On why money is tax.

[mc776]

Ant, Uber, and the true nature of money by Cory Doctorow

The actual historical reality, supported by history, archaeology and anthropology, is that governments created money by creating tax. The first "money" was the Babylonian ledgers that recorded how much of their crops farmers owed to the state and their creditors.

Money took a leap forward with imperial conquest: emperors solved the logistical problem of feeding and billeting their occupying soldiers by charging the occupied a tax that had to be paid for in coins stamped with the emperor's head.

They paid the soldiers in these coins, and demanded that their conquered populations somehow get the coins in order to pay their tax, with violent consequences if the tax wasn't paid. So the people sold food and other necessities to soldiers to get the coins.

Money, in other words, is how states provision themselves, and it derives its value from the fact that you have to pay your taxes in it. Governments spend money into existence by buying labor and goods from the public, and then tax it out of existence once a year. ...

When You Know by Tim Bray

OK, let me add one additional argument for why Bitcoin is not and can never be “real” money. You know what real money is? Money you can use to pay your taxes. The USA, in 2018, had about 140 million taxpayers. Suppose 10% of them wanted to use Bitcoin to pay their taxes. Let’s say the global Bitcoin network can process ten transactions per second (it can’t, it’s slower than that). By my arithmetic, at 10/second it would take the whole network, running flat out, not doing anything else, over five months to process those payments and refunds. This is just Federal Income Tax.

I should keep this in mind for any further worldbuilding stuff. Sure beats uncritically rehashing barter mechanics and GP...

Comments

[helarxe]

The beranlilan silver stater is minted each time a drum-singing bronze-tripod-swan takes flight for the first time in the autumn; the coin falls into the flowered balcony of a widow from the sea-perfumed ether. It has a half-life of three Suns, and most in the hands of beggars and shieldmakers have been in use since Chalchiuhtlicue.

It buys twenty thunderstorms and an ivory tusk;
It can be paid to an angel of the Choir of Lustration when it is spraying the awe and terror of History for it to be silent;
It is worth a dozen hoplites who have seen and Known of Beauty and the Enemy;
It was established as the wergild of one instance of Calm as murdered by Knowledge.

[mc776]

This ties perfectly two diverging threads resulting from the OP that I had not thought to join.

[mc776]

......this is basically what they do in MMORPGs, isn't it.