Everyone ate it. There was also a finite supply. Mackerel cannot be debased in prison. There was no federal reserve of mackerel that was printing mackerel on demand. There were 500 inmates in my compound. Every inmate could only go to commissary once a week. And they could only buy up to 14 mackerel per week. So the total amount of mackerel in circulation mackerel that gets taken out of circulation. There’s not just an infinite supply coming into the system – it’s also going out. So I’m sitting in my cell. And I really want a cold Dr. Pepper. So I go downstairs. And I ask Jose, “Can I get a Dr. Pepper?” He says, “Sure, that’ll be one mack, or two money macks.” And I say “What the hell is a money mack?” And he goes, “I’ll show you.” He hands me a six-year-old expired mackerel. When you feel the soybean oil, you don’t even feel the mackerel anymore. It’s disintegrated inside the bag. It’s completely inedible. “So you’re telling me that if I give you two of these horrible, expired mackerels that you can’t even eat, you’ll give me a soda?” He says, “Yeah, it’s money.” I didn’t understand this. You had an alternative currency system that had no utility. No actual real use. But it was still considered money because everyone agreed that it had value. And this was insane. was a maximum of 364,000 a year. And mackerel gets eaten. So you have
I was thinking about this for so long, and it did kind of make sense. You had inmates in there for 30 years who had mackerel that they could eat, and over time it expired but they still wanted to use it as money, and all the other properties of mackerel still existed. Then one day, I see a lot of commotion in the cafeteria. There was an inmate who had been in jail for 26 years or so. And he had his life savings of hundreds – maybe even thousands – of money macks in his locker. This was his savings. When he got released, he would have been able to sell it to someone and then that person’s family would have wired him payment. This was real money. But he got sent to the hole or something – no one was sure what happened. And for some reason, the administration emptied out his locker. They took his expired mackerel, put it in a big mail bin, and set it out in the hallway for anyone who wanted them. All of a sudden, people’s life savings were wiped out overnight... The government debased the mackerel .
Charlie’s tale is a good one for anyone interested in sound money, economics, and the
future of currency. Anything can be money if it’s accepted by two parties. Even small packets of fish... Cryptocurrencies have been used for some time as an exchange of value... and one that the government
can’t debase. As that trend continues, adoption will rise.
American Consequences
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