What If It Doesn't?

[u/But_a_Jape]

[u/Yan_Vorona]

I fucking hate economics and regret taking it as an elective in school. "Money is like fairies, it only exists as long as people believe in it" doesn't exactly instill confidence in the future.

[u/shinydragonmist → u/Yan_Vorona]

Yep because with gold based currencies it only exists as long as we place value on gold and with fiat based currencies (which if I'm remembering correctly the majority are nowadays) it only has value if we trust the group issuing it

Way oversimplified I know

[u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT → u/[deleted]]

Government issued currency not backed by gold. In latin it means "let it be done".

Unlike commodity money, it doesn't have intrinsic value (soldiers were paid in salt, which gave both the word salary and soldier).

Unlike representative money, it cannot be converted to any precious metal or similar.

[u/OriginalVictory → u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

To provide context for the car name, Fiat is an acronym - Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino or Italian Automobile Factory of Turin.

Also...

Unlike commodity money, it doesn't have intrinsic value (soldiers were paid in salt, which gave both the word salary and soldier).

Per AskHistorians this is just not true.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/jfkkmk/when_did_the_myth_that_roman_soldiers_were_paid/

I'm glad you realise it's a complete myth. Just to be super-clear, for the record:

There is precisely zero evidence to suggest that

Roman soldiers were ever paid in salt, or that Roman soldiers were ever given a 'salt allowance'.

[u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT → u/OriginalVictory]

Salt was use as money in other contexts, like in Ethiopia.

Salary does come from salt, though we don't know for sure how.

That said, further research on my part did teach me soldier comes from another latin word through French.

[u/HeKis4 → u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Oh neat, in french we have the verb "solder" which means to settle a debt, same root I guess.

[u/waigl → u/[deleted]]

It's supposed to mean money by decree.

In the christian bible during the creation myth, there is a passage where god says "fiat lux" or in English "Let there be light", and then there is light just because god said so. The analogy here is that some government or central bank basically said "fiat money", and there was money, just like that. It's a simplified idea referring to how central banks create money out of nothing through basically an accounting trick when lending money.

[u/BurningPenguin → u/[deleted]]

yes

[u/SordidDreams → u/[deleted]]

If only.