Radically restructuring currency so $1 the minimum value. Whole numbers only.
Posted by SumOldGuy@reddit | CrazyIdeas | View on Reddit | 31 comments
Just completely destroy the current value of currency and make $1 the minimum cost for anything. Back in the day they could buy shit with a nickel and get change back.
cpt_ugh@reddit
Why? I don't understand the value of doing this.
As one example, I own a real Zimbabwean $100 Trillion dollar bill so I understand restructuring currency can be helpful after situations like hyper inflation. However, I'm struggling to understand why we might want to make $1 the new minimum value for money. It feels purely performative and confusing. What am I missing here?
SumOldGuy@reddit (OP)
First of all, it is a r/CrazyIdea
Second I think that 1 dollar should be enough to buy a small snack or something on that scale. Everything else would have value corresponding to that. A snack of double the size would cost 2 dollars. 2.5x size would end up costing 3 dollars because it always rounds up.
You are best buying full dollar amounts worth or just below of any product as you would be wasting fractions of value otherwise.
You could buy 1 grain of rice if you wanted, but it would cost a full dollar and you could get a lit more with a dollar.
ChadTitanofalous@reddit
I'd like to see prices as in Europe. Almost everything is in whole € amounts.
Of course state and local sales in the US would make this impossible.
Yeseylon@reddit
Uh, what? I was literally in Germany a week ago, and that's not how it works.
ChadTitanofalous@reddit
Haven't been to Germany. Most prices I've seen in Italy (mostly), France, Spain.
SumOldGuy@reddit (OP)
This is radical. No more euro, no more yen, just dollar
Sensitive-Chemical83@reddit
Like the Yen or Yuan?
SumOldGuy@reddit (OP)
NO
Yeseylon@reddit
Well that's how they work lmao
FishDawgX@reddit
We are realistically only about 30 years away from this being totally reasonable. That’s about when our currency’s historical lowest denominations would match up with $1. I know we just got rid of the penny, but really we shouldn’t keep anything lower than a quarter at this point since the buying power of smaller coins is just too little to matter.
SumOldGuy@reddit (OP)
It's all just numbers. I propose that we do a radical change where a minimum value is provided to the number $1. you can get multiple things with $1, but the minimum transaction would be worth up to $1
SamLooksAt@reddit
We could just start using Yen, it already works exactly like this.
Horror-Confidence498@reddit
Except a yen is worth like a cent
SumOldGuy@reddit (OP)
The single unit cost is the minimum amount. 1 banana is $1, 10 banana might be $3 idk
Horror-Confidence498@reddit
Why would anyone want this? You’d basically be overpaying for one banana unless you get several
SamLooksAt@reddit
What do you think a dollar would be worth if it was the minimum cost of something?
Think about it...
Horror-Confidence498@reddit
A current quarter. Quarters the the most used coin denomination, halves would be common too should people still use them
SamLooksAt@reddit
It doesn't matter what the coins name (or even denomination is).
If it's the minimum denomination you can use it effectively fulfills the same role as a cent used to and the yen currently does.
If you devalue the dollar to the point it's the minimum denomination, it's effectively become the de-facto "cent" (or yen).
It's actually inevitable too given enough time. Eventually inflation WILL take the dollar to this point and anything worth less than a dollar will just be phased out.
SumOldGuy@reddit (OP)
Not at all
Burning_Toast998@reddit
$1 eventually becomes the new penny. We now have inflation that scales in dollars instead of cents. You’ve now caused everything to become significantly more (relatively) expensive until everyone can adopt the new method, and more or less all coins are destroyed, stored, or otherwise removed from the economy
SumOldGuy@reddit (OP)
No. $1 is the minimum increment. You can get one grain of rice or a hundred or a small bag for exactly $1. You can buy a $3 bag of rice if you want. Or you could buy a $1 salad with a little bit of greens and veggies. $1 is the minimum.
Nicelyvillainous@reddit
Yeah, like a lot of European currencies got to be after a few centuries of inflation before the euro. Like Italian lira were like 2k per euro when they switched over, you had 50 liea coins as the smallest size and the 1k lira coin was introduced in 1998.
Back in the early 1800s, they had 1, 3, and 5 centesimi coins, hundredths of a lira. By 1957 they stopped making the 1 lira coin entirely, it was worth too little.
Agitated-Ad2563@reddit
It's really crazy, I like this. A single transistor now costs $1, which means a RTX 5090 GPU now costs some $92 billion.
SumOldGuy@reddit (OP)
I had to clarify that things can still come in batches. so 1 transistor does cost $1 but a million transistors might be a dollar
mysticblanket@reddit
What happens if a bit flip happens causing the 1 to turn into a 0.
SumOldGuy@reddit (OP)
sick reference bro
OkDrag3967@reddit
Then we have checksums and maybe some other algorithms to make sure that errors like that are corrected.
mysticblanket@reddit
Yeah I know. It was partial reference to Rick and Morty.
ChiefWeedsmoke@reddit
First you have to define a "thing." If it's one thing per dollar and one dollar per thing, you better have a comprehensive framework as to what constitutes a thing and how many things go into another thing and all that shit.
SumOldGuy@reddit (OP)
Coming back to this post I realized I wasn't clear enough. The cheapest thing will be set at $1
Some things you could could get 1000 of or 12 of and they would both be $1.
Sometimes a batch of "things" would be technically way less than a dollar, but for the tranzaction to be legal the smallest amount of money is $1.
You can mix and match and trade all you want. The smallest legal transaction is $1.
gr33nCumulon@reddit
That's what extreme inflation is