Money, creating stress and depression planetwide. Sounds about right doesn’t it. Well anyway finally a non fiction piece of writing. Me and my good friend Alex Harman got into a rather heated debate the other day. It concerned the digitalisation of all money globally.
In the UK today more and more places are accepting debit/credit cards. small corner shops, fast food chains, country pubs. Literally the only people who don’t accept plastic nowadays are butcher‘s, grocer‘s, hotdog, ice-cream stands or vans. And that’s only because of the lack of internet connection. However many groups are trying to pioneer large cover(citywide) wireless networks. To which all people pay a pay as you go rate, or even a monthly rate. That way anyone can use the internet anywhere. If this were to exist then the aforementioned vans and stands would have access to the internet and hence card swiping technology.
This would mean that every outlet of every kind would be accepting card. Now if that is the case what is the need for cash at all. I mean a £20 note is only a promissory note, equivalent to twenty of those little round things called pound coins. Coins remember are the only form literal money. Which is odd. When you pay £200 on paypal to some guy in Hong Kong, 200 pound coins do not get flown to this man and delivered to him. Thus truly exchanging the goods for the money. Instead someone deducts 200 from your balance and adds it to his. The money so to speak is never owned by either party. All that’s happened is that some ones and zeros associated with that particular some of money float around like a digital promissory note and make Mr Inamoto feel happy about shipping his prize fish to Kent.
At this point an interesting business idea popped up and distracted us for a while. If people are becoming increasingly detached from the money they think they own, then why not to some extent do away with it all together. Imagine a great site, comparable to Ebay and such things, where everyone posts a list of items that they want or are looking for. Adjacent to this list is a list of things they have that they wouldn’t mind getting rid of. Then other people who want what you have get notified. The other people can approach you with a proposal for a trade, a swap if you will. Eventually both parties come to an agreement and the goods are shipped. It would be policed in a similar way to Ebay, by the masses.
That could be great we thought. Because everyone knows people assign real value to objects, regardless of price tag. People can get what they feel is honestly what its worth to them. But then we thought. Ok we would have to implement some sort of trade ring facility. For example, if Mr A wants item B and Mr B wants item C and Mr C wants item A. This would occur as a single three way transaction. But what about larger chains. What about people who have things that few people want and want things that few people have. The chains would have to be enormous. You would need to have some kind of object, marked in a particular way, of specific and defined value. That way people could trade their items for these fixed value objects until a date where they see something they want to trade them for. If you hadn’t already guessed, this is money. Bit of a pointless distraction, well hang on.
So okay, if everyone is paying by card and thus not ever owning money. Where is all this money. Its all sitting in a bank. It’s not divided into neat little piles for each person, which is why I always laugh when someone asks me what branch my account is held at, its just strewn about in piles of similar denomination. Well that doesn’t matter, if it was divided by account, there would have to be people transferring these funds back and forth globally to the likes of Mr Inamoto. So nobody actually moves or transfers the money, It’s very rarely actually owned by anyone, and all that we deal with is abstract totals. If we allow this kind of detachment from our wealth, why on earth do we still let banks take the piss. When you pay to transfer your account into another one in another country, when you emigrate for example, why should you pay a fee. All that’s happened is Tanya Slater, cashier has typed a few numbers into the computer in front of her, and sent a few ones and zeros to the destination bank, where Sarah Delarosa sends a few back. Job done.
Its not just banks. Stock brokers make their living sending ones and zeros back and forth between computer. Exploiting flaws in the system(the global economy) to make millions. I can understand that the value of a nations currency should change depending on its economic wealth. But to let people get away with such blatant thievery is plain wrong. They send 1001010111010101010 from A to B for a few weeks then bring it back and, bobs your uncle, totally out of nowhere, new money is created from a glitch in the mechanics and they have more money than they started with. that’s like giving your best mate a tenner (£10) when he has £90 to his name. he wins the lottery and you ask for 10% of his now inflated bank balance. Its absurd. The only reason it is like this is because we have billions of redundant, unused token coinage sitting in vaults across the globe doing quite frankly fuck all and a bunch of money for nothing brokers who don’t want to lose their cheat codes.
So we have a giant global swapping system with an entirely detached economy based solely on personal wealth of individual members globally. One fixed interest rate. No stock brokers. Just plain old bartering. The only exchange rate around is you and how much you want that new toy. If you want it more you subconsciously decrease the value of the currency you own so are prepared to give more of it away to get the bear. Simple psychological economics otherwise known as human nature. If it worked online surely it can work in the real world. I mean seriously, why not just put all the coins and promissory notes in a museum someone are exchange every persons wealth into a new entirely digital form. The PWU(personal wealth unit) for arguments sake. All transactions are electronic, faster simpler, overall people benefit, banks can’t rip you off as often. But for the minority, the brokers, they are on for a big downturn in their shares so to speak.
It wont happen today, probably not even in my lifetime. Because human nature also has some downfalls. Close minded paranoia for one, but what about identity fraud, system crashes. Well, on the fraud, it would actually be better to have total digitalisation. Think about it, say robber Rob clones your card and draws out 4 promissory notes to the total value of £200. The banks in their eternal wisdom have printed on them. To supply the bearer with £X, so until he is caught that isolated value of money is in his control entirely. If currency is digitalised and a card is cloned, the victim can go to a bank and open a new account, instantly transfer all funds leaving the robber with nothing other than a warrant.
Even now we are overlooking advances in security. If we fast forward to the point where people don’t carry coins anymore anyway, most cards will come with fingerprint, if not retinal confirmation in addition to a code. I say fast forward as although the technology exists today, people have to get over their political small man syndrome. I doesn’t infringe your human rights if the bank/government having your fingerprints. But they could know wherever I was, what just in case you decide to one day ditch your life at the monastery and take up life as an international crime lord. I have never understood objections to it, maybe because I’m too open minded, if there is a reason please let me know.
And on the bank crashes, the problem is no different from an equivalent situation nowadays. The severity increase would be minimal. But hang on I am only thinking on a national level. If we zoom out, all of a sudden, we see that the problem that was previously limited to HSBC suddenly affects THE ENTIRE WORLD. Stop, HSBC is already a global company. A system crash a HSBC would be no different. Now and then, in both cases it would be catastrophic. Which is why banks put so much money in to back up’s and failsafes. Because at the end of the day, if it were to happen, we would be put back in the stone age. My word versus yours says that much money is mine as billions descend on the bank vault looking for what is theirs. In the world with digital money arbitrary data storage would exist and thus there could be tens of thousands of backups, and you cant fight of what not there. We would have to resort back to swapping and we know where that leads…..
Value, it seems cannot be lived with or without. We will always assign value to stuff. But money on the other hand can be lived without, at least in its current out dated system. Rates of global trend change have been increasing and I think the older generations are getting left behind. As the silver society lives longer it see a parabolic increase in changes. They live longer and changes happen faster, it’s to be expected that some find it hard to adjust. But when I am grey and old. I hope I will embrace change to prevent the horrific stalling of our civilisations development that we see today.
thanks
