"I really don't understand how these crackpots keep ending up at hyperinflation as a solution to their problems."
Two major factors, I think. One, hyperinflation feels better today at the cost of feeling worse in a couple of months. This is true even when the hyperinflation starts hitting hundreds of percent per day... it's still easier to let it go for another day than to do the now Herculean-levels of work necessary to do the right thing. This is very difficult for politicians to pass up. Some others in this conversation have marveled at how bad world leaders can be with the economy, and part of that is even if they did know exactly what the right thing to do is (itself actually a questionable claim, but let's take it at face value for a moment), they're still constrained by politics. A politician who says "Hey, everyone, let's take some pain for the next six months so our next 10 years will be better!" will be right out on their ear in nothing flat. There isn't a single power center they have willing to do that, not "the people", not their generals, not their rich benefactors, not their civil servants, nobody.
Secondly, hyperinflation gives a lot of power to the people in power. Inflation creates a temporal gradient that people usually ignore because it's not that large, but in high inflation environments, the closer you are to the printing press, the richer you are. The printing press prints you fresh new "today" currency. You use it to go out and buy. But a lot of what you're buying is really priced in "yesterday" currency. The act of buying pushes up those prices again, but you got yours. It's everybody else who is dealing in newly-high prices but trying to chase them with yesterday's currency (or worse, last week's currency) who has the problem. (Currency units are not literally labeled like that, of course; they're nominally fungible. But when you have today's print, you've got more to go chase things with.) This works right up until there's nothing left, but then you end up with effectively 100% of that "nothing". I think there's a lot of people in power who find this a very appealing proposition.
(In fact I would consider this one of the major unsolved problems in practical economics, if not the major unsolved problem: How do you deal with the existence of the power to create money/currency? Historically speaking, those who have it are completely incapable of resisting the temptation to use it to benefit themselves. There is no known solution. Physical standards like gold/silver get creatively adulterated over time, fiat simply has this capability built in, barter is so fantastically unstable that it can't even progress to the point that you can ask this question. A solution may not even exist, at least with humans as we know them now.)
Two major factors, I think. One, hyperinflation feels better today at the cost of feeling worse in a couple of months. This is true even when the hyperinflation starts hitting hundreds of percent per day... it's still easier to let it go for another day than to do the now Herculean-levels of work necessary to do the right thing. This is very difficult for politicians to pass up. Some others in this conversation have marveled at how bad world leaders can be with the economy, and part of that is even if they did know exactly what the right thing to do is (itself actually a questionable claim, but let's take it at face value for a moment), they're still constrained by politics. A politician who says "Hey, everyone, let's take some pain for the next six months so our next 10 years will be better!" will be right out on their ear in nothing flat. There isn't a single power center they have willing to do that, not "the people", not their generals, not their rich benefactors, not their civil servants, nobody.
Secondly, hyperinflation gives a lot of power to the people in power. Inflation creates a temporal gradient that people usually ignore because it's not that large, but in high inflation environments, the closer you are to the printing press, the richer you are. The printing press prints you fresh new "today" currency. You use it to go out and buy. But a lot of what you're buying is really priced in "yesterday" currency. The act of buying pushes up those prices again, but you got yours. It's everybody else who is dealing in newly-high prices but trying to chase them with yesterday's currency (or worse, last week's currency) who has the problem. (Currency units are not literally labeled like that, of course; they're nominally fungible. But when you have today's print, you've got more to go chase things with.) This works right up until there's nothing left, but then you end up with effectively 100% of that "nothing". I think there's a lot of people in power who find this a very appealing proposition.
(In fact I would consider this one of the major unsolved problems in practical economics, if not the major unsolved problem: How do you deal with the existence of the power to create money/currency? Historically speaking, those who have it are completely incapable of resisting the temptation to use it to benefit themselves. There is no known solution. Physical standards like gold/silver get creatively adulterated over time, fiat simply has this capability built in, barter is so fantastically unstable that it can't even progress to the point that you can ask this question. A solution may not even exist, at least with humans as we know them now.)