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What if money expired?

The only way I can make sense of it is if it's a problem of hoarding cash.

Assuming that it's better to have economic activity than not, your economy might falter if too many people are hoarding too much cash. You want them to cut open their mattresses, pull out fat stacks of bills, and go buy stuff. Putting an expiration date on cash would incentivize people to not hoard cash.

But that doesn't seem to be the problem Our Hero was trying to solve. In fact, it's not clear to me that he was trying to solve any problem at all, except one in his imagination:
More than a century ago, a wild-eyed, vegetarian, free love-promoting German entrepreneur and self-taught economist named Silvio Gesell proposed a radical reformation of the monetary system as we know it. He wanted to make money that decays over time. Our present money, he explained, is an insufficient means of exchange. A man with a pocketful of money does not possess equivalent wealth as a man with a sack of produce, even if the market agrees the produce is worth the money.

“Only money that goes out of date like a newspaper, rots like potatoes, rusts like iron, evaporates like ether,” Gesell wrote in his seminal work, “The Natural Economic Order,” published in 1915, “is capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of potatoes, newspapers, iron and ether.”

[From the article linked in the OP.]​
It seems like this guy just had some very heterodox and weird ideas about wealth and value, and wanted expiring money for doctrinaire aesthetic reasons. Probably "self-taught economist" had something to do with it.
 
Duplicate. ETA: I have this spot anyway, might as well use it (before it expires!).

Here's where the crackpottery is cemented, for me: "“Only money that goes out of date like a newspaper, rots like potatoes, rusts like iron, evaporates like ether [...] is capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of potatoes, newspapers, iron and ether.”

This goes back to my principle of things that we'd invent if we didn't have them. By 1915, it should have been abundantly clear to even the most self-taught economist that persistent money was not only capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of perishable goods, but it had passed that test with flying colors many times over. His book was rotten before the manuscript even made it to the publisher.
 
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inflation is perishable money.

Yeah, arrived to late to post this, and I can see that there are a few of you that get this.

Money stuffed in a mattress becomes worthless.

You have to do something with money to protect it. (i.e. invest it in something).

While there was a lot of ******** in "Rich Dad, Poor Dad." there was an important message, that everyone should be taught as a child:

"If you spend all your money on drugs, alcohol, tobacco, entertainment etc. you'll never own anything. If you start investing in assets from your first pay cheque, you'll retire comfortably and early."

Went to High School with a guy with that philosophy on board.

He retired at 40, with a beautiful home, family etc. (And many income streams from his assets).

Makes me look like an idiot for having to work until I was 60.
 
Inflation is pernicious. We can't avoid it completely, but we like it to be low enough that we can save up significant chunks of capital without losing too much of its value along the way. Some people aren't in a position to buy large investments right off the bat. But they might well be in a position to just keep putting money in a savings account, month after month, until they can make a payment on a starter home, or at least come up with first and last month's rent, and move into a better apartment. Small amounts of inflation won't set them back noticeably. Any substantive "money expiration" policy would permanently deny them that option.

Anyway, I'm convinced that the guy cited in the OP was a deranged crackpot, and the whole reason he wanted expiring money is because the idea of purchasing a perishable good with a durable abstraction offended his sensibilities.
 
Inflation and demurrage serve a similar purpose: to discourage hoarding of money (but neither will prevent the wealthy from simply moving their money into non-perishable stores of value). The main problem with inflation is that it devalues debts so it discourages repayment of those debts - or, at least, makes higher interest rates necessary. Demurrage has the opposite effect. It encourages debtors to repay their debts rather than hold on to a diminishing asset.

Of course, it must be remembered that Silvio Gesell coined his theories on demurrage at a time when the world was pretty much on a gold standard and money was not naturally subject to inflation. Or rather, money went through inflationary/deflationary cycles as there was only a (relatively) fixed amount of gold based currency available to service credit (debt - which also functions as money).

Since the 1930's the world has been pretty much on a fiat standard. We no longer have deflationary periods because we can always print more money to service more debt.

Incidentally, this is not a new discussion: Demurrage - is it an answer?
 
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The proposal is that one must pay in a certain interest to keep money fresh, but I did not in my cursory reading see to whom that interest would be paid. If I have to pay to keep my hundred dollar bill worth a hundred dollars, someone else is getting it.
The currency issuer (government) would get this demurrage (interest). They are the ones who would be selling the stamps to keep the currency fresh or collecting the demurrage fees from bank accounts. Of course, since they can just print new money when necessary, it wouldn't matter if the demurrage disappeared down a black hole.

