h a l f b a k e r yBaker Street Irregulars
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Coins and banknotes should be issued bearing negative face value. For example, suppose you were at the pub and it was your round, but you had no cash left. Well, the barmaid could pull your drinks and then give you a minus ten pound note. You would be able to pass the note on to a friend who owed you
money, or you could take it to the post office or to a bank and hand it over along with a ten pound note, to cancel it out.
Benefits: no need to worry about running out of cash any more.
Disadvantages: open to abuse by the unscrupulous.
'And Then There Were None' by Eric Frank Russell
http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php
Already half-baked. See Chapter 3, wherein the concept of 'Obs' ('Obligations') is introduced. [DrBob, Sep 09 2014]
'In Our Time - Negative Numbers'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003hyd9
Regular (& highly recommended by me) broadcast about matters of historical interest. [DrBob, Sep 09 2014]
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A truly Half-Baked idea ... |
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It's paper debt and could be sold for 3 pounds. |
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Are you welcome back at that pub? |
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Do you envision each place minting their own
currency (so Joe's Bar -5 are different from Joe's
Pizza -5), or would Joe's Bar and Joe's pizza yub
their -5 notes from
the central government, to which, ultimately, the
recipients of the -5 notes would submit payment? |
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I'm in favor of the first, because it creates more
jobs
for artists. Also, thug credit enforcers. (Maybe
there are tracking devices in the -5 notes, so that
passing them on becomes a matter of some
urgency?) |
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//Maybe there are tracking devices in the -5 notes, so that passing them on becomes a matter of some urgency// |
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The long dark teatime of the soul. |
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Letters of demand are well baked, as are third party
financial instruments. [-] |
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How could anyone resist giving a negative bun for this idea? |
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// financial instruments. |
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Good idea, wall street could send in crack formations of b*gp**e players to Argentina, until they agree to pay the debt. |
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If this turns out to be a good idea, that would make
the notes have positive value, which would make it a
bad idea, so...hmm. |
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Here we have a similar, informal system known by the phonetic abbreviation "IOU".
However, the note goes in the opposite direction to this proposal, and is signed by the debtor. |
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I think this idea wouldn't work in practice - even if everyone were honest, they'd get lost, mislaid or forgotten about. There's no incentive to keep them in the system. The dishonest would run up debts and throw them away, or post into letterboxes or charity boxes etc. |
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"...Believe me, your creditors with a more fervent devotion
will beseech Almighty God to prolong your life, they being of
nothing more afraid than that you should die..." Panurge, on
why it`s good to be a debtor... little grey cells working, ain`t
seen the play in 25 years... |
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Small denominations could be minted from antimony. |
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I was hoping for a different idea, which would be a way of connecting and systematizing those public goods which arise from people refraining from things. At the moment, the only way we can really have these goods is by imposing rules. There ought to be a more flexible way of getting such public goods, in the same sort of way that a market economy is more flexible than a command economy. |
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I was thinking I would invest negative money in the absence of a resort on an unspoilt island. If it yielded a return, I might eventually be able to bring about the absence of a whole chain of them. I have not posted this, because I have no idea how it could work - but, seeing the title of this idea, I was rather hoping that someone else had cracked it. Pity. |
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In some ways, this is a credit card. With the basic fees on all sides, that's 2% of some economies. |
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// I was thinking I would invest negative money in the absence of a resort on an unspoilt island. // |
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Yes, if those carbon footprint charges actually paid for empty seats and empty planes. |
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They had these in the board game "Life". I think
they called them Promissory Notes, but they were
held by the debtor. Sometime in the last 30 years
they "updated" the game. I only played the new
version once, but I don't think it had these
anymore. |
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So this is baked in a board game (where it can work
because everyone's wallet is visible), but completely
unusable in real life. |
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//actually paid for empty seats and empty planes |
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Might be having a few more of those if Russia does close its airspace... |
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Well I am generally in favour of everyone issuing their own currency, but I see these as being issued alongside normal currency and so in the current situation they would be government issue. The government could issue them to people or businesses as part of those people's tax bill. |
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Yes the problem is that you could just burn, eat or lose one on purpose. Tracking devices would help solve that, or a central database recording automatically all transactions. But the thrust of this idea is the combination of the idea of debt (very commonly known to exist, but only in virtual form) and cash (very commonly known to exist, but only in positive form) |
