What would be the best way to establish monetary exchange rates for time travellers? For example if I happened to go back in time to 1920 with three hundred dollars (simply altering the money to look like cash of the period) I could easily purchase a car and set up residence in an apartment for six months or a year with some currency left over to purchase food and other necessities. That wouldn’t be realistic because 300 dollars in 2001 AD is hardly equivalent to 300 dollars in 1920 AD.
Could a simple variation on the gold standard be used for exchange rates? Some formula based upon the average minimum wage of workers in the twenties compared to the current minimum wage rate? A bread standard based upon the price of bread in one era to the price of bread in another era? A standard based upon something which costs the same in any era. Of course this assumes that there are banking institutions which span the decades, centuries et al. and have access to various currencies so time travellers don’t stand out among the natives.
This is the only thing I’m interested in, I’m not interested in hearing about paradox or time travellers sticking out like sore thumbs through language or mannerisms.
Even if time travel were possible, the folks in the time you travel to would only take correctly dated local currency. So what you’d have to do is haul down to the coin store and buy some US currency dated during the ninteen-teens. Whatever that cost you would be your “exchange rate”
Alternatively, you would carry non-money things of easily converted value (gold bricks, for example) and purchase currency with that upon reaching your time.
I’m not sure what underlies this thought experiment. You can roughly control for rising prices by using the Consumer Price Index or other price indices. Such measures have difficulty over wide spans of time, however:
Or perhaps you’re wondering what would happen if a 1930s economy suddenly encountered a modern one (albeit through a small portal).
I’d recommend that our modern representative take a mixture of 1) easily tradeable, highly valued and lightweight goods (gold?), and 2) lightweight products that are relatively cheap now but rather expensive (ie nonexistant) back then. 100 pocket calculators might qualify. OTOH, you did mention that you didn’t want our traveller to stand out among the natives. But why would that be an issue if you’re not concerned about time travel paradoxes?
(Again, I find the question confusing.)
What would our traveller bring back? Hm. Probably a good that was lightweight (to get through the portal) and required a lot of highly skilled labor. I’d lean towards acquiring a good set of old masters paintings.
As time travel has been something I’ve been studying as of late, I thought I’d try to comment on this post… it’s pretty difficult being that, as we currently know them… all the assumptions listed are pretty much difficult to grasp. No paradoxes! That’s what time travel is all about.
Anyway, a meaningful exchange rate would be hard to come by because of the advances in our economies. Right now, there are things that we can get very cheaply (say TVs) that were unheard of commodities or not even invented in the past. These items have actually depriciated in value over the past few years. Anyone with the wherewithall to transfer some property back to the past would find that a lot of what they brought would be either impractical and worthless or extremely valuable. As such, it would require considerable research and quite a bit of guessing before it could be determined what would be good to bring back in terms of monetary gain and what wouldn’t. E.g. the “color” aspect of our televisions would be pointless in the 1930s as no one was broadcasting in color at the time.
This gets into some dicey issues. Knoweledge of the future is itself a commodity, as any prognosticator or forecaster will tell you. Of course (like in Back to the Future) this type of exchange also has to be taken in to consideration.
Frankly, there is no good way to control for these variables. A “standard” would not be useful because there is no economic standard that doesn’t change through time. This includes precious metals (thus the fluctuations in the markets). In order to effectively exchange, it would be necessary to create a time-independent commodity. I just don’t think that can be done. Luckily, time travel is so exorbitantly expensive and dangerous (at least as we understand it now) these issues will not matter in our lifetimes, certainly. Moreover, the idea of stepping back in time is not very straightforward, and in general, it’s not possible to go back in time to before a time machine was built.
Going to the future is substantially cheaper, but determination is the problem. Of course, we’ll know about the timetraveller before she arrives, so that will mean we can plan accordingly for her arrival. This would include, obviously, exchange rates… but at this time there doesn’t seem to be much intrinsic value to being from the past to anyone except historians (and they aren’t exactly rolling in the dough).
But if it were possible to spend a few months in 1920, I’d want to for two reasons. First, it would be interesting to obseve / participate in the very different society of that time. And second, prices would be so low! That would be one of the big attractions to such a trip.
Someone wrote an amusing, very short story about this aspect of time travel. (Spoiler alert!)
I read this years ago in an SF magazine. I don’t remember the title or author or which magazine it was in. The main character was guy in his fifties or sixties, who, incidently, was not very well off financialy. He had been puttering away in his basement for years, trying to invent a time machine. At last, he succeeded! But there was a flaw. No flexibility. He could go back exactly such and such number of years; no more, no less. What good was that, he wondered. Discouraged, he told his wife about the problem. She immediately realized that a trip in the machine would land them right in the depths of the Great Depression. So… from then on, the couple did their grocery shopping, etc. in the Depression!
Maybe one way to approach the problem is to look at what happens when people from a modern, western economy visit the so-called “third world.” Certainly, U.S. dollars go pretty far in Bangla Desh, but there’s a limit. How and why?
Let’s look at a couple of the common indices for historical monetary conversions (not necessarily time travel-- How much were the Biblical ten talents worth in modern money?). One standard scale is the amount of money a median worker would make in the course of an average day’s work. If a typical worker makes $200 a day today, and a typical worker a century ago made $25 a day, then one current dollar would be equivalent to eight old-time dollars by that standard. Another common scale is the price of a loaf of bread of a certain weight, so if a one-pound loaf is a dollar today, and was 20 cents a century ago, then the exchange rate is only five to one. The problem is that such indices don’t really need to agree, and in fact, usually don’t, so there’s no one way of doing this.
Note: All numbers above are made up, and for illustrative purposes only. I don’t have handy values available for historical prices or wages.
The way to go is as a rich tourist. Forget about mimimum wage conversions ans stuff like that.
First, borrow some genuine period money from a museum or a collector. If you can travel time like a tourist, I guarantee someone will provide such a business to the tourists, because with the right info, the tourists can also pretty much guarantee a profit back to the lender.
Going back to the early twenties is perfect. Do a little stock market research, make an overnight killing, live like a king for a week or two, and bring back some extra cash or period trinkets for the lender.
Questions of morality and “Is creating a time paradox possible?” aside, the first few tourists could get away with this easily. I suppose if you pile up enough time tourists in the same placetime, the local currency would seem to mysteriously vanish, not to mention creating problems like overcrowding at the best hotels.
Time travel, like space travel, must ultimately justify itself in the marketplace. At least that’s the rationale I would use to justify looting our ancestors. At least it’s a nice change from looting our grandchildren’s futures.