Unless rotting money is renewed at the moment of each transaction, which would be a huge bureaucratic nightmare, it will become nearly worthless because the recipient of the money will be getting money that has already started going bad, with an ever-shortening period within which it can be used.
Why is the presumption that the money would deteriorate by a fixed amount every month (until it is zero)?

Obviously, it has to deteriorate by a fixed percentage. If the demurrage rate is 1% per month then you would have to affix a 1c stamp on each dollar bill every month to keep it fresh (or 5c stamp on each $5 note etc). The 1% charge would be applied to the balance in your bank account also. So if you had $100 in your account at the end of the month then the charge would be $1. The following month, the charge would be 99c if you just left the money there. If you had $7,688 in you bank account then the charge would be $76.88 leaving you with $7,611.12. If you left the money there, the following month the charge would be $76.11 leaving you with a balance of $7,535.01.

So the money never actually expires. It just diminishes in value.
 
The currency issuer (government) would get this demurrage (interest). They are the ones who would be selling the stamps to keep the currency fresh or collecting the demurrage fees from bank accounts. Of course, since they can just print new money when necessary, it wouldn't matter if the demurrage disappeared down a black hole.

Why is the presumption that the money would deteriorate by a fixed amount every month (until it is zero)?

Obviously, it has to deteriorate by a fixed percentage. If the demurrage rate is 1% per month then you would have to affix a 1c stamp on each dollar bill every month to keep it fresh (or 5c stamp on each $5 note etc). The 1% charge would be applied to the balance in your bank account also. So if you had $100 in your account at the end of the month then the charge would be $1. The following month, the charge would be 99c if you just left the money there. If you had $7,688 in you bank account then the charge would be $76.88 leaving you with $7,611.12. If you left the money there, the following month the charge would be $76.11 leaving you with a balance of $7,535.01.

So the money never actually expires. It just diminishes in value.
Indeed it would not have to be, and a percentage rate makes more sense, but the article cites a system in which the money is depleted after a year.
 
it's fascinating the degree to which people are trying to argue that the people who use money the least would the ones most affected if it decayed somehow.
The reason why people in high-inflation countries get paid in shorter intervals is exactly to minimize the time you have to hold onto money until you can spend it for what you need.
 
Indeed it would not have to be, and a percentage rate makes more sense, but the article cites a system in which the money is depleted after a year.
Er,
To correct these economic and social ills, Gesell recommended we change the nature of money so it better reflects the goods for which it is exchanged. “We must make money worse as a commodity if we wish to make it better as a medium of exchange,” he wrote.

To achieve this, he invented a form of expiring money called Freigeld, or Free Money. (Free because it would be freed from hoarding and interest.) The theory worked like this: A $100 bill of Freigeld would have 52 dated boxes on the back, where the holder must affix a 10-cent stamp every week for the bill to still be worth $100. If you kept the bill for an entire year, you would have to affix 52 stamps to the back of it — at a cost of $5.20 — for the bill to still be worth $100. Thus, the bill would depreciate 5.2% annually at the expense of its holder(s). (The value of and rate at which to apply the stamps could be fine-tuned if necessary.)

In the US the mean average annual inflation rate from 1913 to today is 3.29%, and is currently at 4.6%. So in practice money is doing what Gesell suggested all by itself (despite the Fed trying to keep it down to 2%).
 
Indeed it would not have to be, and a percentage rate makes more sense, but the article cites a system in which the money is depleted after a year.
Although David Andolfatto recently discussed pandemic checks with an expiration date, the article is mainly about Silvio Gesell's idea:
To achieve this, he invented a form of expiring money called Freigeld, or Free Money. (Free because it would be freed from hoarding and interest.) The theory worked like this: A $100 bill of Freigeld would have 52 dated boxes on the back, where the holder must affix a 10-cent stamp every week for the bill to still be worth $100. If you kept the bill for an entire year, you would have to affix 52 stamps to the back of it — at a cost of $5.20 — for the bill to still be worth $100. Thus, the bill would depreciate 5.2% annually at the expense of its holder(s). (The value of and rate at which to apply the stamps could be fine-tuned if necessary.)​
 
Hmmm, ninja'd.

