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That reminds me of a great anecdote from Graeber's Debt: "The anthropologist Keith Hart once told me a story about his brother, who in the '50s was a British s
by tomjakubowski 7y ago
That reminds me of a great anecdote from Graeber's Debt:
"The anthropologist Keith Hart once told me a story about his brother, who in the '50s was a British soldier stationed in Hong Kong. Soldiers used to pay their bar tabs by writing checks on accounts back in England. Local merchants would often simply endorse them over to each other and pass them around as currency: once, he saw one of his own checks, written six months before, on the counter of a local vendor covered with about forty different tiny inscriptions in Chinese."
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y agoI forget what book I read it in, but there was a story about Moshe Dayan, the Israeli military leader. He apparently liked to shop for stuff in the various bazaars. He would pay for his purchase by check. The seller, instead of cashing the check, would frame it, and sell it to tourists as an authentic check with Moshe Dayan's signature for much higher than the value of the check. This resulted in a win-win situation. Moshe Dayan never had to actually pay for his purchases, the seller made far more money than the actual check, and the tourist got to have an authentic check with Moshe Dayan's signature to hang up in their home as a conversation piece.
- zaphirplane 7y ago> the tourist got to have an authentic check What a simple time to live in when you can go to a bazaar and buy something with just the sellers word that it is genuine Everyone knows scams only started in the late 2000
- masonic 7y agoThe apocryphal "Picasso's napkin" is a similar concept.