[thaumasiotes]

I didn't even understand that you had a point of your own; I saw the conversation go "It's stupid that tulips would go that high, and funnily enough it didn't happen." > "citation?" > "look at the wikipedia page for Tulipomania", and then a comment that it's in the nature of tulips to depreciate over time (side note: I get the analogy to patents, but I don't get the analogy to windows 3.1).

The tulipomania page does not support the idea that high tulip prices didn't happen. Those tulip catalogs were not the polemical pamphlets (admittedly, it doesn't appear to be clear who put the prices in). The only thing my comment mentions that came from a propaganda pamphlet is the price of cheese, but I figure there's no real reason to doubt them on that. A law really was passed for the relief of people who had bought tulip futures. It seems to have been effective, but none of that means prices weren't high; it means tulip prices didn't have a major effect on the Dutch economy.