[extropy-chat] Vanity Money (was Bloodless Redistribution)

[spike]

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of The Avantguardian
...
> Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Vanity Money (was Bloodless Redistribution)
> 
> 
> 
> --- "Keith M. Elis" <zarathustra_winced at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > ... you can rely on good,
> > old-fashioned capitalism, almost guaranteed?
> 
> Because this would kill the spirit of the endeavor.
> The whole point of putting these people on the money
> is to honor these great Americans for "giving back"...

I like your idea avant, but if I were rich I would
skip the honor part and go for straight for the 
profit.  {8-]  As a novelty item, I could see having
one's mug on legal currency, as a toy for the super
rich.  This world needs more toys for the super rich
to get their money back into circulation.

> To allow it to become mere advertising space would
> only cheapen the concept and our national identity.
> 
> The Avantguardian

Ja, but the term "cheapen" can also mean "to make
more affordable," which is a good thing.  All national
identities should be cheapened in the pejorative sense
of making less desirable.  In the age of the internet,
we should have memetic identities as opposed to identities
assigned to us as an accident of geography or the
whims of cartographers.

Imagine a meta-national identity where we identify
with those all over the world who subscribe to a
philosophy of freedoms as a superset of all those
freedoms guaranteed by any government anywhere.  For 
instance, my metanational identity recognizes my
right to bear arms, since the U.S. affirms that
right, and also to do any kind of self medication
that I wish, since Denmark allows it.  And so on.

spike