I know little about money having never owned much of it. What I have owned is small numbers in a bank, or big numbers with a minus sign in front in the building society. Nevertheless it buys me things and get me around and from that I can estimate its true worth, but its value changes constantly and it is not easy to convert to its proper worth. Money is a bit of a meaningless quantity historically linked to bartering and to limited natural resources like Gold. It's worth is also subject to meddling with by politicians and money experts who move it around and make mistakes and get greedy.
I propose that money is linked to something with intrinsic value, the ability to do useful work, and to be unified with the Joule. Money based on energy will have an intrinsic value linked to something useful and tangible - the number of slaves we own. We own more slaves today than ever before because we are using energy like never before. Let's hope the age of cheap energy doesn't come to an end any time soon!
The value of Money:
If say a slave works at about 200 watts (just over a quarter of a horsepower) and 1 Money unit is the work 1 slave does in a day, then:
1 Money = 200J * 3600 * 24 = 2*10^6 Joules, or 4.8kWh.
This is enough to run a 1 bar (1KW) electric fire constantly for 4.8 hours, or in today's silly £ money about 20 pence.
Inflation (e.g. finding new energy reserves) does not matter in this currency since although there would be more money around, it still does the same amount of work because its linked to the laws of physics. Inflation just means everyone is getting richer and can get more work done. So for example growing a potato still costs the same even if there is more money about. Surely everyone can't get richer though? Yep, they can and this is easy to see when you use a proper currency unit, you just find more cheap energy. What about deflation? This means there is less energy available and we have less slaves to do work for us. We have to do more work for ourselves, limit how much energy we use, or ingress less energy (e.g. starve). All quite simple really. I imagine there is a little more work to do in getting this up and running globally, but I'm getting bored.
Should I put this idea forward to the IMF?
I propose that money is linked to something with intrinsic value, the ability to do useful work, and to be unified with the Joule. Money based on energy will have an intrinsic value linked to something useful and tangible - the number of slaves we own. We own more slaves today than ever before because we are using energy like never before. Let's hope the age of cheap energy doesn't come to an end any time soon!
The value of Money:
If say a slave works at about 200 watts (just over a quarter of a horsepower) and 1 Money unit is the work 1 slave does in a day, then:
1 Money = 200J * 3600 * 24 = 2*10^6 Joules, or 4.8kWh.
This is enough to run a 1 bar (1KW) electric fire constantly for 4.8 hours, or in today's silly £ money about 20 pence.
Inflation (e.g. finding new energy reserves) does not matter in this currency since although there would be more money around, it still does the same amount of work because its linked to the laws of physics. Inflation just means everyone is getting richer and can get more work done. So for example growing a potato still costs the same even if there is more money about. Surely everyone can't get richer though? Yep, they can and this is easy to see when you use a proper currency unit, you just find more cheap energy. What about deflation? This means there is less energy available and we have less slaves to do work for us. We have to do more work for ourselves, limit how much energy we use, or ingress less energy (e.g. starve). All quite simple really. I imagine there is a little more work to do in getting this up and running globally, but I'm getting bored.
Should I put this idea forward to the IMF?
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