A long time ago, when I was a teenager and the first HoI was out, I was only playing Germany. Mostly because it was the only powerful country which felt somewhat manageable without wanting to cry in the convoy screen…

On a technical level, it would (probably) work. But I think it would feel terrible for the most people : the middle class would see it’s savings melt away unless they lock a lot of it in investments, and people would have to reevaluate their value scale much more regularly than now. And the capital would likely not be “taxed” that in much in this setup.

Silicon itself is certainly not rare (even if the purification process is somewhat exigent on the feedstock), but modern chips uses a lot of rare-ish elements in their makeup (hafnium for mosfet gates, gold for chip/package connexion, etc…).