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'Destroying' money, either physically burning banknotes or just setting some numbers to a lower value in a digital ledger, does not remove value from the economy. When you create money, usually through debt, it takes its value from the currency that already exists. Money is also destroyed all the time through the payment of debt but not as fast as it's created, that's why its value mostly goes down (prices mostly go up): Money printer goes BRRRRRRRRR, money burner goes brrr.
What matters for an economy, and therefore the value of its currency, is the value they create–simply put, how much resources they exploit and how efficiently. The most important resource (in my opinion at least) is people.
So if you want to remove value from an economy you have to take those resources away, or make them hard or impossible to exploit efficiently by them, or make them obsolete...
Yeah, thats the way it ought to be, its actually slightly different, and is very important in the context of what a country does to undermine it's own currency, or even a companies director does to the value of their company.
Value is a question of perception. How much are people/investors willing to tolerate and still perceive the value in a good or service or currency.
Its the reason the massive quantitative easing ended up spreading so widely as a tool in the last 15 years. In the beginning it was assumed that the massive 'money printing' would lead to massive devaluations, which didn't really happen as expected. Thats because the reaction in value percieptions in those currencies ended being more flexible than central bankers and economists initially feared.
The perception of value played a role in how long it took for people in the US to recognise the real estate bubble exploding in 07-08. It plays a role in really any bubble, and is why prices drastically plummet instead of taper. The value perception changes en masse, and bang, everybody runs for the door.
One more interesting example is the value perception comparison of essential workers in the COVID19 Pandemic compared to normal times.