Could The Whole World Use Just One Currency? 

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If there is a single currency, it better be called Credits

if we all get to use only one currency I suggest we pick Zimbabwean dollar. Everyone gets to be a billionaire!

"its hard to store wealth in goats" ahh, darnit , now i know what ive been doing wrong all along. thanks

"Watch how grandpa collapses a galactic government by changing a 1 to a 0."

EE: 'It's hard to store wealth in goats' goats: [munching paper and textile euro and US banknotes] 'om nom nom'

FUN FACT: I remember when Italy went from Lire to Euro. Just for a better explanation, Lire were counted by the 1000, which means that we had 1000, 5000, 10,000 Lire notes ect.. 1 Euro was valued at almost 2000 Lire, the smallest coin was 100 Lire and was worth almost nothing. When Euro was introduced, many people didn't know how to adapt, (or count) so for something that costed 5000 Lire, the price was changed to 5 Euro (almost twice as much). That was super common to see, and I clearly remember at the end of the first month, when everybody was getting their first pay-check, those money were obviously correctly exchanged, which felt like everyone's salary was cut in a half. It also meant that, even though their net worth didn't change, the number of Billionaire in Italy dropped considerably. Thanks for reading! 😊

When I was in Singapore in November, 1 Canadian Dollar was about 1.005 Singapore Dollars (or vice versa, can't exactly remember). It was great not to have to do mental gymnastics when figuring out how much stuff cost.

Really flattered that my local Citi branch at 13:50 is featured in like half of these videos

"divide the goat into thirties - that just wouldn't do" butchers: am I a joke to you

Suggestions for future videos: * Economics of Slavery * Economics of the Apocalypse

The main thing preventing me from shopping online in most other countries is the not the difference in currency. Its the tax barriers and the hassle of declaring those taxes and so on. Paying in another currency is really a small hindrance compared to the import taxes that are not worth dealing with just to be a few items.

"Its hard to store wealth in goats." Would be good on a t-shirt.

Regarding small communal villages being great, one important reason why: they don't have to rely on barter. Because everyone knows everyone else, they can use reputation and favors as their medium of exchange. This is in fact how humans evolved, to live in communities. Barter is a relatively recent invention that is only necessary when trading with someone you don't know and don't expect to have an ongoing social relationship with them and all of their friends and family.

It already exists its called Toyota honda civics.

Hey EE! Would you be interested in making a video about corruption in general? Types of corruption, how it affects economy and business, how governments can fight widespread corruption, some historical moves that greatly reduced corruption, some that tried but failed miserably and so on... I think that would be very intereting as it is tightly connected to economics, a constant topic in the news of all (free) countries and yet we never hear how to effectively fight it. Cheers!

I came for the title, but got a refresher on Foreign Exchange! Amazing job, everyone! Thank you!

This might be a weird question, but would it be possible to explore how some of the other "multinational currencies" like the Central African Franc and East Carribean Dollar, and how/whether they're different to the Euro in any fundamental ways? I'm well aware they're not as widely used or accepted as the Euro, but they seem on a very surface level understanding to be similiar "projects" with regards to currency. Enjoyed the video btw, as always. Thanks for continuing to release these so regularly.

bUt wHaT aBoUt OnE CoiN?!?!1 There you go, I did it so you won't need to!

Those are the street shops in Kathmandu, Nepal where he was talking about bartering. We have a currency called Nepalese Rupee though in which we trade!! 😉😉

For political systems the question of control is always the most important issue. Thinking otherwise is just naive.

There's a lot of debate on whether barter systems actually ever existed. You're absolutely correct that bartering is a very inconvenient system, which is probably why they never existed. It seems that most non-currency based economies were actually gift economies. Could you do a video on gift economies?

I'm Canadian and I'm used to my currency basically being Northern Pesos. If you're Canadian and you got a job in the US, you're making a giant bonus due to the conversion alone. For some reason employers will pay same in the Canada and US; an engineer could make 60k CAD in Canada and have the same job where he/she makes 60k USD in the States, that's 80k CAD!

Great video! Congratulations on 500k subscribers, well deserved!

