Currency in a semi-post apocalyptic cyberpunk world

Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by Meteor, Jul 12, 2016.

  1. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    Minor WIP, might clean it up and try it for real one day.
     
  2. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    I had/have this issue with my cuurent WIP (after the wave) as well - which is set 50 or so years after a global epidemic, I wrestled a lot with what people would use as currency within in and between the societal groups ... i even went off on a tangent where the main group didnt use money but had a everyone works everyone consumes system

    then I decided that the whole thing was a red herring and not important to the story so I reverted to the main group in the story just using coins between themselves and trading in commodities between groups e.g food, bullets, weapons, slaves .
     
  3. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    I was reading old posts and remembered this. If you want a taste of that novel, check out my blog posts titled: CyberSEXMurder. Warning: Extreme language, sensuality, and violence
     
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  4. Jun

    Jun Member

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    Maybe not completely relevant but what I will say perhaps will be food for thought. By the way, I'm not an expert economist so I may be explaining this rather poorly but... here I go.

    So North Korean currency holds nearly no value in the international community right now, precisely because the country is so isolated. It imports and exports very little (I think they do a LOT of undergound stuff like drug trafficking but I'm only counting "legitimate" transactions here) therefore the NK currency holds no value outside of NK. So when NK government and even people in NK actually often use US dollars and Euros in order to do business with elements outside of the country. But sometimes NK issues government bonds. Now these bonds retain about 10-20% - I think - value of what they are actually worth. This raises the question, how? NK produces nothing worth buying with NK bonds, essentially rendering them useless, just like the NK currency. The answer is in South Korea ironically. So when/if the two Koreas reunite as a single nation, IF the reunification occurs under South Korean leadership, by claiming all territories and assets of former North Korea, South Korea will also resume the responsibility of paying out any national debt (bonds in this case) NK once had. This is particularly visible during certain events. Whenever there is a conflict on the border between North and South Koreas, the North Korean bond prices shoot up to like 70% of what it's worth.
    This turned out longer than I meant it to... I guess in the end basically what I'm saying is when something is being used as a currency (like bonds) it usually holds some sort of value, if not directly. Might be interesting to think about in your story, especially with all those corporations and governments wrestling for control of the markets.
     
  5. big soft moose

    big soft moose An Admoostrator Admin Staff Supporter Contributor Community Volunteer

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    the other reasons the bonds have some value are a) interest - in order to borrow money from their investors countries with junk credit ratings have to pay way more interest on their bonds that do well developed economies, ane because its paid outwith NK it has to be paid in dollars/euros/sterling , and b) the market end of the day any bond is worth what people will pay and due in part to (a) there is still a market for these bonds.

    applied to this situation any corporations who are struggling would need to offer a higher dividend on their bonds, giving them an inherent value ... if you made them bearer bonds they could essentially be used like cash (at the end of the day paper money is only a promisory note to pay the bearer a certain ammount of gold)
     

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