A lot of people are interested in money. Some people think about little else. The strangest thing is that, despite all the attention it gets, money does not actually exist. It is an abstraction, a fantasy, an illusion wrapped up in an enigma. Most of what we call money is nothing but a number on a computer disk somewhere and can appear and vanish just like anything else on your home computer. Consider the crash of 2008 when several trillion dollars vanished almost overnight. Were all those bonds and banknotes burned or shredded? No, a lot of imaginary wealth recorded on computers was simply deleted with a few keystrokes. In theory, money is backed by real things like property, but history shows how wrong that is. As for gold, that pretty but almost-useless metal, its value is said to be based on scarcity. Using this yardstick, a rare mountain gorilla or an honest politician would be priceless. Who needs gold? Now that marriage is so out of fashion, even the sale of wedding rings is down.
Banknotes and coins are nothing but convenient physical symbols of a nonexistent reality, like the statues of primitive gods. The more you think about it, the more the entire world economy resembles a global pyramid scheme. It’s no accident that there is a pyramid on the dollar bill. Gigantic imaginary deficits are supported by the promise of imaginary repayment in the imaginary future. The pyramid stays up only as long as all of us continue to believe in it. It is without a doubt the greatest conjuring trick of all time. Cryptocurrency, which doesn’t exist at all, raises this trick to the level of magic.
Paper money may be out of fashion, but I suspect we will cling to it for a long time yet. It’s our last tangible evidence of wealth, ever since we abandoned the shiny reassurance of gold. But banknotes are dull, with their dreary color and grim portraits. It was all the more welcome to read that the British are planning to brighten up their banknotes with animal pictures in place of the usual monarchs and long-dead authors, scientists, and politicians.
Eighteen animals, birds and amphibians are being auditioned for the first banknote design, and the question of who should be in the competition has sparked a lively national debate. Rats, for example, have been left out, but as there are probably more rats than people in the British Isles, the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals is campaigning for the inclusion of rats, as well as pigeons and seagulls. Firm favorites are the Fox, the Barn Owl, and the Bumblebee.
Not everyone is delighted with this creative flourish on the part of the Bank of England. Those who regard money as semi-sacred see it almost as blasphemy. But I think it’s quite brilliant. Once people get used to the new notes they will almost certainly acquire their own nicknames that will pass into the language. The price of gas might not be so alarming if counted in hedgehogs, and gamblers might get a grim smile out of losing a few ponies on a horse.
Money is the most unnatural thing in the world, but we can’t do without it. Why not beautify it with at least a hint of nature?