The Greece Germany roommate analogy fails on several key points: 1. Greece didn't _just_ happen to lose their job. They had been living above their means for decades, which then all came crashing down when they lost their job. 2. Greece didn't spend most of their money on communal expenses with Germany. They spent it on internal expenses in Greece(bloated public sector, extremely generous pensions, etc) in order for successive governments to get reelected. 3. When Germany(through the Troika) did force Greece to adjust their spending to their earning and sell the TV(publicly owned ports, etc), the opposition to this from Greece was massive enough to propel previously unheard of Syriza into government by promising an end to austerity.

Anthropologists and archaeologists are still looking for the fabled "Land of Barter".

You touched on "friction", i.e. the transaction cost of dealing with more than one currency. In the digital age, I think the trend is definitely towards reducing friction, which means dealing with multiple currencies will be less and less of a hassle over time. This, combined with the "How do you agree on who controls it?" problem, practically guarantees the cost of a universal currency will outweigh the benefits IMHO.

Love your work, liked and subscribed.

Well done mate, nice editing. Definitely subbed 👍

"190- 257 nations , depends on who you ask?" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Engines from Germany, which are worse than engines from italy. A Sentence that no italian car owner would ever say in their entire live.

Thank you for answer my question (I've been asking this question long time ago).

The problem with having one currency worldwide is that it would be controlled by one group of decision-makers, and if those decision-makers make disastrous decisions, it affects the whole world. not just their country. Decentralization of control (meaning competing currencies) is better at ensuring that we don't have a worldwide collapse of the economy, especially if you allow people to hold more than one currency easily, which diversifies their holdings and wealth.

As a Retail forex trader , that's a no no!

Well you know, that's the way it used to be. Do you know what a "dollar" actually refers to? It refers to a certain amount of silver. So for instance the original mexican peso was "a dollar currency" meaning it was backed up by the same amount of silver as the US dollar was, and the same amount of silver as the Australian dollar was, and the same amount of dollar as the Canadian dollar. There wouldn't have been any fluctuating exchange rate between these countries, because they'd all be "dollar currencies" and they would all stand for the same amount of silver.

David Graeber's book Debt: The First 5000 Years, argues that the idea barter came before money and credit is a common myth and isn't supported by the historical evidence. It made a pretty convincing case imo

Thank you I had this question for months 👍♥️♥️

Hey EE! Love your channel! Can you talk about the economy of Algeria, my country? It's a serious case of the Dutch disease.

"If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion." --George Bernard Shaw

10:35 I too surround my tv with hundreds of brown folders and box files! The storage in your storage look is so hot right now

This is actually an interesting thought if you think about how in an a sci-fi intergalactic sense Earth would would need to become essentially one nation in a way as a planet. Or how in Scifi settings there's intergalactic currencies such as credits in Star Wars

i live in Iran and during last 2 years sanctions and varies economic problems has shrank our currency value to the extend that price of a USD or euro has grown over 300 percent. yesterday it grown by a 10 percent in one day if this trend keeps going then we will son become another Venezuela

Closing statement : "No country in the world is going to give up their sovereign power that managing their own currency gives them", except all the ones you mention earlier in the video who did?

Congratz, 500.000 subs! Strangely youtube stopped recommending your videos 2 weeks ago, even though i watched all new ones immediately. Super strange, anyone else experienced that?

Hooray well-done on the 500subs m8

It would be amazing if you would do a video explaining the Central African Franc, especially how it works between France and the African countries that use it. I am an American living in Cameroon and hear many opinions on this and am curious to hear your take on it.

"You can't divide a goat into 30 pieces. It just does not work!" Butcher: Allow me to introduce myself.

To answer the begged question right at the start; "Give me control of a nations currency and I care not who writes the laws" - Nathan Rothchild, Govenor Bank of England. Setting up a global currency monopoly would be the most stupid thing imaginable.

Absolutely not. That would put complete power into the hands of the tiny group of psychopaths who seize control

A Bitcoin/cryto standard would just be like a return to the gold standard, except the money (Bitcoin/crypto) would be easier to secure, transport, verify, etc.

Great video as always, keep up the good work! Quick Question: are you a CFA or a certified economist? just curious

Good video and interesting implications re global currency. It would be good to address the issue of barter. It's an interesting counter-point in explaining the role of currency but is not necessarily the historical prerequisite to currency. I think there's more evidence of barter systems in societies were currency fails or where it is otherwise not available. Also the role of French and German banks in bond purchasing would be good to highlight too. Where your roommate keeps giving you money at an irresistible interest rate hoping for long term returns.

