5 ms·

The entire story here is wildly bizarre. The fact that the honest-to-god solution to anything in today's world is to have a mint at the ready, just in case you

The entire story here is wildly bizarre. The fact that the honest-to-god solution to anything in today's world is to have a mint at the ready, just in case you need to swiftly stamp a coin of arbitrary value and then transport it with haste by helicopter to a particular location in time to keep the national economy on track is just completely bonkers.

dmarchand90 5y ago
Makes me think of the Simpsons episode where the US government prints a trillion dollar bill https://youtu.be/_KgHy3Pi5Yw https://youtu.be/_KgHy3Pi5Yw
- jesuslop 5y ago
  Apropiate. Also, Burns: "Priceless coins not used in vending machine. Yes, not bad." https://frinkiac.com/caption/S11E12/1184960 https://frinkiac.com/caption/S11E12/1184960
rightiousrob 5y ago
Well said
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BelenusMordred 5y ago
Put so honestly in that way it reads like something out of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The utter absurdity of it all.
kazinator 5y ago
It's not even half as bizarre as someone buying a GIF of some cartoon cats as a sort of cryptocurrency token.
- JadeNB 5y ago
  > It's not even half as bizarre as someone buying a GIF of some cartoon cats as a sort of cryptocurrency token. I think it is considerably more bizarre. People have always done strange things with their money; NFTs have made it maybe more visible, and have certainly dressed it up in new tech-y buzzwords, but they've hardly introduced the idea of spending money in strange and stupid ways. But I am considerably more upset about whole countries' economies being founded on strange and stupid decisions than I am on individuals making such decisions. (Which is not to say that I could, or know how to, do any better; we're just comparing bizarre-ness, not solutions.)
  - panarky 5y ago
    > I think it is considerably more bizarre It's only bizarre when you believe that money is a concrete, tangible thing with unchanging intrinsic value. When you believe that then of course it seems wrong and unnatural to create new money out of thin air.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - kazinator 5y ago
      We can see it as a form of taxation. Isn't the following approximately right: suppose that some country has a net worth of 10B (calculated somehow). The government decides that it needs some cash, so it prints another 10B of that currency and injects it into the system. Well, all it has done is devalue the currency by half, thereby looting half the economy of half its value, transferring that to the government. It's just a ploy to steal 5B by declaring it to be government property, which is possible since every instance of money is a tiny abstract contract which is controlled by the government's treasury/mint. It's like issuing new stock to raise cash, without any increase in the total market valuation, which nothing but a cash grab from the current share holders made possible by controlling the issuance of stock.
      - bryanlarsen 5y ago
jeffrallen 5y ago
Well, to be fair, it wouldn't be bonkers, if it was a headline in The Onion. The problem is that it's in Axios.
syshum 5y ago
That is because once you understand the economy, you understand that is all built upon Smoke, Mirrors, Lies and Deceit on top of a foundation of sand....
- paleotrope 5y ago
  Yeah, but you're not allowed to make it so obvious.
atonse 5y ago
What happens if someone steals it in transit? Do they invalidate it? Because 5 minutes before it was stolen, it was considered a valid currency.
- brundolf 5y ago
  Pretty sure at that point a wormhole opens up at the center of the U.S. Constitution being held in the National Archive
- Kranar 5y ago
  Legal tender is generally not invalidated unless destroyed. Stealing property does not grant you legal possession over it, so you'd be hard pressed to find anyone willing to accept that coin in exchange for anything since they could easily determine that you have no right to exchange it in the first place. The most you could do is destroy it, the end result would be as if nothing happened and that's about it.
  - panopticon 5y ago
    There's a market for stolen art; surely you could find a buyer for the coin. You'd get nothing near the face value though.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Kranar 5y ago
I don't see why it's bonkers. The stamp represents a contract issued by an authority that gets its legitimacy from a vast population. All the issuance and transfer of this coin does is grant permission to distribute resources to various groups and as a society we've agreed that said permission is needed to lend legitimacy to our currency. In principle it doesn't need to be transported by helicopter or transported at all, that's a formality that predates the Internet. It's not a particularly big detail that is worth changing, much like it's not a particularly big detail that a President must be sworn in by having a judge physically stand next to him and have him exhale CO2 in such a manner so as to produce vibrations within a narrow audible range. Both things are just formalities to express intention.
- brundolf 5y ago
  I think it's mainly how physical the process is. We can't just decide this stuff informationally, or even on a paper document, or ahead of time. We have to hike a chunk of metal somewhere else within a specific time window like it's The Amazing Race or something.
Geekette 5y ago
Who knew such theatric fuckery lay within the US treasury system? Based on the line below, I guess we should view the helicopter as the modern day folkloric finger of Hans[1] awaiting dispatch to plug the dike, stem the flood and save the country: "In case of emergency, a trillion-dollar coin could be deployed to bridge any gap between the money running out and the debt ceiling being raised". [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brinker,_or_The_Silver_Skates#Popular_culture:_the_legend_of_the_boy_and_the_dike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brinker,_or_The_Silver_Sk...

