Hey Presto! Out of Thin Air! A magical new currency and economy!

Originally posted by shamus78
OL, your suggestion makes as much sense as basing our economy around bits of paper and metal. Cheers for thinking differently!

Yeah -- but my point is that our economy is NOT based around paper and bits of metal -- its based around the trading of services and hard goods.

If everyone in the world was connected to a computer system than kept track of how much "stuff" we all own, then there would be no need for the paper and bits of metal -- or even the compressed air. Money is just an arbitrary (yet mutually agreed upon) method for counting the services we have provided and the stuff we have traded in the past.

The currency we carry around with us is just a simple way of showing that we do own stuff and have provided those services. When we provide a service -- such as file your bosses papers, fix a car, or design a building -- we get a voucher (money) telling us that we provided that service. That money is simply a symbol that the service was provided. With that voucher, we can later trade it for other services, or maybe for more stuff.

Think of it this way:

Say we are in a time before money. A pig farmer asks me to paint his barn, and says he will give me one pig in return for painting. I tell him I have no need for a pig right now, but I would rather have a bushel of apples and 5 loaves of bread. The pig farmer agrees that a bushel of apples and 5 loaves of bread is equal to one pig -- and thus would be a fair trade for painting the barn -- BUT he has no apples or bread, only pigs.

However, the farmer down the road DOES have apples and bread, but doesn't have any work for me to do for us to trade. Therefore, the pig farmer's barn goes unpainted, and I don't get the apples and bread I need.

Now -- let's add money to the mix to make it all easier: The pig farmer can pay me in money the equivalent of one pig for painting his barn, then I go down the road and use that money to buy apples and bread from the other farmer. The pig farmer gets his barn painted, I get my apples and bread, and everyone is happy.

Our economy is not based on the paper and metal currency, but rather it is based on barter. That currency is only a convenient way to keep track of bartering and allows for multi-party bartering (i.e., I paint Farmer A's barn, but use that service I provided to trade for Farmer B's apples.)

The money in this case was just a symbol showing others that I provided a service (painted the barn) that was worth a bushel of apples and bread.

Fair enough.

Ok, I'll rephrase my original comment: "It makes as much sense as using paper and bits of metal that serves an arbitrary (yet mutually agreed upon) method for counting the stuff we own and the services we have provided in the past."

Thanks Soylent!

Cheers
Shane

I like the concept, but... In order to compress air, you need energy - now that energy may be provided via Human effort or wind or solar...but the average person only has Human power to work with (they would have to pay for any other source). So this would require people to be their own energy source, which would require, like a job, time away from their bliss (or still the inability to afford their bliss if they can't now). Though the value of money will drop, it will not go away - because somebody has to pay (in the form of food, or to the energy producers) for their energy. The overall gain in energy will be heavily counterbalanced.

reply to post by Amaterasu


Explanation: St*rred!

Personal Disclosure: I agree and have therefor I have moved away from the replace the current currency mix to a more add this idea to the mix centralized position! Thanks very much for the thraed bumps.

reply to post by OmegaLogos


Most welcome for the bump.

Glad to see that you agree, as well. [smile] It may be one of many options, but I'm still rooting for plenum energy.

This just makes absolutely no sense.

The law of conservation of energy is a law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy in a system remains constant over time (is said to be conserved over time). A consequence of this law is that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another. The only thing that can happen to energy in a system is that it can change form: for instance chemical energy can become kinetic energy.

en.wikipedia.org...

Compressed air is not an energy resource, instead it is a way to store energy. If you had humans compressing air for several hours per day the only thing they would be doing is converting chemical potential energy found in food to potential energy in compressed air. Compressors are not even close to 100% efficient neither is the human body, thus the total amount of actual energy available to people to use to do actual work would simply be far lower than the amount available than if the chemical potential energy was simply used directly as a biofuel. And if that was done then you would have the more total energy AND you wouldn't be wasting the lives of humanity spending their short time on the planet compressing air.

It would also be impossible for this to work as a currency because it would always be cheaper and more efficient to simply use the biofuel directly as energy, thus all the people compressing air on treadmills (or whatever) would simply spend more than they earn on food. There is no way around this due to the laws of physics. This is fundamental.

The maximum power output a non-athlete human body can put out is 909 watts during a 30 seconds sprint. The average westerner uses over 11 kilowatts on average for transportation, lighting and so on. Australia has 15 million people of working age out of 21 million people total, assuming those 15 million people somehow compressed air at 100% efficiency for 9 hours per day at the same power as someone sprinting, then they could only supply 2% of our energy. And that that energy would come from biofuels in the form of food in the first place too so there would be no point doing it.

There would no time time for society to run hospitals, educate children, build infrastructure, maintain infrastructure, generate vast amounts of actual energy. Instead you would be wasting 5 million person-years per year to convert chemical potential energy into a smaller amount of compressed air potential energy that could only meet 2% of our current demand (which is increasing).

The only way this could possibly work is if you had machines (like wind turbines, or a nuclear reactor) compressing the air for us, but in reality this would mean that it is practically exactly the same as what we have today only instead of electricity and petrol, we would be using compressed air instead. There is also little reason to use compressed air over electricity, as compressed air is often less efficient than electricity as shown here.

This idea is nothing more than MAGIC, and as we all know magic does not exist.

i could swear our govt already blowing compressed air up my....oh nevermind...that's smoke!

Will the air be hot?

What if your paralyzed?

Explanation: Bumped to help generate ad revenue!

Personal Disclosure: Enjoy!