In the US the mean average annual inflation rate from 1913 to today is 3.29%, and is currently at 4.6%. So in practice money is doing what Gesell suggested all by itself (despite the Fed trying to keep it down to 2%).
As I pointed out up thread, the main difference (other than that inflation is a silent currency devaluer) is that an inflationary currency disincentivises the repayment of debts - unless the interest rate is sufficiently high. OTOH a currency that was subjected to demurrage would encourage debt repayments - even if interest was minimal and thus, circulate more rapidly.
 
it's fascinating the degree to which people are trying to argue that the people who use money the least would the ones most affected if it decayed somehow.

No. People who have the least amount of money to save will be the most affected, if their meagre savings decayed before they'd saved up enough to invest in something that will make their lives better.

Say I'm setting aside $1,000 each month for contingencies. I can buy a $1,0000 government bond each month instead. Not ideal, but I can probably get by with credit and regular paychecks for a few days while I convert the bonds back into money if I need it.

If I have a small amount of cash on hand, I'm pretty much boned. I'm saving $10 a month, and in ten months I'll have enough money saved to buy one bond at $1,000. Unless my money's expiring along the way. Then I end up paying a penalty, and that $1,000 bond costs me more than $1,000. I keep this up, and pretty soon I'll be living hand-to-mouth, the very risk my savings was supposed to pull me away from.

It's also fascinating the degree to which you're missing the fact that the people who use money the most use very little cash at all, and hoard even less of it.

Poor people hoard cash if they can, because they don't have enough of it to convert it into some more profitable investment. An expiring cash policy will mostly affect people who are hoarding cash. I.e., poor people and drug dealers. ETA: And the literal Mister Moneybags who literally keeps all his vast wealth in literal bags of literal money, and exists only in your imagination.

ETAA: It's also fascinating the way your claim has been rebutted more than once already, and instead of addressing the rebuttals you try a fringe reset instead.
 
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To achieve this, he invented a form of expiring money called Freigeld, or Free Money. (Free because it would be freed from hoarding and interest.)​
Guess I missed this yesterday. An early twentieth-century Austrian, concerned about lenders charging interest on loans? Yeah, I'm starting to get a better picture of this idea now.
 
Hmmm, ninja'd.


As I pointed out up thread, the main difference (other than that inflation is a silent currency devaluer) is that an inflationary currency disincentivises the repayment of debts - unless the interest rate is sufficiently high. OTOH a currency that was subjected to demurrage would encourage debt repayments - even if interest was minimal and thus, circulate more rapidly.

I'm not exactly following you here. I'm in a situation where my mortgage rate is fixed and very small. So, I'm not paying the loan down more than I'm required to. So what. That currency is still circulating, I'm doing other things with it. It doesn't matter what. If I hold it in a savings account or CD the bank can loan it out. If I'm spending it, thats going to the economy. If I hold treasuries or muni bonds that means the government can spend more. Only if I'm hoarding paper bills in a box under my bed am I taking it out of circulation. The amount of people that do that these days is very very small.

ETA: hoarding cash is a problem for an economy, and by that I mean literally holding paper or coins in a safe or a box. We've already solved that problem in the USA anyways, by making bank accounts risk free.
 
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No. People who have the least amount of money to save will be the most affected, if their meagre savings decayed before they'd saved up enough to invest in something that will make their lives better.
They are disadvantaged by inflation in exactly the same way. Inflation is even worse for them because prices tend to rise before wages do.

People living from pay check to pay check are the least disadvantaged by demurrage because they don't have surplus cash that "rots" but they can't escape price rises due to inflation.

ETAA: It's also fascinating the way your claim has been rebutted more than once already, and instead of addressing the rebuttals you try a fringe reset instead.
:confused: What the **** are you going on about?

Guess I missed this yesterday. An early twentieth-century Austrian, concerned about lenders charging interest on loans? Yeah, I'm starting to get a better picture of this idea now.
Now you are just doubling down on the stupid. Gesell wasn't a typical Austrian economist (and if you are being anti-semetic I don't know if he was Jewish either).
 
I'm not exactly following you here. I'm in a situation where my mortgage rate is fixed and very small. So, I'm not paying the loan down more than I'm required to.
That is precisely the effect that inflation has. OTOH it would still be a good idea to pay down credit cards because the interest on them far outstrips inflation.

Of course, we no longer live in an economy that is dominated by a gold standard and few people have checking accounts so maybe demurrage is a solution to a problem that no longer exists. It is still worth exploring whether it is better to have inflation or demurrage however.
 
No. People who have the least amount of money to save will be the most affected, if their meagre savings decayed before they'd saved up enough to invest in something that will make their lives better.