dmarchand90 5y ago

Makes me think of the Simpsons episode where the US government prints a trillion dollar bill https://youtu.be/_KgHy3Pi5Yw https://youtu.be/_KgHy3Pi5Yw

jesuslop 5y ago
Apropiate. Also, Burns: "Priceless coins not used in vending machine. Yes, not bad." https://frinkiac.com/caption/S11E12/1184960 https://frinkiac.com/caption/S11E12/1184960

rightiousrob 5y ago

Well said

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

BelenusMordred 5y ago

Put so honestly in that way it reads like something out of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The utter absurdity of it all.

kazinator 5y ago

It's not even half as bizarre as someone buying a GIF of some cartoon cats as a sort of cryptocurrency token.

JadeNB 5y ago
> It's not even half as bizarre as someone buying a GIF of some cartoon cats as a sort of cryptocurrency token. I think it is considerably more bizarre. People have always done strange things with their money; NFTs have made it maybe more visible, and have certainly dressed it up in new tech-y buzzwords, but they've hardly introduced the idea of spending money in strange and stupid ways. But I am considerably more upset about whole countries' economies being founded on strange and stupid decisions than I am on individuals making such decisions. (Which is not to say that I could, or know how to, do any better; we're just comparing bizarre-ness, not solutions.)
- panarky 5y ago
  > I think it is considerably more bizarre It's only bizarre when you believe that money is a concrete, tangible thing with unchanging intrinsic value. When you believe that then of course it seems wrong and unnatural to create new money out of thin air.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kazinator 5y ago
    We can see it as a form of taxation. Isn't the following approximately right: suppose that some country has a net worth of 10B (calculated somehow). The government decides that it needs some cash, so it prints another 10B of that currency and injects it into the system. Well, all it has done is devalue the currency by half, thereby looting half the economy of half its value, transferring that to the government. It's just a ploy to steal 5B by declaring it to be government property, which is possible since every instance of money is a tiny abstract contract which is controlled by the government's treasury/mint. It's like issuing new stock to raise cash, without any increase in the total market valuation, which nothing but a cash grab from the current share holders made possible by controlling the issuance of stock.
    - bryanlarsen 5y ago

jeffrallen 5y ago

Well, to be fair, it wouldn't be bonkers, if it was a headline in The Onion. The problem is that it's in Axios.

syshum 5y ago

That is because once you understand the economy, you understand that is all built upon Smoke, Mirrors, Lies and Deceit on top of a foundation of sand....

paleotrope 5y ago
Yeah, but you're not allowed to make it so obvious.

atonse 5y ago

What happens if someone steals it in transit? Do they invalidate it? Because 5 minutes before it was stolen, it was considered a valid currency.

brundolf 5y ago
Pretty sure at that point a wormhole opens up at the center of the U.S. Constitution being held in the National Archive
Kranar 5y ago
Legal tender is generally not invalidated unless destroyed. Stealing property does not grant you legal possession over it, so you'd be hard pressed to find anyone willing to accept that coin in exchange for anything since they could easily determine that you have no right to exchange it in the first place. The most you could do is destroy it, the end result would be as if nothing happened and that's about it.
- panopticon 5y ago
  There's a market for stolen art; surely you could find a buyer for the coin. You'd get nothing near the face value though.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Kranar 5y ago

I don't see why it's bonkers. The stamp represents a contract issued by an authority that gets its legitimacy from a vast population. All the issuance and transfer of this coin does is grant permission to distribute resources to various groups and as a society we've agreed that said permission is needed to lend legitimacy to our currency. In principle it doesn't need to be transported by helicopter or transported at all, that's a formality that predates the Internet. It's not a particularly big detail that is worth changing, much like it's not a particularly big detail that a President must be sworn in by having a judge physically stand next to him and have him exhale CO2 in such a manner so as to produce vibrations within a narrow audible range. Both things are just formalities to express intention.

brundolf 5y ago
I think it's mainly how physical the process is. We can't just decide this stuff informationally, or even on a paper document, or ahead of time. We have to hike a chunk of metal somewhere else within a specific time window like it's The Amazing Race or something.

Geekette 5y ago

Who knew such theatric fuckery lay within the US treasury system? Based on the line below, I guess we should view the helicopter as the modern day folkloric finger of Hans[1] awaiting dispatch to plug the dike, stem the flood and save the country: "In case of emergency, a trillion-dollar coin could be deployed to bridge any gap between the money running out and the debt ceiling being raised". [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brinker,_or_The_Silver_Skates#Popular_culture:_the_legend_of_the_boy_and_the_dike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brinker,_or_The_Silver_Sk...