Archive for January 12th, 2013

Making the World, One Coin at a Time

Posted January 12, 2013 By Dave Thomer

The thing that I most enjoyed about the talk of the trillion-dollar platinum coin is that it brought to the forefront the idea that money isn’t a real thing. It’s something we make up, and it works because we all agree that it works. It doesn’t have to follow the laws of physics or anything else – as long as we collectively will it to be so, it is. (I do think this is a drawback of the coin idea – even though according to the rules, it probably would have technically worked, I think it would have been too hard for too many people to maintain their suspension of disbelief, and then the whole structure comes tumbling down.) It’s nice to have a reminder that we are active constructors of our world, and maybe to think about what we should do with that responsibility.