Money
From the earliest human civilizations, various forms of money have been utilized. Good for good barter (e.g. a goat traded for a bushel of wheat) and the need for debt evolved into fiat currency (e.g. US Dollar, Chinese Yuan), which today is managed by nation-state governments. The administration of a monetary system requires managing the quantity (amount of money is in a system) and flow (ensuring money can be spent/received/saved) of money in a given monetary system. Historically, the management of money systems has been monopolized by nation-state governments for a variety of reasons, such as:
- The high cost of maintaining an infrastructure to create currency (e.g. printing bills and coins)
- The ability for governments to pay down debt via inflation (e.g. printing money to pay down debt)
- A government being a natural consensus mechanism (e.g. everyone believes in it)
- Historical precedent
Governments continuously mis-manage monetary systems. Here are two prime examples:
Sources:
Hyperinflation | https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Hyperinflation.html
Coin Market Cap | https://coinmarketcap.com/