Say I'm setting aside $1,000 each month for contingencies. I can buy a $1,0000 government bond each month instead. Not ideal, but I can probably get by with credit and regular paychecks for a few days while I convert the bonds back into money if I need it.

If I have a small amount of cash on hand, I'm pretty much boned. I'm saving $10 a month, and in ten months I'll have enough money saved to buy one bond at $1,000. Unless my money's expiring along the way. Then I end up paying a penalty, and that $1,000 bond costs me more than $1,000. I keep this up, and pretty soon I'll be living hand-to-mouth, the very risk my savings was supposed to pull me away from.

It's also fascinating the degree to which you're missing the fact that the people who use money the most use very little cash at all, and hoard even less of it.

Poor people hoard cash if they can, because they don't have enough of it to convert it into some more profitable investment. An expiring cash policy will mostly affect people who are hoarding cash. I.e., poor people and drug dealers. ETA: And the literal Mister Moneybags who literally keeps all his vast wealth in literal bags of literal money, and exists only in your imagination.

ETAA: It's also fascinating the way your claim has been rebutted more than once already, and instead of addressing the rebuttals you try a fringe reset instead.

you are wrong.

poor people hoard money, because it's cheaper than banking, assuming they can get access to it.
Not because they want to - people used to pay into cooperative society funds when they had liquidity to fight the effects of inflation.
But those have been stamped out.

But I agree that that Inflation doesn't not hurt the wealthy - they can buy inflation-resistant assets.
Note that I never said I was in favor of "expiring money".

If you want to reduce inequality, you either tax wealth or progressively tax purchases.
Or you burn the mansions - it's really up to the super-rich how they want to do it.
 
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Completely idiotic and mostly seems to be a way for the government to steal from the poor. Listen to this part:

To achieve this, he invented a form of expiring money called Freigeld, or Free Money. (Free because it would be freed from hoarding and interest.) The theory worked like this: A $100 bill of Freigeld would have 52 dated boxes on the back, where the holder must affix a 10-cent stamp every week for the bill to still be worth $100. If you kept the bill for an entire year, you would have to affix 52 stamps to the back of it — at a cost of $5.20 — for the bill to still be worth $100. Thus, the bill would depreciate 5.2% annually at the expense of its holder(s). (The value of and rate at which to apply the stamps could be fine-tuned if necessary.)

This system would work the opposite way ours does today, where money held over time increases in value as it gathers interest.

This means everybody would have to go down to the bank with their cash every week and buy a new stamp. Wouldn't that be delightful?

And of course, the vast majority of money and wealth in this country is not held in cash, but in various types of accounts, real estate, stocks and bonds, collectibles, etc. Are they going to see their money dwindle as well? How exactly would you do that--take the home away from a family after 20 years?

ETA: Basically, yes:

This new “natural economic order” would be accompanied by a reformation of land ownership — Free Land — whereby land was no longer privately owned. Current landowners would be compensated by the government in land bonds over 20 years. Then they would pay rent to the government, which, Gesell imagined, would be used for government expenses and to create annuities for mothers to help women achieve economic independence from men and be free to leave a relationship if they wanted.
 
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This means everybody would have to go down to the bank with their cash every week and buy a new stamp. Wouldn't that be delightful?
You are a silly boy. People would just buy a book of stamps and put them on the currency at home. You could even use the same stamps that the post office already prints. The poor would have minimal cash so they wouldn't have to buy many stamps.

And of course, the vast majority of money and wealth in this country is not held in cash, but in various types of accounts, real estate, stocks and bonds, collectibles, etc. Are they going to see their money dwindle as well? How exactly would you do that--take the home away from a family after 20 years?
For checkable deposits, the full demurrage would probably apply. For other types of savings accounts, the bank may absorb some or all of the demurrage (in lieu of paying interest). As for other types of investments, they are not cash assets so they are not subject demurrage (or inflation - theoretically).

Incidentally, land is already subject to rates and taxes and if you don't pay them, you can indeed lose the property so nothing would change.
 
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You are a silly boy. People would just buy a book of stamps and put them on the currency at home. You could even use the same stamps that the post office already prints. The poor would have minimal cash so they wouldn't have to buy many stamps.


For checkable deposits, the full demurrage would probably apply. For other types of savings accounts, the bank may absorb some or all of the demurrage (in lieu of paying interest). As for other types of investments, they are not cash assets so they are not subject demurrage (or inflation - theoretically).

