Up until the year 300 BC all coins in the Roman Empire were made of either Gold or Silver. But then one day a clever Roman guy realized something that would lead to an idea that would revolutionize the way an economy is run forever, including all economies today.
This also applies to the economy of Steemit as well as the dollar, the pound, the Yen, and so on.
This unknown Roman, who has literally been forgotten in history, went to speak to the Roman Government, also known as “The Senate”, and told them of his realization and of his idea.
Imagine a nervous guy standing in front of Rome´s powerful politicians, and this is what he said:
“It does not matter what a coin is made of in order for it to have value. All that matters is he quantity of the number of those coins in circulation”
At first they thought this was utter nonsense and this unknown guy was crazy. Everyone had become used to the idea that a coin must be made of something rare, like gold in order for it to have value.
However, here was this guy saying was that it was rarity itself that made a coin valuable.
Diamonds are pretty of course, but that is not what makes them valuable. It is because they are very difficult to get and so they rare and therefore valuable . Just to clarify, if anyone could just dig a hole in at the ground and find a diamond anywhere, then diamonds would not be worth very much because everyone would have them.
So his point was, whatever is rare has value.
Eventually, this clever unknown person convinced the Roman politicians (Seneators) of his thinking,
and they realized that the idea was simple but very powerful.
And so the Senators decided to try a social experiment to see if it was true.
They employed a man who was clever with mixing metals to begin making cheap coins made from Copper instead of gold.
In a special announcement, Roman Citizens were told that these new “copper coins” were perfectly legal (legal tender) to be used to buy anything they wanted.
The people were told that these copper-coins had value because they were based on the stability of the Roman Empire itself.
How does actually work?
The Roman Empire itself could be considered as being valuable because of its thriving citizens and its thriving culture.
When a culture is thriving it means that more people will be tempted to join that culture, and as more people join, becoming citizens, this makes the Empire grow larger.
The larger an Empire becomes the more value it has.
And so logically so does the value of its economy (coins)
Understandably, Rome citizens were a little skeptical about these cheap coins but after a while they began to accept the idea that Rome was solid and so was not going to crumble any time soon.
Therefore as long as the people of Rome believed in the Roman Empire, then the coins of the empire would also have value. And the bigger the Empire became the more valuable the coins became. (Sound familiar?)
When there was only Gold and Silver coins not many people had them. But now, as if by magic, there was a large supply of money (coins) everywhere and all the citizens had them. It might sound crazy, but the Senate literally gave them to all Roman citizens for free.
SO WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? - New era for Rome
Just as this unknown clever guy predicted, the economy of Rome boomed.
In fact, for the first time in history the ordinary guy in the street had access to coins that were previously out of their financial reach. It was rather like taking one gold coin and cutting into smaller pieces, but instead of these "pieces" being made from gold, they were made from cheap metals.
This is exactly what we do today with pennies, dimes, cents and pence.
By doing this it gave ordinary hard working citizens something standard they could use to trade with.
But more importantly this money was "created" without the burden of "interest" added on top as what Banks to today.
But that is another story I will go into in another blog.
With this new money system Rome literally eradicated poverty during this specific era and no other Empire since has ever achieved this.
Rome and its "socialistic" Senate, became the wealthiest, most abundant civilization in human history.
This is still true today.
SO WHAT THE HELL WENT WRONG? - WHY DID THE EMPIRE FALL?
Rome could have remained in this virtual utopian state forever but then it all went wrong
Once again Rome´s future was altered by the influence of one guy.
This time however, this guy´s name was remembered. Julius Cæsar.
I am sure everyone has heard of this man but in case you do not know much about the guy, he was basically a general of the Roman army. A Empire needs an army to protect it from invaders right?
Julius Cæsar had once been a soldier himself and really understood the art of war.
Powerful people saw this in him and rose him up to be the leader of the entire Roman army.
Julius Cæsar had been out in the world defeating countries and forcing them to “join” then Roman Empire.
Once a defeated country became part of the Roman Empire then their citizens would be forced to use the Roman coin. This of course increase the value of the over all Roman economy - meaning the value of its coin.
NOTE: Now you know why it is so important to the America Government want the dollar to be the most used “coin” in the world. This is why Bitcoin is a threat.
BACK TO Julius Cæsar:
From all his many victories in battle, Julius Cæsar had gathered a great deal of gold.
With this gold he began creating his own coins. He was so vain that he even put his own face on these coins.
When Cæsar returned to Rome with all his wealth and the army behind him, he declared himself the new leader of Rome. Calling himself “Emperor” and that he would be the leader for life.
And who was going to stop him?
Hail Cæsar!
Now that Cæsar was the new leader of Rome it meant that he could do whatever he wanted and the first thing he did was to make a law that only HIS GOLD COINS were legal, and that the cheap copper coins would be illegal.
Can you imagine the effect this had on ordinary Roman citizens?
Suddenly all their copper coins they owned/saved became worthless.
This effectively made people poor overnight.
The incredible social experiment of creating cheap money and having its supply carefully controlled, had created the opportunity and the environment for every citizen of Rome to own money.
But now, once again, money was back in the hands of only a few people. Basically Cæsar and those that sucked up to Cæsar and thus were in his inner circle.
This totally pissed off the senators and they eventually got around to assassinating Cæsar.
Unfortunately they left it too late because now his gold coins had become the "standard" form of money:
And now that this gold money was firmly back in the hands of the rich few, and these rich few did not want to let go of the power this wealth gave them.
By the time Cæsar was killed, the money supply of coins was reduced by 90%.
Without coins, no one can buy anything.
When this happens it creates what today we call a depression.
Things became so bad that the ordinary hard working citizen had to sell their entire property just to be able to buy a loaf of bread. Sound familiar?
Ordinary people of Rome now lost faith in the Roman dream.
The dream that: working together in order to create a great nation for the common good, was over.
This is actually what lead to the fall of the Roman empire and the beginning of the dark ages.
All because a handful of people wanted everything for themselves instead of spreading the wealth around among the many.
And so the wise words of the Roman Emperor, Markus Aurelius came true. (as seen in the film Gladiator)
He said; “An empire does not fall from marauding enemies at its gates, but when the people themselves stop believing in it”
In this way, Steemit CAN NOT be destroyed from outside by its enemies, but only if its own members stop believing in it.
The value of the Steem “coin” is based on how many are in circulation and its thriving members and thriving culture.
The more people join Steemit, the bigger the community grows. The bigger the community grows, the more valuable the “empire” of Steemit, and therefore the higher the value of the Steem coin.
The biggest lesson from the fall of the Roman Empire is this:
When money is spread out among the many, an economy booms.
When money is kept in the hands of the few, it falls.
History proves this.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
The price of steem is currently rising.
What does this mean?
Well one thing it means is that the community/members are thriving and and they believe in Steemit´s future and thus it is attracting new people.
As for the recent Whales "experiment of "Not voting": this in effect, puts the steem money in the hands of the many rather than the few.
If this is what is causing the Steemit price to rise, I will not comment upon.
Hail Steemit !
Thank you for visiting my blog and reading my post.
I wish you a warm welcome back next time @arthuradamson
