Today I was held up in a queue of people paying after refuelling their cars. Each person waited their turn to swipe their bank card, enter their PIN, wait for the bank to respond, sometimes sign the receipt, receive their docket (to check that the right amount is debited) and then move on.
It struck me that, since the card being swiped is only a means of transferring funds from purchaser to vendor another method could be employed.
A central authority, for instance the government, could issue paper and metal tokens that have specific values that relate to the price of goods. People could go to the bank that holds their account and use the funds in the account to obtain as many of these “papers” or “tokens” as they wish, the value being deducted from their account. Then if the person were to obtain $20 worth of fuel they could simply hand a $20 “paper” to the vendor and leave. The vendor could later give them to his bank which would add them to his/her account.
I believe this method could save many thousands of pointless, irritating hours spent in queues.
This is a brilliant suggestion. Naturally, at these central token dispersion buildings, there would be no further need to wait in line. One would simply walk up to one of several friendly available employees who could instantly tell you the balance of tokens available.
You would then tell this employee the amount by which you wished to subdivide your balance of tokens, and they would respond by telling you the new remaining balance after your transaction.
Since one spends most of the transaction with this employee telling him about your “papers” and “tokens,” and the employee telling you about your balance, we could call these people tokers. It makes sense!
All hail the brilliant idea which will forever eliminate awkwardly long queues while waiting for business transactions, especially on payday.
Could you recycle the paper and use it again? What would happen when it wore out? Could you print something interesting on the pieces of paper like Farside cartoons maybe?
Oh, please. Can you imagine the kind of infrastructure that would have to be created to make this practical? Not only would we need to create token-distribution outlets within easy distance of every person in the country, but every single retail point of sale would have to be redesigned to be capable of handling and transferring these tokens around. The workers would spend countless hours accounting for their tokens and making sure none got lost. Sheesh.
You’ve got the germ of an idea there, but it has some serious flaws.
These “tokens” sound too ephemeral. You want to keep all your capital in paper? Paper burns, man. Mice and birds make nests out of it. You want something a little more secure.
I propose we select a rare and durable element, and make a standard mass of it a fixed economic unit. That way, it doesn’t matter if your life’s savings is subjected to an inferno, you’ve still got it.
Come to think of it, this would be an improvement over magnetic funds or this hypothetical “paper money” in that it could be a truly international measure, and people wouldn’t suffer the terrible devaluating effect of inflation which has been with us since time began.
Your idea has a lot of advantages to it, but I think it can be streamlined further.
Think about it: what are you using these tokens for? To buy stuff, of course. And what will the person who receives your tokens do with them? Buy stuff of his own.
Now, what if we simply cut out the middleman and eliminate the need for carrying around papers and tokens altogether? Stay with me here. Then, whenever you want to purchase a certain amount of stuff, all you need to do is give the seller an equivalent amount of stuff that he wants. That way, everyone gets everything they want right there, without needing to mess around with inconvenient pieces of paper and metal. Just think of how much easier a system like this would be!
A simpler idea for a country that already has chip & pin cards is to put consoles at each petrol pump. Then once you have topped up your tank you just stick your card in, enter pin, collect recipt and you’re on your way, no need to go into the store at all.
Don’t we already have this? I buy my fuel at Tescos, and they have a ‘Pay at Pump’ option. you pop in your card, it reads it and gives it back. You then proceed to top up (to a maximum of £60) and can drive off immediately when finished.
Of course you do, after all, you live in Shangrala.
I propose that we dispense with the tokens, whether paper or elemental, and simply scribble down notes to the vendors a promise that the place where the tokens are keep will hand over the amount written on the paper and signed by the buyer upon presentation. What could possibly go wrong?
No offense to the OP, but I see a few downsides to the idea…
[ul][li]I envision vending machines designed to accept the papers but failing to do so unless the paper was still in the new, crisp state in which it was distributed from the central authority. This would lead to tired jokes about same in commercials and situation comedies.[/li]
[li]Transactions would become more informal. As time went on, vessels for paper/token gratuities would appear at more and more points of sale, usually without good cause.[/li][li]Over time, the lowest valued token would no doubt lose value to the point where it was almost considered a nuisance. Imagine little bowls of nearly worthless tokens sitting right in the vendors’ stores, with little signs on them – possibly even in verse – underlining their lack of value. Plus, kids would shove them up their noses.[/ul][/li]This is just off the top of my head. I know I probably sound kind of crazy, but I can really picture these sorts of things happening with a paper-and-token system. I wouldn’t reject the idea outright, but we would really need to think hard about such a system before trying to implement it.
While we’re at it, all this cool stuff on the internet… we need to develop some system of taking text and images away from the computer. Like printouts, except we can’t just carry a bunch of printout papers around with us, because they’ll get disorganized and out of order.
One notion, that I’m not sure how much I like, is that we might be able to rig a printer to work with a continuous roll of paper instead of seperate sheets. Then, we could cut off the paper output once a whole bunch was printed out, and roll it around two, erm, two rods, for ease in carrying. Why two rods? That way, to find a particular part of the printout, you could roll paper from one rod to the other until you got to the right part.
That has its downsides too. Maybe what we REALLY need is some way to fasten a whole bunch of little printout papers together down one side… maybe with a kind of needle stitching? Then you could just flip through them. And maybe add some kind of hard plastic cover to keep the first and last pages from getting dirty or worn.
Oh, sure, derail a perfectly good idea with your silly slippery slope fallacies! There’s no way to know that any of this would actually happen. Care to erect a straw man or two while you’re at it?
chrisk, don’t be ridiculous. Obviously, we’re wasting way too many trees on paper already. Can you imagine the rate of deforestation your needle and thread paper collections would create? What we need to do is find some plant that grows in marshy wetlands at a rapid rate. We’ll split the stems into layers, then pound them together into thin sheets. They are much more replenishable than trees. The only problem I can see is that printers wouldn’t accept these sheets - so we can make marks on them ourselves with toner made wet with water and sticks! How amazing would that be, to print on sheets of papyrus paper with your own hand instead of with a machine? What optimal control and exactitude you could have. No more messing with margins, formatting, or other such nonsense. No longer will Microsoft Word force you to use small letters in your outline! Use capitals! Use numbers! Heck, use whatever you want! You now have total control of where the ink goes!
Couldn’t these papers and tokens be used to fuel some sort of underground economy?
Anyway, I hear tell that Iraq has leaped ahead of the rest of the civilized world and begun using just such a system. Currently it appears that it can be only used for food though. And not breakfasts or lunches either. Just dinners.
I’d be willing to sell you several thousand of these documents at a highly inflated price.
There’s one thing I can say for certain about the idea. It will certainly make games like Monopoly and Life less expensive! No longer would it be necessary to buy and install a large, bulky electronic card-reading system in order to transact exchanges of goods and services between players!
One might even go so far as to suggest that these “papers” could revolutionize games such as poker, which presently require players to stand in long lines during each phase of the game to transfer funds for the purpose of the ante, and in the seeing and raising of the stakes. If the casino were to issue “papers” and “tokens” of its own these transactions would be greatly simplified!
