, what did he care who was the ruling Archon in Athens any given year? Did it really affect him? As a result, a lot of these people just kept to themselves and didn’t get involved in politics simply because it was so impractical—not to mention dangerous—for them to try.
In ancient Greece, a person who kept to himself and out of public life was referred to as an idiotes."
TJ, maybe this answers your question better than all of the above:
"Why, [Caesar], he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," Act I Scene 2 |
