How would an economy function in a world with easy cheap time travel?
April 14, 2009 9:50 PM Subscribe
How would an economy function in a world with easy cheap time travel?
For instance, I think the stock market would cease to function because no one would ever be willing to take any losses. Any loss which exceeded the trivial cost of time travel would be erased and thus no one would ever make any money either because no one would sell stock that was going to go up. It seems like paralysis of the market would be the end result.
How about the value of currency? If banks still gave out interest on savings accounts then everyone would put money into accounts and then travel into the future a few hundred years past their deaths and withdraw the money and travel back in time.
I suppose that you could prevent that though. The only way to transfer money between time periods would be some form of cash (either paper, coin, or electronic cash card if such a thing is ever made legal) or some form of saleable item like gold. Cash from the future would just not be legal tender while cash from the past would legally be required to be burned and replaced every year to keep the supply of old cash low. OTOH, markets for gold would just disappear because it would be worthless. Anyone could get any amount of gold in the future and bring it back to the present.
So, ironically (I think it's irony) gold would become a worse investment than plain cash.
Normal work would still be paid for because time travel doesn't obviate the need to get things done. If you want to build a road then time travel won't build it for you. You'd still need to pay people to do the work (assuming that people don't travel into the future to get robots which they bring back to do the work for them). They would need to be paid for in cash for the reasons stated above.
Object duplicating (using time travel) would need to be made a crime and somehow prevented. For instance, if you took $100 and travelled back in time 24 hours and gave it to yourself then your old self would have $200 during that day. But the serial number on it would match up, so people who accepted money would need to immediately submit that fact to a central location so people could see if someone is attempting to spend money which was already spent. Bills would need to get new serial numbers every time they change hands too in order for that to work.
For the purposes of this question lets assume that paradoxes are somehow minimized. Let's assume we are using time travel rules which allow killing your own parents (or even younger self) without causing a paradox. Without that stipulation this question wouldn't make sense because any change you made would cause you to not time travel to make the decision in the first place and thus a paradox would occur.
I think of this as 2D time travel because there are two dimensions of time in place. In one dimension we have standard time. In the second dimension we have the instantly changing timeline as people travel in time and change things.
So, how else would it change the economy?
How about the value of currency? If banks still gave out interest on savings accounts then everyone would put money into accounts and then travel into the future a few hundred years past their deaths and withdraw the money and travel back in time.
I suppose that you could prevent that though. The only way to transfer money between time periods would be some form of cash (either paper, coin, or electronic cash card if such a thing is ever made legal) or some form of saleable item like gold. Cash from the future would just not be legal tender while cash from the past would legally be required to be burned and replaced every year to keep the supply of old cash low. OTOH, markets for gold would just disappear because it would be worthless. Anyone could get any amount of gold in the future and bring it back to the present.
So, ironically (I think it's irony) gold would become a worse investment than plain cash.
Normal work would still be paid for because time travel doesn't obviate the need to get things done. If you want to build a road then time travel won't build it for you. You'd still need to pay people to do the work (assuming that people don't travel into the future to get robots which they bring back to do the work for them). They would need to be paid for in cash for the reasons stated above.
Object duplicating (using time travel) would need to be made a crime and somehow prevented. For instance, if you took $100 and travelled back in time 24 hours and gave it to yourself then your old self would have $200 during that day. But the serial number on it would match up, so people who accepted money would need to immediately submit that fact to a central location so people could see if someone is attempting to spend money which was already spent. Bills would need to get new serial numbers every time they change hands too in order for that to work.
For the purposes of this question lets assume that paradoxes are somehow minimized. Let's assume we are using time travel rules which allow killing your own parents (or even younger self) without causing a paradox. Without that stipulation this question wouldn't make sense because any change you made would cause you to not time travel to make the decision in the first place and thus a paradox would occur.
I think of this as 2D time travel because there are two dimensions of time in place. In one dimension we have standard time. In the second dimension we have the instantly changing timeline as people travel in time and change things.
So, how else would it change the economy?
This post was deleted for the following reason: This could fly on BBQ but it's straight up hypotheticalfilter over here. -- cortex
Sports betting in Vegas would go bust. Just ask McFly.
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 10:05 PM on April 14, 2009
posted by Bernt Pancreas at 10:05 PM on April 14, 2009
I don't know, Chuck Berry seems to have done ok
posted by markjamesmurphy at 10:21 PM on April 14, 2009
posted by markjamesmurphy at 10:21 PM on April 14, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:54 PM on April 14, 2009