15th
In the future…
Money as we know it will not exist, but will be replaced with a currency based in energy units. I know this sounds farfetched and ridiculous, but when you stop to think about it, it would be the next logical step in human economic evolution. Eventually, we will come to depend on electricity so much and paper money and even computer money will have become so mistrusted due to devaluation and fluctiation, that people will prefer to own units of energy and use those as a standard of trade.
Why this has not happened already and will not happen probably for some decades, is because right now virtually nobody can operate indepdent of the electrical grid. We are all plugged in to whatever ower company is in charge of our district. However, with the advent of cheaper solar power, community-driven forms of energy like geothermal and wind power, not to mention the use of fuel cells, we are approaching a day in which every home will act as its own power source. Once that happens, power becomes abundant and transferable enough to act as a medium of exchange. Obviously now I can’t pay you in energy units for mowing my lawn. But imagine in the future if I could wire you so many mega watts of power to your house as payment. Imagine if your employer paid you in giga watts instead of a paper check or wire tranfer.
Such a system may sound impossible, but as we progress more and more everyday items require electricity. We use more lights, more computer power, more electronic gadgets, and more power sources year after year. When you think about it, what we buy most of the time is really fuel in multiple forms (i.e. food, gas, heating, lighting, entertainment, education, etc.) We are either fueling our bodies, our vehicles, or our minds. As we depend more and more on electrcity to accomplish this, eventually it will become practical if not preferable to exchange watts instead of dollars. At the least a watt is more measurable and can hold its value more than a dollar. A watt is a watt no matter what, to coin a phrase. It doesn’t devalue as the dollar does throughout the day. It is not a form of debt as the dollar is as it is nothing more than a note from the Federal Reserve which must be repaid by the U.S. Government. It has real value and is of course dependent on how you use the watt.
This transition will not come easy, and no doubt it is the powerful who will fight it. But ultimately it will be the millions of tiny villages dotting the future landscape—each one inhabited by people who will know each other just as tribes who dwelled in caves millenia ago knew one another—who will force this change. It’s hard to imagine such a scenario now because our power sources are decentralized and diversified. We use gas for our cars, electricity to turn on our lights, perhaps coal to heat our homes, or wood or oil. But give it the time and technology, and I believe this watt exchange theory will come to pass.