Thank for info

4:52 why is he typing for watching EE video😂

I loved the explanation about Greece and Germany being forced to share the same apartment when they don't have the means to support the same standard of living. That metaphor finally made the challenges European countries are having with the Euro click for me - thank you!

13:08 I imiately jump up when I saw that castle. I have some fond memories of that place.

Make more videoes about the "bancor" that Keynes suggested at Bretton Woods! Thanks

I can already see the central bankers getting a hard on thinking about this

Hi, Economics Explained. Want to say a big thank you! You are doing a great job and I am happy to see such good quality on RU-vid. Let me try to give ya some feedback. Seems like you are using the covid situation and trying to get a new audience but creating lots of new videos (can't really complain about that). However, I know that most of the topics you are presenting, need a great time to research, to analyse, reflect, and explain. And it seems to me that you are compromising on something. I am new to this channel and might be wrong, or maybe I saw some really cool videos and expect others to be the same "level", in any case, I believe you can and should do better. While I watch the video, I carefully listen to the introduction and your arguments, but "just touch the surface". I, and o lot of your viewers, would like to hear something in more depth, would like to learn new terms, and understand such topics more profoundly. Again, your team is doing a GREAT JOB! and this is why I believe you can make it even greater!

As long as it meets the beneficial conditions...then i'm good with..especially if there's a backup system also in place.

Super Mario Odyssey does a nice job at this, like there is still a unique currency for each kingdom but you can also use a global coin currency :)

A one world currency would be one based on what human truly cannot live without: oxygen.

You should make a video on the economy of Hong Kong

Oh, you need to look into Elastic Finance. Dynamically expanding and contracting supply. I work in Elastic Finance and would love to talk with you about it.

Wow nice channel...but how do you pass the Murray Rothbard purity test? :-P

2:50 - Bettering was never a popular medium of exchange, it was only done between tribes or participants who did not new each other very well. Most transactions in pre-mordern world were actually done by the system of "credit", you give presents and "favours" in exchange of presents and favours of the other party in future.

Have you looked into stable coins and DeFi? Price stable decentralised tokens and publicly auditable reserves administered by smart contracts on-chain solve the problems you mentioned in the crypto part.

Congrats on 500k subscribers

You could expand on this topic by making a video on how the global economy would/could function in a hypothetical world united under a world government of various forms.

Since you're an Australian I think it would be interesting to see your take on the New Zealand economy vs Australia

You missed the fact that you can cryptographically prove your bitcoin reserves.

The way you described the World Central Bank reminded me about the Banking Clan from star wars that became corrupt during the clone wars

AWESOME channel can you do a video on honduras economy

Bob: Money is evil just use direct trade Seamus: imma end this man's career

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." - someone sometime

❤️ this video and liked the new term of financial friction. I like the fiat currency because it shows supply and demand for prices for goods and services around the world.

Great video overall, however I would assert that economies never operated on barter, and that economists rewrote history to suit their narrative. The case is made more completely by a book called "Debt: the first 5000 years". The short version is that ancient economies were either gift economies or operated based on a record of debts rather than a barter transaction which closed immediately. If you think about it that's common sense too, even this video points out how unworkable barter is as a way for an economy to operate.

Your analysis about Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin is absolutely correct. A capped currency doesn’t solve any problem. When you also take in consideration, that with any transaction the blockchain becomes larger and therefore the mining costs go up, bitcoin is just a big bubble. Of course the mining costs are more influenced by the miners competition at the moment, so you expect many small minors pushed out of the market and only the miners survive, who have the lowest cost of electricity. This consolidation makes the blockchain susceptible for manipulation. This is what ultimately destroys Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. But still I see very big potential in the technology of Cryptocurrencies. There are some critical aspects which need to get fixed. Some people point out Etherium as a better Crypto. An authentication via proof of steak rather than proof of work has many advantages. But there are more essential feature our perfect Crypto must have. Hedera Hashgraph claims to provide an instant authentication process and the data is constantly hashed/computed, so that there is no big data agglomeration as with the blogchaintechnologie, whilst providing the same amount of security. I am no mathematician, so I cannot really confirm these statements. But an improved technical Standard where old data is shortened and authentication times are lowered significantly is also essential. The last point is of course the control of money supply in the system. As you pointed out in the beginning a fractional reserve system is not viable. Like libra, the Crypto from facebook, the amount of currency can be attached to financial assets. But libra is centralized, which is reluctant to our initial idea of Cryptocurrencies as decentralized currencies. So the solution to this dilemma are policies which are programmed into the system. We could keep track of the amount of goods and assets in the system and therefore keep track of inflation or deflation. We can control these parameters by giving out helicopter money or detroying money of the accounts. We could build in marketplaces and smartcontracts in this Cryptocurrency like in Etherium and it would make taxation easier for governments because we could build that in too. It would be a Fiat currency with such transparency, that it could last very long. Of course there a still some problems with my proposal, because in all of history there was no lasting fiat currency, but this could be a step in the right direction.

