Unmoney

          Unmoney

          Figure 0. Zilchbill and Pennygone:

          I invented the $0 Bill during a period of my life when I had about that much money to my name. I did so in order to express that fact, and also to fill in what seemed to me to be a gap in the monetary system. There are notes worth $1000, $100, $50, $20, $10, $5, $2 and $1; so why not one worth $0? That was my reasoning, such as it was. I knew that a bill whose stated value is nothing is not exactly money; in fact it is anything but money. Therefore I designed the zilchbill to differ from money currency in just about every detail.

          These incorrect details include: the eagle is now a rabbit, running from the dog we trust. The pyramid is inverted. The slogan at its tip, originally meaning ‘he has smiled on our endeavors’, here means ‘coitus smiled’. The bill flips lengthwise rather than on the short axis. On the face side, the presidential face has been replaced by a clown. (An obvious error; for when has America ever had a clown for President?) IT calls itself not a ‘Federal Reverse’ note, nor legal tender, and it was issued by the Untied Snakes of Avarice. Not United States; Untied Snakes. The phrase means ‘the freed serpents of greed’.

          The 0¢ Coin is just as inaccurate. Uncents are made of paper, a material worth even less than the copper-clad zinc that cents are made of. The face side shows a clown’s profile, the motto IN DOG WE TRUST, a date of 0000, and the slogan SECURITY. It flips on the vertical, not the horizontal axis. On the tail side we see the denomination of NO CENTS, The Untied Status of Avarice, and the motto E PLURIBUS NIHIL (out of many, nothing) over a picture the Pennygone. This famous building richly deserves to be honored on the 0¢ coin; it has just the right hollow shape.

          I made all of these deliberate errors for reasons both artistic and legal. Were any humorless person to try to prosecute me for counterfeiting, then I need merely ask the judge what this this a counterfeit of, and what could be bought with it.

          (Nothing. Change machines spit it out with obvious disgust. Yet when I start giving these away in a crowd, everybody wants one.)

          Getting all these details wrong took a lot of thought and work. Few people appreciate more than I do how baroque the dollar bill is. My congratulations to the Treasury people! For all my clowning, I know that they have created a magnificent work of art. Just to parody it took a labor of love.

          I expended all that loving labor, with this result. That says something about the market value of love. It also says something about the market value of honesty; for the $0 Bill is the only honest note in existence. It has precisely face value, no more, no less. What else in the world is just what it says it is?

          Unmoney is Utopian, for it is the most perfect form of money. It’s pure money, freed from being worth anything. Zilchbill and pennygone are money in its natural state. Unmoney is absolute currency; it’s the Platonic ideal of money. Zilchbill and pennygone are spiritual money; they are the ghosts that money leaves behind when it’s gone.

The zilchbill has many uses. I use zilchbills as bookmarks. This fits, for zero is a placeholder.

One zilchbill is worth a million zilchbills; so you can afford to lose a million of them; which makes the zilchbill ideal gambling currency. In fact I bet a whole $0 bill that there is no better amount to bet.

Unmoney has medicinal value. I have seen people state at it, transfixed; it has the same hypnotic power as other bills, but without the rationalization. Therefore zilchbill and pennygone are homeopathic cures for Money Madness.

          There is an educational use for pennygone and zilchbill; with each representing a power of ten, they can denote a scale of values.

          Let the pennygone represent a factor of one-tenth; so one pennygone represents a tenth of a dollar, two represent one hundredth of a dollar, three represent a thousandth, and so on. This way the pennygone serves as a kind of economic microscope. Here is a list:

One pennygone = 10^-1 dollar:

          Parking meter, road toll, snacks.

Two pennygones = 10^-2 dollar:

          Cost of zilchbill printing, smallest change, deposit on a can

Three pennygones = 10^-3 dollar:

          A match, a needle, a gram of granola, a peanut

Four pennygones = 10^-4 dollar:

          A gram of gasoline

Five pennygones = 10^-5 dollar:

          A watt-hour, a video game point

Six pennygones = 10^-6 dollar:

          One byte on a thumb drive, IC transistor

Seven pennygones = 10^-7 dollar:

          Bit on a disk, grain of salt

Eight pennygones = 10^-8 dollar:

          Bit on a CD ROM memory

          Now let the zilchbill represent a factor of ten; so one zilchbill represents tens of dollars, two represent hundreds of dollars, three represent thousands, and so on. This way the zilchbill serves as a kind of economic telescope. Here is a list:

One zilchbill = 10^1 dollars:

          Utensils, appliances, restaurant meal, shows, hardbound books

Two zilchbills = 10^2 dollars:

Week’s groceries, clothes, shoes, TVs, radios, furniture, cross-country flight, stoves, microwaves, refrigerators

Three zilchbills = 10^3 dollars:

Month’s rent, furniture, beds, fur coats, stereo, small car, PC, overseas flight, per capita US national deficit

Four zilchbills = 10^4 dollars:

My annual pay, RVs, small businesses, cheap condos, large cars, per capital US national debt.

Five zilchbills = 10^5 dollars:

Houses, apartment building, racecars, racehorses, mass-spectrographs, CAT scans, transplants, supermini computers

Six zilchbills = 10^6 dollars:

Lear jet, yacht, land, football teams, Cray computers, country clubs, orchestra budget, political campaigns.

Seven zilchbills = 10^7 dollars:

Corporations, TV stations, newspapers, movies, ships, airplanes, small Federal programs (FTC, ACDA)

Eight zilchbills = 10^8 dollars:

Year’s budget for federal judiciary, Head Start, FBI, Civil Aeronautics Board

Nine zilchbills = 10^9 dollars:

Endowments for large universities and foundations, year’s budget for states, labs, NASA, Post Office, typical DOD weapons system.

Ten zilchbills = 10^10 dollars:

Large banks, Food Stamps budget, year’s manufacturing profits, Bell system profits, corporate taxes

Eleven zilchbills = 10^11 dollars:

Year’s pay for all employees, all bills in circulation, sum individual taxes, world gold reserves, US national deficit, interest on US national debt.

Twelve zilchbills = 10^12 dollars:

          Year’s GNP, federal budget, total spending on DOD 1945-1980,

          total spending on DOD 1980-1988, Reagan’s Debt.

Thirteen zilchbills = 10^13 dollars:

          Year’s planetary product