Electrophotonic Timesinks

photo credit: Per Foreby

Yesterday at work, as I was exchanging my 20 krona note for two 10 krona coins in the changing machine, in order to buy a 17 krona ice cream from the vending machine for my sore throat, the following occurred to me.

Since I can only use the coins in the machine, they are actually more valuable to me than the note. Following this line of thought, two ten krona coins should NOT equal one twenty krona note, but instead, say, 22 kronas in note-money. It’s obvious a system like this must be implemented immediately! So what will happen? I Am Not an Economist, but I gave it some thought over a couple of beers, and here’s my take on it.

• As soon as this law is announced, people would immediately start trading in their notes to coins. Actually, no, this is silly. The extra 10% would hardly justify the weight of the coins.
• The ice cream would cost 15 kr instead of 17… though its more likely no one would bother to adjust the prices, for PROFIT and INFLATION.
• It’d be impossible to actually exchange a twenty krona note and two krona coins to two ten krona coins properly, as the total value would be OVER 22kr (the two coins being worth more). OH MAN SO CONFUSING.
• Essentially, we’d get two separate currencies with exchange rates between them. Prices still have to be given in totals of course, and if kronas on coins start being more valuable than their paper counterparts, we’d have to have two different currencies to pay for stuff over 20 kr. We could call the currencies KOCs (kronas on coins) and KOPs (kronas on paper), ‘cuz, you know, it sounds funny. Lets say the price of more expensive stuff would be given in KOPs. You’d then pay up to near that amount in KOPs, then divide the rest by 1,1 and pay that in KOCs. Meanwhile, prices for stuff cheaper than what we now call 20kr would only have to be given in KOCs.
• Some smartass would put out an iPhone app that made it a lot easier to pay with a mixture of the two currencies, and he’d get super rich.

Finally, when people tire of this stupid system we’d either abolish coins or abolish physical currency altogether.

OR they could just put note slots on all the vending machines.