I got in a taxi this morning, and the taxi driver asked me whether it was ok if I paid in cash. He explained that their computer system is down, so using a credit card would be problematic.
I replied “Sure, cash works.”
Then I thought about it a bit more, and I added “If cash stops working, we’re all in trouble.”
In that moment it occurred to me how much I take for granted that I live in a country with a stable monetary system. For all of the recent political talk in the the U.S. about which political party is hell-bent on destroying the economy (universal answer: The other party), we actually take quite a bit for granted here.
Everyone in the U.S. can be confident that the twenty dollar bill in their pocket is still going to represent pretty much the same value after a week or a month. There have been many times and places in the world where that has very much not been true.
Perhaps we should take a moment, between all of the shouting and finger pointing in the lead-up to our forthcoming election, to count our blessings.
‘Perhaps we should take a moment, between all of the shouting and finger pointing in the lead-up to our forthcoming election, to count our blessings.’
You know in some circles this is actually a controversial statement (the gold-bugs who fervently believe that fiat currency is both immoral and doomed to fail). Makes it doubly important for the, uh, less passionate to realize the reality of the matter, and as you said, to count our blessings…
It’s also a good practical argument against replacing the dollar with BitCoin, unless magically, 100% uptime becomes possible.
gratitude. here here!