As the link I gave in the GP argues, currency was specifically developed as a tool for population control: As the sole source of currency, a state can influence its people's priorities and behaviors by providing a budget for the tasks it wants accomplished. All tax must be paid in the state currency, which creates an intrinsic demand for it from the whole population, and ultimately the only way to obtain it is to fulfil the missions on the state budget. Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State [0] provides a very good overview of how this worked in Nazi-occupied territories, but it's a similar game in any nation state, autonomous or otherwise.

If a currency were to arise with no political group can control, this mechanism of domination would be short-circuited. I don't doubt that there would still be organized violence, but there's good reason to hope it wouldn't be on the scale we see today.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-...

> I think this is a fascinating question, but one that's not tied up in culture at all. It's not just the Koreans and Chinese that have succumbed to this, but also the Russians, Germans, Yugoslavs, and South Americans that I can't name.

That's probably because you need to study more history.

Taking the past 200 years in Russia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_cri... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_1905 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_II_of_Russia#Assassin... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decembrist_Revolt

That's just the largest, most-well known events.

It would also help to know a bit about current events (NazBols/Other Russia protests, the Caucus wars going on for the past 10 years, etc.).

By Germans I assume you're referencing Nazis. Where was the Nazi injustice for the Germans? Given how much ordinary Germans profited (http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-W...), it's surprising more of them didn't support the Nazi party.

I don't think it's that difficult with proper reference to historical examples. The first socialist welfare programs in Europe were instituted by authoritarian, nationalist, militarist Prussian leadership shortly following the unification of Germany. It was part of Bismarck's strategy to undercut the republican reformist sentiment left over from 1848, and bind the common people to the state through conservative handouts.

Another interesting book looks at the welfare programs instituted in Nazi Germany as part of their corporatist 'third way' economic system (supposed to avoid reliance on free trade industrialism and inoculate against cosmopolitan bolshevist appeals): http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Beneficiaries-Plunder-Racial-W...

Right-leaning socialism was the original socialism in practice in Europe.