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> said in a lot of places that then went through extreme political turmoil

Well, yes; inequality and shortages that the elite refuse to address lead to a lot of the classic Latin American revolutions, as well as the earlier Chinese revolution and Russian revolution. This is the concept referred to as "redistribution is insurance against pitchforks".

> wilful ignorance on the part of the elites

This really characterises a lot of the post 2016 era. The amount of incredibly stupid and incoherent nonsense. But no matter how comfortable the narrow elite are, no matter how much surplus money is sloshing around for crazy startup projects and asset price inflation, they're not going to tolerate higher taxes.

(I hereby propose the least politically feasible project ever: confiscatory taxes on billionaires, but the money is simply deleted in an effort to bring down the money supply)



> but the money is simply deleted

What an interesting idea. Is there any historical precedent for actually deleting/destroying money?


Yes, all sorts; an example which comes to mind is the Indian demonetization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis...

It was pretty disruptive: "The move reduced the country's industrial production and its GDP growth rate. It is estimated that 1.5 million jobs were lost." and it seems to not have been very effective in its stated aim to move the "black economy" back into visibility.

The Cyprus "bank haircut" could count as another example, in that it's deleting secondary money - bank deposits which had become unbacked and unbackable - rather than primary money. https://www.ft.com/content/4a1bb1d6-9926-11e2-af84-00144feab...


Banks do it every day. It is what happens when someone repays a loan. Likewise money is created when that loan is created.


> What an interesting idea. Is there any historical precedent for actually deleting/destroying money?

Bitcoin?




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