On Thursday, April 11, 2002, at 10:05 PM, Peter Gutmann wrote: > Ken Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> For some reason the mention of a "Susan B Anthony" dollar stuck in my >> brain as >> an "Alice B Sheldon" dollar. Susan Anthony is a person who I've never >> heard >> of. I'm almost tempted not to find out who she is or was to preserve a >> nugget >> of delicious cognitive dissonance. A world in which governments put >> Alice >> Sheldon on the currency would be an interestingly different world from >> the one >> we seem to be inhabiting. > > Not being from the US I have no idea who either of those two are, but > that does > raise an interesting point: Maybe the reason no-one wants the coin is > because > of who's on it. Solution: Mint a coin with La Cicciolina (or whoever > the US > equivalent would be) on it. They'd be able to get rid of at least 140M > of > them.
The only "La Cicciolina" I know of is a skanky coke whore blonde who made B-grade porno movies in Italy and ran for some kind of political office. I don't know of a single person who even owns a photo of this skank from15 years ago, let alone who would find a vague likeness of her on a coin appealing. But you raise the issue of seignorage on the coins: government benefits when coins are bought and squirreled away, lost, pasted into "Famous Figures in American History" albums, etc. The Susan B. Anthony dollar, the Sacajawea dollar, the upcoming Betty Friedan and Oprah Winfrey dollars, all are just political puffery. The way the USG could "force" the conversion from paper to coin is by just forcing it: declare that on some date several years in the future the dollar bill will no longer be printed and that only coins will be issued by the Treasury. Nothing less will cause the hundreds of millions in expenses in converting vending machines over...and why should they, when smartcards are so common in other countries? More creatively, the Feds could allow gambling casinos to replace casino tokens with dollar coins. (Silver dollars were once very common in Las Vegas...I got some there around 1960.) Gambling laws in the 60s and later discouraged the use of actual cash in casinos...a formal exchange into tokens gave the tax collector better visibility into taxable winnings than if just dollars were being won and lost at the tables. (And bear in mind that a one dollar coin is worth about what a quarter ($0.25) was worth in 1970, and about what a dime ($0.10) was worth when silver dollars were still common. Maybe we need a $10 coin.) --Tim May "As my father told me long ago, the objective is not to convince someone with your arguments but to provide the arguments with which he later convinces himself." -- David Friedman
