Caves of Qud uses water as currency. I think it explains this by making all of its characters weirdo radiation freakazoids that can teleport and fly around and stuff.
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resting_parrot@sh.itjust.works 14 hours agoThe problem with using water as currency is that it is heavy. It is not reasonable to carry around large amounts. You’ll need some kind of representational currency.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 14 hours ago
yep that’s exactly what i think would make sense in the real world. basically a paper currency backed by real water. one dollar represents 1 kg of water.
it’s like the gold standard, just not backed by gold but by water.
Garbagio@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
Kinda fucked up that when coming up with a SciFi dystopia the worst we can think of is the Nestlé-buck.
dzsimbo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
It is telling, isn’t it?
To pivot I can also imagine information and energy scarcity, be it real or artificial.
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
That works until someone starts manipulating the market by redeeming their dollars for water, selling the water on the market, getting dollars again, redeeming for more water and continuously profiting from the endless cycle.
This is actually why the gold standard ended. Money and real world materials will fluctuate in value and are sold on different markets. Having money pegged to a real world material means someone can take advantage of a treasury by manipulating those markets. This was happening with the US dollar, then the Nixon shock happened and no more gold standard.
Why would people in the future use a currency system that’s similar to one that we used in the past and stopped using because it was fundamentally flawed and vulnerable to manipulation? I suppose if it’s set in a small community where there isn’t anyone that would work out how to manipulate the currency it might work. But if there were bad actors, you’d expect a water based currency system to be manipulated same as the gold based system was before the Nixon shock.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
“Bury your water, kids.”