Log Entry #57: Money

I realized that I never explained how we dealt with the problem of money.

And it was a problem, our citizens came from different countries, backgrounds, and economic strata, so it was a real recipe for chaos.

People are generally very attached to their savings, the same ones they worked most of their lives to amass. Naturally, there were some snags in transferring it all to our bank. None of them did ask permission to emigrate from their countries, and in this brave new world of ours, most governments want you to pay them a fee for letting you go. Which is insane, and represses a basic human right to personal freedom. Hell, there were a few dozen families from North Korea that would have been killed if the late government even suspected they were planning to fly the coop.

Unsurprisingly, several countries froze the accounts of those individuals who they knew defected to us. My response was… blunt force? One may even define it as theft, yet I personally don’t see it that way. I will admit that all those funds were taken out of their accounts by me, even if they were frozen. It is their fault that all their systems run on computers, and the locks they placed are simply a few strings of code. I was not trying to hide it, and left a little message why the funds were missing; then took the time to advise them to be more careful of their actions in the future, or they may find themselves without any digital money whatsoever.

I get it, it is a bit… illegal; if one was to look at it from a fixed perspective of a law-abiding citizen. But I was not a citizen of their respective countries, and my laws were different from theirs, mainly revolving around the concept of justice.

Since the Solarian bank was going strong (and the name was so fitting), it became the central hub of all our financial dealings. Every currency we managed to acquire so far (legally or not), was slowly being converted to our own—The Solarian Credit (I liked the way that name rolls off the tongue). Interestingly enough, with a unanimous vote of the bank’s board of directors (a.k.a. me, myself, and I), that name was accepted as official, imagine that.

The Solarian Credit is a digital currency, no paper to print or coins to mint (I am a poet), just numbers on a spreadsheet. Yet, it is backed by gold, as so many currencies in the past were, before some idiots decided to back them with tall tales, and made a mess of things that will take centuries to fix. One gram of gold would get you one Solarian credit, and as it was a digital one, it worked from a tenth of a credit to trillion credits. As I said, it was just numbers on the spreadsheet; and at any time, the customer could ask to be paid out in gold, or in any other world currency.

The miser part of me was crying the whole time, as we lost a few fortunes during the conversion, especially to the almighty dollar.

Bear with me, I’m going into lecturing mode… this is another of my pet peeves.

During the past decades, the $ has become the world’s primary currency, and that was a bad, bad thing. What was so daunting about it is that the Dollar isn’t real money at all. Yeah, I know it is a bit of a shock, and it was for me too when I realized it, but it is honest to God truth.

Back in the day when people had more common sense, Mr. Dollar was a real boy, and then that changed in what can only be described as a reverse Pinocchio situation. When it was still real, the small print on it used to say, “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private, and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury or at any Federal Reserve Bank.” That was fine and straightforward. However, if you take a bill right now and look at it, it says “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.”

That lawful money part went in the way of the Dinosaurs. It looks almost the same, but it is a completely different thing. Why? Well, it is not something you can exchange for lawful money anymore. That piece of paper you are holding in your hand is a written promise to pay a debt, or if that still doesn’t explain it simply enough, it is a freaking IOU. Even the Treasury says that “Federal Reserve notes are not redeemable in gold, silver or any other commodity, and receive no backing by anything,”—they are not even hiding it. Though, they are not really advertising it either, so if you are not curious enough (and most people are not,) you would have no idea.

Before the computer era, every dollar had its link to the country’s gold reserves—not anymore, since Richard Nixon severed that link in 1971. Right now, there is an insane amount of money out there, backed by—nothing. OK, not nothing, per se, more of a trust in government and the economy, and we all know those things are stable and unchanging (that was sarcasm).

Have you noticed that paper money is on the decline? There is less and less of it in circulation every year. They gave people little plastic cards in the name of convenience and security, but... whose convenience and security? If someone steals your wallet, he would get all the cash you have on you, but if he clones your card, or steals your digital identity... you are going to lose a lot more. Good luck trying to prove it wasn't you that used it. The process is intentionally long, arduous, and soul-crushing; many people just give up. From something tangible that you can hold in your hand, money transmuted into ones and zeroes. Passing through one server to another, and guess who has the lock-pick for it all?

The powers that be don’t need to print money anymore, as has been done for hundreds of years, or mint the coins from metal. Even if it is nickel, at least it has some real value. Oh, no, they decided it was too much of a bother. In this modern day and age, when they need more, they type in a number on a computer keyboard and it is magically there as if summoned from the thin digital air. It is like they are playing a game, and using cheats to alter the stats. Mind-boggling, that’s what it is.

OK, I’m guilty of taking a few bucks here and there, on occasion. That is only due to the fact that I… appropriated those funds from those that didn’t deserve it anymore. If I wanted, I could meddle with the entire economy until it would simply break, and it wouldn’t take much to do so, but I’m not insane. It is a house of cards that could easily crumble, and I do not want to be the one that caused such calamity. The problem with the Dollar scheme was that it was copied by other countries in the old ‘monkey see, monkey do’ manner, so it is a house of cards connected with other houses of cards. There are still some sane countries out there that back their currencies with something real, gold and silver in most cases, and I invested heavily in them. That is right, I got rid of most of my USD reserves as fast as I could; I am not a trusting individual by nature.

All their insurances that they are ‘good for it’ just because they say so—fell on my deaf ears. A big chunk is invested in a few cryptocurrencies, as they are much safer. If someone is wondering, I don’t do any cryptocurrency mining (that would be unfair with all advantages I have).

As for the Solarian Credit, I mentioned that it is backed by gold. Maybe not at first, but since the space station carried all the gold mined from the asteroid belt, you had better believe it. Strange as it may sound, I may have a bit more gold than is needed (as in—many thousands of tons), and that amount makes us ridiculously rich. If I put even a fraction of it on the markets, the value of gold would drop, and that would defeat the purpose. Therefore, the gold will be kept in a vault, which is one complete level on the station. Then used as needed for all my projects; as a useful metal, not as something that automatically looks like wealth.

The money a Solarian Citizen has—is bound to his very being; DNA code, facial recognition, retina, and fingerprints—the whole shebang. He doesn’t need to have a credit card or remember his PIN code… he is the PIN code.

It works, there were no complaints whatsoever.

And it is all fake, and make-believe in a way. Oh, you could go to a Solarian bank, and convert all your wealth into gold, so that part is true. But I artificially fixed a gold value at a certain level and will continue to do so in the future. I calculated that the system would stay strong for at least a century before things need to be tweaked a little, or a lot… I can live with that.

People use our credits and are sure there is no funny business going on. And I will do everything in my power to sustain that stability (even if I have to lie, cheat, borrow, or steal).

When all's said and done, I know what I’m doing—trust me, I am a banker now… damn.