Mr. Freeman, part 60
Oh, how I missed you so, my dears know-it-alls, my clever boys and girls, my kitties and bunnies! From your teary eyes, I can see that you haven't forgotten your old pal Freeman and that you're ready to get back to solving riddles and searching for... messages! But we don't have much time, so let's concentrate on what's most important...
The world has finally gone totally bonkers, and so today my travelling circus presents a brand new show. Come on, let's go! GRANDPAS COOK UP SOME BRAND NEW DOUGH! GRANDPAS COOK UP SOME BRAND NEW DOUGH!
There were grandpas and there were turnips, but no dough. People would just exchange what they had for what they needed, like a turnip for a wagon, and the wagon for a jug of wine. A simple and easy to understand system. And if there wasn't enough of something, like nails or arrowheads, due to the fact that almost no one knew how to work with metal, then obviously those things were worth more.
Later, people started exchanging all sorts of rare metals, and if someone got rich they would carry around half a ton of gold with them like idiots. It was inconvenient, and you could get robbed. So they decided to turn in all of their heavy objects for safekeeping. That's how banks came about. They chopped up everything they got into equal chunks and introduced the gold standard. And the warrants from the banks that promised the bearer metal in exchange turned into paper money.
It was all simple and clear; there was no way for a bourgeois to line his pockets. And then quite recently, with the help of clever words and wise-assed verbal gymnastics, the dough-makers abolished the gold standard. Everybody just got screwed! Rejoice, little man! Before, you used to exchange money for gold, and now you're going to exchange it for... purchasing power!
In other words, currency is just paper, ink, and an order from above to regard this typographic composition as happiness and the highest good! And those who oppose this order are fences, instigators, terrorists, and sodomites! Let me open your eyes, my dears! Think! There won't be a grain of jest in my call to action!
The government provides amenities for our streets, and that is good! But it doesn't mean that you're personally not allowed to paint a fence or plant a tree. Good deeds shall multiply! And the government prints money, and that's good too since any currency is the lifeblood of the economy. And the faster it flows, the more lively the economy will become. Good deeds shall multiply! Whether it's electronic money, gift certificates, or bubble gum trading cards.
Attention! Everyone has a right to issue his own money. That's the big bourgeois secret! Some secret! Suppose John the smith paints a hundred extraordinary pictures. He sells them all to his neighbor for fifty bucks and suddenly dies soon after. Most probably from drinking. The neighbor takes them to the city and doubles his dough by selling the pictures to some shady art dealer he knows.
The dealer hangs the paintings in his trendy gallery and starts selling them one at a time for crazy money. People ask, "Hey, dude, why are they so expensive?" "Well, John is dead, so there won't be any more pictures. There's limited supply." The same crap is going on with bitcoin. In this case, math doesn't allow an endless number of them to be produced. You can't just go and issue a hundred thousand million of them when you feel like it. Because Johnny died.
And they cost exactly as much as people are willing to pay for them, just like with some antique dish or Stalin's underwear. So anything that there's not much of and is difficult or even impossible to duplicate can work as dough. And that means that almost everything around us is made out of money. It's crazy, isn't it? There is also the good money of Johann Silvio Gesell. It works quite effectively... until people start getting shot for it...