The easy way out

The easy way out

Posted Nov 6, 2012 15:25 UTC (Tue) by fsateler (subscriber, #65497)
In reply to: The easy way out by khim
Parent article: Let’s Limit the Effect of Software Patents, Since We Can’t Eliminate Them (Wired)

(historically money were backed with gold).

Not true, please do some research. True, several countries had for a time currencies convertible to gold but that is not the historical norm, as several commodities were used. Moreover, even when the currency was physically made of gold or other commodity, it was not always convertible to the base commodity. Here are some facts for you:

• Ancient Sparta used worthless iron disks as currency.
• Ancient Athens used worthless copper disks as currency.
• In Ancient Greece in general gold was not particularly valuable, yet some coins were made of gold.
• The early romans used worthless bronze tablets and coins.
• In the US, after silver was demonetized in the 1870s, its price relative to gold plummeted.

In the above list, worthless is used to mean "worth below the face value of the currency". In other words, the value of the same amount of commodity is below the value of the minted coin.

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