The social sciences can be dangerous stuff.  Get you public health policies wrong people die.  Get your diplomacy wrong and all hell breaks loose.  Follow the wrong economic policies and folks starve or worse.

One of the charts that most effected me over the years is this one that shows when various nations abandoned the gold standard during the depression and the lead up to the 2nd world war.  I think you make a pretty straight forward argument that the 2nd world war might have been avoided if the sequence had been different.  Hard money kills.

All currencies have an agenda.  Sometimes their designers are too foolish to know what it is, but still.  Gift cards, frequent flier miles, credit cards, check clearing networks all have an agenda.  You can manage your nation’s currency to make workers insecure and increase the level of unemployment.

This essay by Charlie Stross about why Bitcoin is evil says many of the things I have been thinking.  He calls it a weapon by design.

I’ve wondered if nation states engage in cold warfare by viciously engaging in PR campaigns designed to advance the bad economic policies in their rivals.  I don’t see why not, all the other players in the democratic policy strive to guide social policies to their benefit.