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Imagine, if you will, that you a genius bank robber. For years you have been plotting an ingenious heist. You and your highly practiced gang of thugs succesfully infiltrate and blast your way into a gleaming stainless steal safe. Inside, you find and pilied about the room are bags and bags stuffed full
of... pennies. Millions of them. Only able to lift a few twenty or thirty bags, you and your gang escape in your pre-positioned helicopter with a grand total of fifty dollars.
"darn" you sputter, "if only I had brought a fork-lift!"
Stone Money of Yap
http://www.pictures...ds/Stone-Money.html
Fiddly small change... [8th of 7, Oct 13 2009]
[link]
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This is impractical for the same reason that you cite it being hard to steal. Can you imagine going to the bank with a fleet of trucks just to get enough cash to pay Mark for the pics he got hold of from that summer you were a bit too drunk in Lyon and the wives were out of town? |
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Hmm, true, but on the other hand you could just write Mark a check. |
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Why not take the idea a step further, and make the pennies 9 feet in diameter and 4 feet thick? |
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That's very impractical, [Wrongfellow]. I would say 5 foot by 16 inches would be big enough to be secure, but small enough to roll through a normal front door and down the street to the shops. |
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With cast copper weighing 542 pounds per cubic foot, this is going to bring a whole new weight to the saying "a penny for your thoughts". |
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Apparently there is an island in the Southern Pacific where the inhabitants used to use very large - almost immovable - stones as currency. Quite how it worked was not made clear. |
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Actually, the Wikipedia article (as well as most popular
articles on stone money) is (are) bollocks - the
interpretation of them as "money" is perverse and wrong. |
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The big stone discs are "money" only in the same sense
that the Mona Lisa or a ceremonial sword are "money".
Yes, the discs were exchanged and given on various
occassions and, yes, they were considered "valuable".
Exactly the same is true today of statues, ancient artifacts
etc - this does not make them "money". |
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// this does not make them "money" // |
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Indeed not. They are "negotiable securities". In some ways they are superior to paper money or even coins which are non-unique and have little or no intrinsic value. |
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It is admittedly rather awkward to purchase three pints of bitter and two packets of cheese and onion crisps with a Gary Larsen original cartoon, and getting the change in live chickens, but barter remains a workable method of commerce, and is retained in a number of the more primitive areas of your planet, such as New Guinea, the Amazon rainforest, and Aberystwith. |
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//this does not make them "money".//
//the concepts are the same. // |
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No, the concepts are not the same. The value attached to
the stones was not consistent either over time or across
people; nor were they used in the wide range of situations
where currency would be used. |
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They were works of art or status symbols, and had value
accordingly, but they weren't "money". |
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Well, I didn't really follow that. Anyway. |
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interesting idea for Fort Knox: just melt all the gold into one large impossible-to-move nugget. |
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Bigs, I may be dumb or tired (or both), but I really don't
follow. All I'm saying is that calling the Big Round Stones
With Holes In "money" is no different from calling, say, a
valuable statue "money". It can be given, it can be traded,
its value depends on circumstance and perception, but it's
not money. |
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a truely huge brick o gold could be kept outside and guarded by genetically re-incarnated man eating dinosaurs. We would never need money again, all checks would be backed by the national gold mountain standard. |
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[ ] for the post, [+] for a huge brick/nugget guarded by recreated dinosaurs. |
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[bs] [WcW]'s anno following your previous one |
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