The Operation Bernhard example seems particularly weak to me, thinking for 30 seconds you can come up with practical solutions for this situation even if you imagine Nazi Germany having perfect competency in pulling off their scheme.
For example, using tax records and bank records to roll back peoples fortunes a couple of years and then introducing a much more secure bank note. It’s not like WW2 was an era of fiscal conservatism, war powers were leveraged heavily by the federal reserve in the united states to do whatever they wanted with currency. We comfortably operate in a fiat currency regime where currency is artificially scarce and can be manipulated in half a dozen ways at the drop of a hat.
The way you interpret Operation Bernhard seems to me like you imagine the rules of society as something we set up and then are bound to like lemmings. When in reality, the rules can be rewritten at any time when the need arises. I think your example is equivalent to saying the ability to turn lead into gold would destroy the gold-standard era economy and utterly wreck civilization. When we know in hindsight we can just wave our finger and decouple currency and gold at a moments notice.
I suspect many of the other rules and systems that hold our civilization are just as adaptable when the need arises.
The Operation Bernhard example seems particularly weak to me, thinking for 30 seconds you can come up with practical solutions for this situation even if you imagine Nazi Germany having perfect competency in pulling off their scheme.
For example, using tax records and bank records to roll back peoples fortunes a couple of years and then introducing a much more secure bank note. It’s not like WW2 was an era of fiscal conservatism, war powers were leveraged heavily by the federal reserve in the united states to do whatever they wanted with currency. We comfortably operate in a fiat currency regime where currency is artificially scarce and can be manipulated in half a dozen ways at the drop of a hat.
The way you interpret Operation Bernhard seems to me like you imagine the rules of society as something we set up and then are bound to like lemmings. When in reality, the rules can be rewritten at any time when the need arises. I think your example is equivalent to saying the ability to turn lead into gold would destroy the gold-standard era economy and utterly wreck civilization. When we know in hindsight we can just wave our finger and decouple currency and gold at a moments notice.
I suspect many of the other rules and systems that hold our civilization are just as adaptable when the need arises.