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Perhaps the person you give it to could sign for it, just like a receipt. |
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What would happen if, for example, you accidentally
put a -£5 note through the washing machine, or
inadvertently let it get eaten by an okapi? |
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As with civets, this only increases the value. |
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That makes no sense. Apart from the obvious fact
that okapi seldom, if ever, eat civets, there is the
inescapable observation that a civet which has
passed through an okapi's alimentary canal is unlikely
to be in a useable condition. |
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If A gives B $1, is that the same thing as B giving A $-1? |
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I can see in the first case the value transfers - B has one more dollar than previous. But in the second case it's not as clear. |
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Of course it's bloody clear. In the first case we move from a situation where
Start: A has £1, B has 0
Finish: A has 0, B has £1
Net transfer from A to B: £1
Net transfer from B to A: £-1 |
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In the second case we have
Start: A has 0, B has £-1
Finish: A has £-1, B has 0
Net transfer from B to A: £-1
Net transfer from A to B: £1 |
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I foresee chaos in the streets, as the old, the weak & the slow will be continually mobbed by gangs of unscrupulous debtors who run up & stuff their pockets full of negative cash before scarpering off again. |
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//if, for example, you accidentally put a -£5 note through the washing machine// |
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Logic can help you here. If the washing machine eats a £5 note, then one way of seeing it is that the machine owes you a fiver. You can start poking it with a coathanger in an attempt to get it to pay back. |
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If the machine eats a £-5 note, then you owe it a fiver. If you don't come up with the cash quick it will encourage you to pay up by spewing dirty water all over your scullery floor. Or it will seize your silk stockings as collateral. |
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What is the value to A in those examples? You can say a net value has been transferred but how is it realized? |
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Say A hires B to mow his lawn for $10. After the lawn is mowed, either A gives B $10, or B gives A $-10. Are these equivalent? |
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In the latter, how does B realize any value from that? B is not going to be able to use his landscaping proceeds to stop at the supermarket and pick up some milk. |
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^ But, in that particular case, B had previously been given a $10- by C, who he owed $10+ to but hadn't paid. |
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Equivalently B could have taken $10 from A, and paid C. |
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Yes [tats] of course they are equivalent, that is the whole point. |
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£147 minus £5 is the same as £147 plus £-5 I think you will find. |
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Interesting...if I give 3 of them to a friend, my friend becomes 15 pounds richer* |
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So, if somebody owes you a fiver and is of the "ohyeahIforgotnextweekforsure" variety, you go to the bank and withdraw $5- and give it to him. You've now got the $5. "next week" he can deposit a $5+ and the $5- at the bank... or give it to somebody else that owes him money. |
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^//my friend becomes 15 pounds richer// |
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If you give 3x $5-'s to your friend then you've moved a $15 debt to them. |
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How do you give someone -3 of a countable object? |
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pocmloc, have a listen to the 'In Our Time' podcast linked above. |
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[pocmloc] you didn't address my second question. How is the value realized? How does it benefit B to give A $-10? Those funds are not available to him to use for anything. |
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Cash can't work this way. What you're talking about is an IOU, informally a "bill". I can mow your lawn and bill you for it but I expect to receive payment. I don't see how negative money ever results in payment. |
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Of course, this would lead to derivatives, short
sells, credit default swaps... |
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Well think how normal +ve cash works. You desire to recieve it, and when you get given a banknote you have purchasing power. |
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Well, -ve cash is the opposite. You desire to give it away, and when you give away a -ve banknote you are relieved of debt obligation and therefore have more purchasing power than before. |
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Thanks for the IoT link {DrB], I listen regularly on the bus but had not come across this one in the archives. |
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Next up: imaginary money. Spend money in the complex plane. At the end of a transaction, equate real and imaginary parts. |
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pocmloc, I think what you're missing is that noone is questioning the maths. |
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They're trying to point out that there are issues with getting it to work in practice.
If everybody was a) completely trustworthy and b) completely reliable, then it would work. But then, so would communism. |
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Oh well in that case, I dealt with those pesky practical objections in the final line of the original idea. |
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