Nero debased the Roman currency in 64 AD and lit the fuse on an inflation that burned for two centuries. He reduced the silver content of the denarius from roughly 90% to 75%, and shaved gold coins down in weight simultaneously. The state needed money to rebuild Rome after the fire, fund military campaigns, and finance imperial vanity projects. Minting debased coin was faster than taxation, and it transferred the cost to every Roman holding savings. Prices rose. Merchants adapted. Roman price edicts from later emperors confirm what market actors already figured out: more coins chasing the same goods means each coin buys less(something children are able to grasp, but your local government econoists still denies). You held denarii; the imperial treasury held real goods purchased with freshly debased metal. By the third century, emperors like Gallienus pushed silver content below 5%. Diocletian then issued the Edict on Maximum Prices in 301 AD, threatening death for merchants who charged above his approved rates. Merchants simply stopped selling. Price controls attack the symptom while the debasement continues, producing scarcity as a result. Every move the Roman state made, modern governments copy: outspend revenue, conjure money from nothing, dismiss the fallout, then prosecute anyone who prices accordingly. Inflation is taxation by deception. Rome is but one case in a long historical pattern, running across three thousand years. Only one thing has changed: how fast the currency gets destroyed.