Monday, September 23, 2013

Reworking the money supply for explosive economic growth

Make uranium the currency. It sounds crazy, and it comes from an imaginary physicist, so it just might be. But it also might be true, as things in physics often are. Let's set aside the problem of deflation, since the half-life is so long, or the inherent stupidity of making our currency based on a physical substance. Let's instead focus on the positive aspects.

While we might not expect people to trust banks, we can expect them to use banks. No one wants a lot of uranium sitting around their houses, not even terrorists. On the trust front, we can expect that banks would be more highly-regulated. While its easy to wave away responsible regulation on the grounds of "economic freedom", something that they made up on the spot, there is also the issue of terrorism. While the scale of the threat was also made up, it is scary and explodey and both of those are strong motivators. Therefore we can expect that people will use banks and will trust them to not explode.

In the event that the banks do explode, making big explosions, with the usual destruction of property and killing people, is illegal. This means that in the event that bankers blow up the economy again it will likely be accompanied by an actual explosion. Those are much easier to prosecute, since people have more of a tendency to admit that they exist. Fewer people would be claiming that the Federal Reserve or Elders of Zion caused the explosion. That's a good thing.

In the event that the banks do not explode, then the bankers will get to learn the other meaning of liquidator: those who worked on cleaning up the debris from Chernobyl and who suffered tremendously from the resulting radiation poisoning. This may seem to petty spite, and it is. Since when does policy have to be based on being nice to people?

Then a few decades later people will claim that The Wizard of Oz is about expanding the money supply to include strontium-90. Obviously that's stupid, because the half-life is far too short for it to be a sound foundation for the money supply.

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