https://preview.redd.it/gc0v1drp1ot61.png?width=938&format=png&auto=webp&s=37d28982a03fc2f8da4aba68954d8553c57e738a
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_stick
The split tally of the Exchequer remained in continuous use in England until 1826.
For those who scoff on crypto, surely cryptocurrency is better than a piece of wood!
I've been researching the use of Tally Sticks as currency and found multiple references to Henry I using them in his tax system. It is intuitive to me how regular citizens might exchange tally sticks that originated with a wealthy lender or a goldsmith, or some high-ranking noble who (at least in theory) always be good for the debt if you wanted to "cash out" your tally stick.
It isn't clear to me how tally sticks would be used for paying taxes, seeing as they would be given to wealthy nobles rather than originating from them.
I'm making lots of assumptions here about how these things worked and who would have actually been utilizing tally sticks. If anyone can point me in the direction of some decent sources on this type of currency, I'd really appreciate it. Any general explanation of tally sticks would be incredible. Thank you for your time!
So as a kid we always used tally sticks to count kids coming back from the restroom, or whos turn it was to do something. Recently though I watched a video on the origin of tally sticks.
Brief History Lesson
Back in the day before computers receipts were not a thing, but people needed a way to keep track of how much something cost. Tally sticks were born. In principle areas made a system that was based on cuts in a stick. These cuts were called tallies. A certain number of cuts, at certain lengths or distances would equate to a number. Someone in the transaction would keep the tally stick. Eventually tally sticks were used to account if someone paid taxes. I forget in what region, but possibly multiple. A stick was carefully broken in half, length ways. Then each side of the transaction would record the tallies. Then if it ever came back up, such as the question "did you pay your taxes," the citizen could get there side of the stick so it could be matched perfectly.
Discussion/Question
How do you all record how taxes or transactions done in your worlds?
I personally love medieval fantasy such as Lord of the Rings, The Witcher, and Dungeons and Dragons Campaign Settings. These are popular worlds that I like, I do like less popular fantasies. The world im building now is similar to a medieval fantasy, I know there popular, but its what I like. The thing ive noticed is that for D&D, which is why im building it, players can easily forge marks/seals/signatures in order to get money for a receipt lets say. So if a player wanted to they could easily make money by forging receipts for money from the bank. This system of having a perfect match of a stick would fix that problem.
Do you like the idea of tally sticks for world building?
What would be a cool/unique alternative to tally sticks?
It makes me sick that those greedy bastards would try making their own coin trying to fool the masses and who knows what else they're up to.
Just implement btc or similar. The world doesn't need a different coin for every aspect of their life.
Rant over. #fuckfacebook
Edit:After reading comments I have changed my stance. Btc is incompetent. Thanks Facebook and Mark for coming to the rescue for all us bag holders. This is going to be amazing.
Cheers for Silver guys
when you really look at what money is you will see that money is a ledger. We have always used what we could to form a system of keeping track of value.
Gold was good because it was hard to fake, it made it a good way to take something rare and make it a ledger. Tally sticks were also ledgers, and hard to fake and worked very well.
Tally sticks were easy to transport and were actually very disruptive to the pre existing system.
The history of tally sticks is parallel to bitcoin is many ways. However the powers that be had the gold and didn't want to loose their claim on the wealth they had accumulated. They used their power to end the use of tally sticks in favor of fiat government backed currency.
In a way bitcoin is just "Tally stick 2.0"
Gold is also just a ledger. Gold shows you who has value and who doesn't. It's a proof of steak system where if you have gold you have value. It's limited supply and lack of rust or decomposition made it the best possible ledger for a very long time.
When you invent the wheel, and spread the tech around it's almost impossible to take it away. Never since the invention of the wheel has a culture decided not to use it in favor of previous tech. Simply put grand inventions like the wheel change the game so much and offer so much efficiency to the system you can't really undo them.
Bitcoin is like that. It's not that gold isn't good as a ledger, and it's not that gold hasn't done well for 5,000 years or more, it's that bitcoin is just better.
