Comment by silotis
2 hours ago
The brief mention that the fallout wasn't as disastrous as myth would have it greatly understates just how exaggerated the popular account of tulip mania is.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-...
So many of these articles get it completely wrong. Economically. People weren't going crazy for tulips just because, the government had incentivized investment in tulips. The government at the time basically told people that they could not lose money on investing tulips. It should be a story about governments misallocating resources. That's it, but people quit. Keep twisting it into a story of psychology and mania which it was not.
Does it make sense to talk about "the government" in this age? It probably misguides us more than informs us. I've always felt the perception of government at the time is closer to our perception of the captain of the local football team - at best distant and upholding the honor of the village, at worst a thief with a title - rather than how we view it today. Authority of information lay with the church. Maybe replace by "Persons of wealth in positions of power"?
I wonder what the crossover or relationships between the two - Persons of wealth in positions of power and the church - was here at the time.
In Ireland, for as long as it has existed with its own government, the two have been pretty heavily intertwined.
>It should be a story about governments misallocating resources. That's it, but people quit. Keep twisting it into a story of psychology and mania which it was not.
The fact that it's marketed as a story about psychology and mania rather than government policy gone awry is arguably itself a story about psychology and mania.
People have a need to feel like the forces that control them know what they're doing.
Ha this is a brilliant take, and worthy of a follow up.
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It is also worth pointing out how patchy the price data seems to be. Looking at Wikipedia [0] it seems like there isn't much actual evidence and the exciting part of the bubble was 6 months.
I expect the people involved cared a lot, but it looks like more of a cool curio than an event that could have had serious fallout. Paying $200k for a tulip looks quite tame compared to Blue Poles.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
Really interesting article, thanks!