Currency and Script continued.

I have been rolling the ideas of currency and script around for the last few weeks. Without blinders on, it would seem that credit is a form of script. Script with terrible terms, but script nonetheless.

I kind of felt that bringing up Zimbabwe in the last post was a bit gratuitus, but on reflection it seems like there are a few ideas there to explore.

I did actually go and look on Ebay for A Zimbabwean trillion dollar note, and it's no surprise that you can absolutely buy them, for a mere 16.95. My hat is off to the trader who realized early that people would want them as curiosities.

Buy low and sell high right? It would seem to be one of the foundations of capitalism. I did get a chuckle out of that, but after some thought it occurred to me that our intrepid trader probably had to buy a bundle of Zimbabwe green backs. Well more than a bundle, most likely a bag full.

He bought in bulk and now he is selling them retail. Well I hope he did. I suppose a cousin could have mailed him a couple of them. I just assumed that he got them from the bank and that to get the bank to go to the effort of getting them he would have had to thrown down at least a few hundred dollars.

What if I threw down a few hundred dollars or however much it took to get 100,000 Zimbabwe individual notes and then gave them away to people who promised to accept them as local dollars?

Think about that.

How would it affect my local economy?

How it would affect Zimbabwe's economy?

Think about post-national economies.

The entire banking system once ran on a computer less sophisticated than whatever you are using to read this post.

Think about what would happen if a thousand US communities tried it.

Simultaneously.