[weland]

> I'd say it's a matter of debate how good that control is when who's controlling it is either incompetent or has it's own interests -- or worst, both.

The problem is that, in the example quoted, no one had that control. Gold mines run dry and you're fucked. Not because some incompetent banker is controlling the gold supply, but because there is no more damn gold. The most competent financial advisor of Rome -- a figure so gargantuan in the field of finance that, if transplanted to the modern world, would not only win that fake Nobel prize for economics, but would cause every other economist to retire out of shame -- would have been powerless. Because there was literally no more gold.

Obviously, it wasn't the end of all things -- new mining facilities would be open, sometimes processes would be optimized in older ones, wars would be waged, but these things took time and needed money.

[gshubert17]

No more gold? Wasn't there more gold in other places? Places the Romans didn't know about, but still places.

I'm not suggesting the Romans needed to venture westward and discover the Americas, but did they really have no other options?

[creshal]

Their trade balance was massively negative – it's called the "silk road" and not the "Roman wine and glass ware road" for a reason. Gold and silver left Europe and perishable goods were bought for it. It was initially offset by spoils of war and massive mining operations (some of the Roman mines in Spain are still visible today).

Apart from that, there was also normal economic and population growth – even without trade, if your population and economy grows, you'll need more money if you want to keep prices and wages stable.

So, they had several options:

• Conquer places that have gold! That went well for a few centuries, until it didn't any more.

• Debase the currency to make more of the money still here. That was, unsurprisingly, massively unpopular. And because monetary value was still tied to precious metals, people just started to hoard old money to melt it in later (something you still occasionally see with e.g. copper pennies), which led to all sorts of economic problems (occasionally crashing all the way down to barter trade).