Comment by dluan
4 months ago
It's still used for bribes in Japan, where earlier this year the agriculture minister was sacked for receiving gifts of rice in the middle of a nationwide rice shortage. His replacement still has an outside chance to become the next prime minister.
Surely that was somewhat of a once off, bribes in Japan are usually money like anywhere else, this is an extremely atypical exception
The most interesting search result for “rice as a bribe” was its use in a Pathfinder module in order to curry favor with birds. I recognize this isn’t precisely the point here, but given the cross-section of countries represented, I would imagine bribing people with what was literal food currency for centuries has merely decreased in priority relative to local fiat currency, which is perhaps widely accepted nowadays but less readily produced from farmland.
I’m very confused by your comment to be honest, of course fiat currency wouldn’t be produced from farmland?