And Then There Were None is the story I was trying to remember. If I recall correctly, the supposedly money-less economy was based on an informal trading of “obs” (“obligations”). I do something for you, you owe me an ob. Then when you do something for me, the ob is paid off. When I first read this as a kid, it seemed like an interesting idea, until I started thinking about the logistics of keeping track of obs, and then realized that “ob” is just another word for “money”.
Sure, even in replicator-world, an expertly-prepared steak tastes better than a Whopper. But that expert chef can make one perfect steak, and then replicate it for everyone. So it still works out to the same almost-zero marginal cost.
Some Star Trek characters still cook anyway, but that’s because they enjoy cooking, and there’s a bit of snob appeal to non-replicated food.
I understand the Quran also describes a fixed exchange ratio for gold & silver. It does not match modern values, so would be ripe for some exploitation, if you found someone foolish enough to do the deal.
Some superb stuff here – thanks, all.
There’s a 2013 thread on the Dope, “Most complicated currency system ever?” (took me some time to remember and locate it).
boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=701724&highlight=Lhasa
That thread is essentially about real-world currencies; but it contains one splendidly nonsensical dialogue from what I take to be a work of fiction called “5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.”-- runs approximately as follows:
A: How much are you being paid?
B: Two thousand pastoolas.
A: Two thousand what?
B: Two thousand pastoolas. [B’s employer the villain] pays me in pastoolas.
A: What are pastoolas?
B: If you must know, the currency here is a little strange. First of all, in the small money come the drakmids. At the regular, normal rate of exchange, there are 59 drakmids to one silver zlobeck.
A: “Zlobeck”?
B: Three silver zlobecks make one golden krachmuk. A pastoola normally is, uh, 44,000 krachmuks. But these, they tell me, are not normal times…
So you would be happy to measure and weigh each coin you get in change, to make sure that the correct value is made?
The inconvenience of that is the reason why standard sized coins were invented.
In Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel, set in the fictional country of Zubrowka, the currency is the Klübeck. Not particularly crazy though.
I’ve mentioned the book here before, and Charles Stross a bunch of times, but the plot of Neptune’s Brood revolves around the economics of a galactic economy with three different tiers of cryptocurrency: fast, medium, and slow. As well as insurance fraud—a principal player is the Crimson Permanent Assurance. The book is very funny in parts, but the economics aren’t. (Or maybe they are: I get the feeling reading Stross that I’m missing most of the jokes.)
It’s a strange enough, but interesting, setup that I thought still follows with the OP.
The short story Self Limiting begins with the line “There are no millionaires on Xanax”, explaining how the currency of the planet Xanax is silvery-grey metal coins which are kept in “money pits” of a standardized size. A million coins won’t fit in a normal money pit, so there are no millionaires. One greedy individual dug an oversized pit and started stealing from the pits of other Xanaxians, since he wanted to be the first millionaire. It didn’t turn out well…
That’s one way to prevent the over-accumulation of wealth.
“It is better to owe money than favors, because with money you know when you’re done paying”. “Money is paid with money; favors, you end up paying with favors and money.” Paraphrasing a couple of sayings from my mother’s side of the family; the paternal side of the family is perfectly happy to work on a favors basis so long as the other party can be trusted to not fiddle the accounting. The US economy is more heavily currency-based than the Spanish economy; favors are a perfectly common currency in many places, although one normally doesn’t track them in little black books (or in little books of any other colors). Pratchett and Baxter were simply moving that money vs. favors scale to the favors extreme.
There’s a long movie as well, but I can’t recall its name. I’ll try to find it.
In Time, maybe? I haven’t actually seen it.
That was it, yes. Now kindly stop looking at my brain over my shoulder.
One is inclined to assume from the name, that the country of Zubrowka has at least some likeness / overtones re Poland; with “real-world” Zubrowka being an admired variety of Polish vodka.
Fictional currencies (quasi-normal type), even though without the bonkers-complicated-for-comic-effect dimension: thoughts are prompted, of Lois McMaster Bujold’s “Vorkosiverse” space-fiction novels, for which I am a fairly strong enthusiast. The many different planet-polities in her “Nexus” would seem to have, correspondingly, an assortment of respective currencies of their own. We don’t learn the specifics of same in very many cases (perhaps a truly obsessive Vorkosiverse-geek would be aware of a greater number, than I am). We learn that the monetary unit of Barrayar, the hero’s home-world – and its subject-planet Komarr – is the Imperial Mark: the German connotation perhaps holds with suitable overtones for Barrayar’s rather militaristic society, although the planet’s most pronounced cultural flavour is Russian rather than German. Beta Colony – highly sophisticated, technically and socially advanced, and profoundly liberal – has as its monetary unit the Betan dollar: the Nexus’s most stable, prestigious and prosperity-inducing currency, customarily used as a “measuring stick” vis-a-vis other currencies.
The planet of Kibou-Daini – its population largely of East Asian, especially Japanese, stock – has as monetary unit, the nuyen. As regards Barrayar’s rival planetary empire and potential / actual enemy in the part of the Nexus concerned, Cetaganda – a place of great technical prowess and a highly subtle and refined, though in some ways rather nasty, culture – it seems that the reader does not learn what they call their money. It tends to be that the only scenes of the series set actually in Cetaganda, are ones of imperial / diplomatic ceremonial, or extreme political crisis, where situations of people having to mess around with cash, don’t arise.
Terry Pratchett’s science fiction novel Strata has a currency called “Days” (and bigger denominations of time) which ultimately serves as the backing for all other currencies. One Day is literally one day’s worth of life extension treatments* (so nobody’s giving up any time, like in that film or In Time.)
In theory, the older you grew the more careful you were to stay near a gene surgery and the local Company store, where your Days could be cashed for carefully-calculated longevity treatment – at the guaranteed rate of twenty-four standard hours extra life per Day. Only the Company paid in Days, and only the Company gave the treatment. Textbook economics followed that the Company owned everywhere and everybody.
The Company is the Strata Corporation, which terraforms planets for colonisation.
- not immortality - that, apparently, is a once-off surgery. The treatments are for the eternal youth part of the deal.
Reminiscent of Niven’s, “The Roentgen Standard.” http://www.larryniven.net/stories/roentgen.shtml
For that matter, after crashing on prehistoric Earth, the Golgafrinchams adopted the leaf as legal tender, thus making themselves all fabulously wealthy. Unfortunately, the easy availability of leaves caused rapid devaluation, so they started burning down forests to revalue their currency. Nice logical thinking…
Fallout has bottlecaps for currency.
The Metro games have military-grade ammunition used as money, giving you the choice of using inferior ammunition or literally shooting money.
Warhammer 40,000 Orks use “Ork Teef” aka their own teeth as money.
MacSpon:
Hey, at least the fire-invention committee finally got its act together!
In the SF short story “No Love in All of Dwingeloo”, a race of higher-dimensional beings trade in futures; literal futures, as in trading the ability to alter the outcome of different possible timelines. When the human protagonist of the story learns that Earth is being sold short- that speculators are betting that humanity will shortly go extinct- he risks all to save humanity, at great personal cost.
No love for the Flainian Pobble Bead?
The Algebraist (novel) has an economy based on kudos. It doesn’t go into great detail but I guess the more famous you are the more things you can get - a little bit like in our system.