What if we had a seed-based economy? Would it work?

[Parththakkar12]

Let's say the dollar collapses (looks imminent at this point), and we were out of an economy. What possible new economy-ideas could be implemented? How would we go about creating a new economy together?

We would need a stable currency that has inherent value. Fungible or not, it would just have to be stable! One idea I'm getting is to create a seed-based economy, where seeds are the new currency. We may have to resort to farming if the supply-chains collapsed, that's when seeds will become more valuable than ever.

The reason for this idea is that seeds do have inherent value. The dollar does not, the cryptocurrencies do not, even gold does not! But, seeds do.

It's almost as if you had a centralized currency, but the authority that issued the currency was God himself! No monopolies on the currency by any ego.

What do you think about this?

Edited May 29, 2021 by Parththakkar12

[Tanz]

Are you talking about Seeds that are used to grow plants?  Seems multiply through time, more than humans can print money

[blueplasma]

How the hell will you use seeds as currency...like how is it possible physically.

Edited May 29, 2021 by blueplasma

[Parththakkar12]

3 hours ago, Tanz said:

Are you talking about Seeds that are used to grow plants?  Seems multiply through time, more than humans can print money

Yupp. Seeds that would be used for, say, agriculture, to grow your own food.

3 hours ago, blueplasma said:

How the hell will you use seeds as currency...like how is it possible physically.

By weighing them. That was the random possibility that came to my mind.

[Scholar]

No, this would not be practical for many reasons. One of them is that a foreign government could produce these seeds and distribute them in the economy to deflate the currency and collapse the economy which is build around it. This happened in the past, infact it is a big security risk eve today. This is why only the government can print money and why we go through such lengths to make it hard to counterfeit bills.

Here is a good video on this:

There are other reasons why this would be impractical, like that seeds can spoil quickly and so forth.

 

 

[blueplasma]

On 5/29/2021 at 11:41 PM, Parththakkar12 said:

By weighing them. That was the random possibility that came to my mind.

Don't you think it will be inconvenient. Like I got to the store to buy cheetos and say here's my 10gms of rice seeds lol.

Or do you mean we print paper money backed by such seeds ?

[Parththakkar12]

42 minutes ago, blueplasma said:

Don't you think it will be inconvenient. Like I got to the store to buy cheetos and say here's my 10gms of rice seeds lol.

Or do you mean we print paper money backed by such seeds ?

Yeah, this is a similar problem to the one that came when they used gold, before they printed paper money backed by gold. Which is why they printed money backed by gold. So, you're right, maybe it is a step backwards if we weigh it.

Could there be other ways of making it work though?

Edited May 31, 2021 by Parththakkar12

[StarfoxEpiphany]

There used to be a system in England called Tallysticks that couldn't be manipulated by the banking system.  Basically, before tallysticks, the goldmakers - usually Jews since their religion allowed money lending - would keep people's gold and give them a stamped certificate as a receipt.  It wasn't long before people started just trading the receipts for goods instead of exchanging them for gold first and then buying the goods.  The goldmakers quickly realized they could issue more receipts than gold beings stored, and that's how money printing began.

To counter this, the King of England outlawed gold as a currency for tax payments, and implemented a system based on tallysticks.  These were actually sticks as long as walking canes. To start, they were cut lengthwise down the center.  The king would keep one half and the other half would go into circulation.  If the circulating stick didn't match up with the king's stick like a puzzle piece, then it was "counterfeit" currency.  Get it?  "Counter" "fit" as in the two pieces don't fit.  Yeah, that's where that word originated.

Edited May 31, 2021 by StarfoxEpiphany

[4201]

On 31/05/2021 at 4:29 AM, Parththakkar12 said:

Yeah, this is a similar problem to the one that came when they used gold, before they printed paper money backed by gold. Which is why they printed money backed by gold. So, you're right, maybe it is a step backwards if we weigh it.

Could there be other ways of making it work though?

No you cannot make an economy based on something anyone can produce easily. I just need one seed an a field to make an infinite amount of seeds overtime. How are you going to distinguish the real ones from the ones I made? GMOs? Your GMO seeds would need to not be able to produce more seeds which makes them much less valuable than actual seeds.

On top of that it's biodegradable which is highly inconvenient.

[Chew211]

Read the first 2 chapters of David Harvey's Companion to Capital. You'll sort of see how the current money system came about, and then you'll see the issue with what you're proposing here.