Idle thinkings
I've put about 30 seconds of thought into this so there will be holes to poke in this.
What if the world used a zero-sum monetary system?
Like, instead of the price of goods and services slowly climb due to inflation, and minimum wage raised to compensate, how about this: find a thing that will never change in value and constantly base everything else on it.
Pretend we were under an oppressive government that controlled our oxygen supply. We all need approximately the same amount of oxygen to live, and that will never change, so everything else could be measured in O2 units. Pretend that in essence, the value of O2 won't go up or down so there will be no inflation or deflation. O2 could be used as currency.
So what would change is paycheques and the costs of goods/services (compared to the O2 standard) - you would never know how much you were making or how much items on the shelves would cost.
Banks would be in essence, casinoes. Taking out 10 O2 credits? They could be worth 5 or 15 later! And they wouldn't want to hold onto money, what's the point of handing out interest if an O2 will always be worth the same amount?
Salaries would depend on what was needed at the time. A lot of ditches need to be dug? Suddenly an hour of digging time is worth a lot more O2 and ditch diggers are rich!
So I guess what I'm trying to say is I've basically reinvented Communism.
- Uni