I'm Totally Serious, Bro

Just as Good as Money...Trust Me

When you think of currency, you tend to think of some sort of tender that holds some sort of value, like a dollar or the euro. The dollar itself doesn’t really hold any value, but it promises you, the consumer, that that piece of paper is worth some amount. California however, decided to take a step back and was like,

“Hold on dude,  aren’t IOUs kinda like cash? Like when you really think about it?”

“No, actually not at all”

“So like, instead of cash, we’ll just pay for stuff using IOUs”

“No, it doesn’t work like that. IOUs aren’t legal tender–You can’t pay for anything using an IOU. That’s what 6 year olds do when they want to buy lemonade from another 6 year old.”

And from there it dawned on them that they could use IOUs as a form of currency.

[via]

“All of this suggests that California has basically created its own currency. When legitimate financial institutions are willing to trade them (at least for now), and there’s no gray market on Craigslist, where big discounts to face value can be had, then you know that the California IOU is basically being treated like cash. It’s just more paper for our paper-filled economy.

The California IOU is like the currency of some third-world country that has to pay its debt in dollars. The only thing California can’t do is demand residents treat the IOUs as legal tender (that would be a violation of the Constitution [yeah, that ol' thing]), but in a cash-short economy, some will probably choose to do so anyway.”

I think California is moving in the right direction. If we could use IOUs to pay for things, we’d be able to get everything we want and just worry about it later. Wait, don’t we already have those? Oh yea, credit cards. Looks like that didn’t work out so well. Whatever though, if it’s working for them so far then let them do it. I would love to pay for something with a piece of paper that says “IOU $7,000″ written in crayon.