Before watching this, I will say that if the EU is having problems with a single currency, how would the planet full of drastically different economies and stages of economic development be able to use a single currency?

do the federal reserve next! how it works, how its privately owned etc

What if the world adopted a universal currency alongside their national currencies? That way people could choose which currency to use for a given purchase. That might take away some of the issues that Greece faces with the Euro (if they’d also reinstitute a national currency in this case). Idk what problems would arise from such a system but would be interesting to analyze?

According to one game, the world used to have a unified currency, called Ducats for some reason...

Great video! you should make a video on the implications of cryptocurrencies to the world economy

Well I mean while using one currency would be catastrophic we could try to group countries together by economic stability / prosperity and their relations (so for exampe west europe, east europe, north america, etc.) this would reduce the number of availalbe currencys and would stabilize the remaining currencys but the drawbacks would be easier to handle

You shuld do a video discussing central bank digtal currencys and their potential effects.

"You can buy one-millionth of a bitcoin."

If you say "1 German Deutsche Mark", you are basically saying "1 German German Mark" 😂😂. Awesome video as always man ! Thank you for your work 🙏🏼

9:10 is that the civil war building where Winter soldier crushed a heli

Hey could you share a link to the timetable by which countries have to adopt the Euro? Thanks!

The issue with a world currency that breaks the usual fractional reserve system: "OH NO THE RICHER PEOPLE HAVE TO ACTUALLY BE RESPONSIBLE NOW AND NOT AVOID TAX BY TAKING LOANS!" But yes fro this kind of thing to work, you need a international government first above all federal governments. THEN we can consider more global unifications.

Countries with a trade deficit need to be able to devalue their currency in order to boost exports. That's why South European countries are running into trouble at the moment.

When is the ICO of the Economics Explained Coin?

The engine example worked well to explain currency exchange rate risk but avoided how no German money would leave Germany with the introduction of the Euro. Instead debts & credits would be raised via the Target2 system. A video on Target2 would be good.

"This probably won't change banking..." And then came along DeFi!

that's not true, sure banks could issue "notes" backed by a certain cryptocurrency amount, but one of the main points of bitcoin, and other crypto currencies is that it made banks UNNECESSARY! I do not need a bank to protect a passphrase in the same way gold needs protection.

Great videos as always! Can you make a video of what if Africa used one currency similar to the Euro and the EU, in this case a AU (Africa United)

@Economics Explained ok i have got to correct you here at one point. I ones worked as an Intern for a German Officesupplies manufacturer/seller. As i was rather articulate, meticulse and knowledgeable enough in the relevant German laws i was the Guy how wrote up the relevant Information for a possible Lawsuite against customers that made an initial Order and than didnt follow though to inform the Boss and if given the ok transmit all info with all Complaints to the Lawyer for evaluation and possible Lawsuits. The Company that i interned for had about 500 Employees by the way and i do not know whether the several dozen interns/apprentices are included. Anyway a favourite "trick" of mine was to tell he country of origin of the customer. If it was anywhere outside of Germany (mostly Switzerland and Austria) the answer came within a couple of minutes, No, let it drop. Those within Germany were mostly sued of course. So even within common Currency Regions there are still substantial Tradebarierrs.

1:26 Cody Co fans be like: I've heard that before

Example for students as myself: So you have been assigned a project with 26 other guys (that's alot lol) and you end up getting 3- /C- because Greece didn't do his part (if he were alone he would have gotten 5/E and would thus try harder.

Great video! Hypothetical question: what if Canada America and Mexico had the same currency?