Bitcoin is a step forward that will be hard to ever get people to take away. Once you understand it, it would be almost impossible to convince people not to use blockchain as a ledger.
Blockchain is the most perfect leger system we have ever invented. It keeps people honest by offering reward to those who act correctly and penalize bad actors with the proof of work system.
without proof of work the system would not work, and yes it does take a lot of electricity to provide the security for this system, but the cost of maintaining bitcoin is less than the cost of fraud.
The power it takes to make bitcoin secure will always be cheaper than the cost of the fraud that would ensue without the security. The free market guarantees that.
So gold is a good ledger, but that is all it is, a ledger just like bitcoin or tally sticks or an excel spreadsheet.
Gold was the best ledger for a long time, tally sticks were also very very good ledgers
... keep reading on reddit β‘Tim Harford, "What tally sticks tell us about how money works", 10 July 2017, http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40189959
> In fact, in 1834, the British government decided to destroy 600 years of precious monetary artefacts. It was a decision that was to have unfortunate consequences in more ways than one. ... > > Those tally sticks, by the way, met an unfortunate end. The system was finally abolished and replaced by paper ledgers in 1834 after decades of attempts to modernise. > > To celebrate, it was decided to burn the sticks - six centuries of irreplaceable monetary records - in a coal-fired stove in the House of Lords, rather than letting parliamentary staff take them home for firewood. > > Burning a cartload or two of tally sticks in a coal-fired stove is a wonderful way to start a raging chimney fire. > > So it was that the House of Lords, then the House of Commons, and almost the entire Palace of Westminster - a building as old as the tally stick system itself - was burned to the ground.
They had transcribed the information into ledgers, it appears. Was anything actually lost by their destruction, other than (one palace and) the pleasure of seeing the actual objects?
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Could some other basis for currency available at the time have been even more successful? (Perhaps something worked very well elsewhere geographically, or in the future, without much advance in technology.)
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Which are good documentaries to watch on the history of money?
In this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGDh_JiZp9U
It mentions the "Stock" of the tally stick could be used as a pseudo-currency, as in the stocks themselves had value depending on what was being recorded on them, and who owed the debt. If nobleman John owed me 7 pounds, and I do not think he's good for the payment, but someone else does, the stock has value to them, and I can collect coin for it.
Was it possible to get the willow wood used, and make false tally sticks, as use them as currency?
Can I pass it off and say a local nobleman owes someone, say, 10 pounds, and trade it to someone for 5 pounds, and by the time the person finds out, I am gone, or deny trading him the stock?
Is there a silver 'tally stick' equivalent? I remember participating in a thread on this subreddit where we were discussing how we would rather buy a bar of Ag that was cut in half, thus ensuring that the insides were also made of silvery goodness. Why not cut 1oz ASE's in half, using a tally stick system, thus helping to ensure legitimacy. It's not perfect, it's certainly counterfeit-able, but it would help somewhat to ease one's mind when purchasing silver.
Tell me /r/silverbugs, what say you?
After Cromwell left power, in England, the king was Charles II.
Taxes were recorded on tally-sticks: the government got one half and the taxpayer got the other half.
Somehow, when taxpayer A paid taxes, taxpayer A was apparently able to sell his tax receipt to taxpayer B, because it was proof of taxes paid.
I don't understand how this worked. It doesn't make sense to me that a receipt had resale value.
I also don't understand how the king managed to sell tally sticks in advance at a discount to goldsmiths, but if I could understand how taxpayer A could sell his receipt to taxpayer B, maybe the advance sale to the goldsmiths would make more sense.
Edit: Here's an example of how I imagine it would work.
The king has two taxpayers, A and B. A owes 10 pounds and B owes 20 pounds. The king expects to get 30 pounds total.
A pays 10 pounds and gets a receipt for it. A sells the receipt to B. B pays 10 pounds, plus the receipt. The king now has 20 pounds, plus a receipt with A's name on it. It's not clear if the kind could then go to A and demand that A re-pay the 10 pounds of taxes. I don't understand what happened.
Thanks.
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