Rome and Steemit were not built in a day. The rise and fall of Rome and how Steemit can learn from this story.steemCreated with Sketch.

in #steemit8 years ago (edited)



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




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Hello @arthuradamson,

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Thank you, much appreciated.

This is my best Steemit post of all time, I am going to save the URL on my computer and read the post whenever i lack inspiration, Thank you sir for this wonderful post, You have given us tremendous value today and I am very proud to be one of your followers.

@the-future, you have to see this. Resteemed

I am off to smear @arthuradamson all over Discord and social media

Wow I am sincerely honored.
My only intention is to share what I believe everyone should know.
After the 2008 financial crash I decided it was about time I educated myself on how money works.
It took me about 2 years.
After that I decided that if everyone knew this knowledge then it meant the banks and the rich would have a far more difficult time in swindling us because we would know what they do.
Since then I have been trying to find ways of telling it in an interesting and uncomplicated way.
We should all control the money, not the few, history shows that this is how we all prosper.
How can that be bad.
Thanks again, your kind words mean a lot @ogochukwu

Your post has enlightened me beyond measure

Then I feel happy 😃

Great post! Learnt a lot from this thank you!

Hey thanks.
I became fascinated with the history of money after the 2008 financial crash.
I realized that I did not really understand how money works and perhaps there were others like me.
The way I figured it, if everyone understood how money works, then the banks would have no control of the money anymore and we would instead because we understood how they swindle us.

that is totally true!
Followed look forward to more content :)

Hey thanks, much appreciated @gingenetwork

You're welcome man! Check my blogs out if you've got a free 5 mins 😊 @arthuradamson

Sure, I will do right now thanks .....
Followed

Excellent post!
Resteemed

Wow, what can I say but thank you so much, really appreciate it.

This has been one of the best articles I have ever read on here. I like history and I never knew that Ceasar did that with the gold coins (making other coins illegal). I always thought they started to delude coins at some point. Thank you so much for sharing this amazing fun to read piece. I will look forward to your other posts.

Wow, what a wonderful response.
History of money is a particular hobby of mine and I write about that every now and again.
I basically use my blog to write what thrills me or what is on my mind at the time. In this way I know I will write without a hidden agenda but instead with true freedom of expression.
I mean, if we do not thrill ourselves or interest ourselves with what we create, then how can we expect others to feel they have shared in something real.
I can not promise that you will like everything I post but I can promise my intention is to share in stories/experiences/artwork that I feel is enlightening in some way.

A very good explanation of the fall of Rome. All I could remember from school times was that it had fallen, and Ceasar being killed had somethi g to do with it. How was @dan's health when he left?. 🐵

People always say: we shall learn from history. Well this is how you do it! Thank you very much.

Hey thanks @sumsum. Money history is a hobby of mine. I like to understand how things work and how we get to where we are today.

This is one of the best articles (and allegories) I have read in my six weeks or so here!

The history of money is fascinating... one of the things I keep coming back that money is NOT "the root of all evil," in fact money is a pretty nifty thing... it's the LOVE of money that's the real problem... leading to greed and the desire to hoard... which leads to uproar. As Cæsar discovered...

I'm all about getting more people on Steemit... and pulling them (as best I can) from my old contacts from my prior "social blogging" days. Picking people who are not only accomplished content creators, but who have large followings they can bring along. It's a labor of patience, though... organic growth matters; indeed, this place cannot be built in a day.

Thank you for sharing your thinking. Awesome opinion. Nice !

Delightful post. Thank you. Now I had read there are many things that went into the fall of Rome. I am fascinated by this part of history. But I had heard that they were overproducing their currency and that devalued it to the point of uselessness. But ROME never really fell, it just moved to Constantinople and let the Vikings sack the West Coast for slaves and rewards which eventually made their way back to Rome/Constantinople. I love talkin history. Thank you for this appealing post. Followed!

Thank you, indeed Roman history is fascinating.
I deliberately simplified the case in order to get across a message. Of course there were many factors that lead to Romes demise and indeed there was a time were the over produced. The point I was focusing on was that as long as the money supply is controlled and no interest is added on top then you can keep on top of inflation. Also that the value of a currency is related to the nations health itself.. Ultimately it is human greed that destroys economies.

As a Norwegian myself, I must apologize for sacking the West coast 😃
Cheers @jacobts

Apology accepted. And comment enjoyed! Appreciates your post. And Followed! :)

lol! thanks man, much appreciated.