Incidentally, land is already subject to rates and taxes and if you don't pay them, you can indeed lose the property so nothing would change.
So if you buy the stamps in advance, are you not paying in advance for a thing that might not happen? I presume you would not have to buy the full number at once, but if you're not going to go often to the stamp source, are you not basically just borrowing from the government?

If you buy too many stamps and have them left over, have you just paid out for nothing, or can you get a refund? If the latter, are not the stamps themselves a form of undemurred cash?

I still have a feeling that the bureaucratic hassle here might prove daunting. Of course we can presume that non-paper money would disappear, or somehow be exempt. But paper money would also have to be distinguished by date of issue. How would cash work? Who prints it? Who is tasked with inspecting every bill that is spent at every venue where cash is spent, to determine if its stamps are up to date?

I realize we're moving into a cash-free economy, but it hasn't all happened yet, and I'm not convinced it would be a well accepted move.
 
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You are a silly boy. People would just buy a book of stamps and put them on the currency at home. You could even use the same stamps that the post office already prints.

And we're going to fit 52 of those things on a hundred-dollar bill? How big are the bills in your fantasy?
 
Wouldn't the requirement of stamps to be applied to money make the stamps also money? It seems to me you'd just be trading a system with one currency into a system with two half-currencies that have to be used together.
 
What happens when you get to the end of the year, and you've filled in all 52 stamps? Does the fully-stamped $100 retain its full value in perpetuity from that moment? Does the bill's value drop to zero, even though you've paid the depreciation? Does the bill's value drop to $94.80? Does the bill's value just drop at the normal rate, month over month, with no alternative?
 
What happens when you get to the end of the year, and you've filled in all 52 stamps? Does the fully-stamped $100 retain its full value in perpetuity from that moment? Does the bill's value drop to zero, even though you've paid the depreciation? Does the bill's value drop to $94.80? Does the bill's value just drop at the normal rate, month over month, with no alternative?
Good point, at least from the administrative point of view. If we must keep stamping the bill forever, it's going to get pretty bulky. Or must we, at the end of some period, trade it in on a new one? If the bill stabilizes, then essentially you're paying a purchase charge for an investment. If not, then it would appear you're in for some bureaucratic complexity that might turn around and bite you even if the underlying idea has merit. It would not be the first idea that's good in theory but impractical to implement.
 
This whole stamp and paper bill thing seems delightfully early 20th century. Plus I see a new market for fake stamps, and bills for that matter. A cashier will probably be focusing on the stamps and miss an obvious counterfeit actual note. Plus wouldn't stamps fall off if wet or sweaty?

So much easier to do this all digitally, reverting to bank cards. Create a program that depreciates deposits in the value of the "stamps" from the date of deposit. Your deposits would lose value in the amount of the stamps by the end of the year. Traditional cash users would prefer the effortless simplicity and take us more quickly to the Biblical cashless society and the Mark/QR code of the Beast. It's a brave new Apocalyptic world
 
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I'm no economist (but then neither was the loon who came up with this nonsense), but it seems to me that this is a very silly idea that achieves, through unnecessarily complicated means, absolutely bugger all by way of a benefit to anyone (except printers of stamps).
 
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So if you buy the stamps in advance, are you not paying in advance for a thing that might not happen? I presume you would not have to buy the full number at once, but if you're not going to go often to the stamp source, are you not basically just borrowing from the government?

If you buy too many stamps and have them left over, have you just paid out for nothing, or can you get a refund? If the latter, are not the stamps themselves a form of undemurred cash?

I still have a feeling that the bureaucratic hassle here might prove daunting. Of course we can presume that non-paper money would disappear, or somehow be exempt. But paper money would also have to be distinguished by date of issue. How would cash work? Who prints it? Who is tasked with inspecting every bill that is spent at every venue where cash is spent, to determine if its stamps are up to date?

I realize we're moving into a cash-free economy, but it hasn't all happened yet, and I'm not convinced it would be a well accepted move.
I can't believe that you are asking such ignorant questions. Is snail mail such an old fashioned concept that nobody knows how it works any more? I can remember when my mother paid her bills by check. She would regularly buy a sheet of stamps and a box of envelopes so that she could mail her payments. Stamps don't expire. Is this such a foreign concept?

When a currency note is full, it is exchanged for a new one. This is not some pie in the sky theory. It was actually put to use in the Austrian town of Worgl in the 1930s. (there you put a stamp on monthly). It worked spectacularly well - until the Austrian central bank shut it down. Of course, this during the gold standard days. Results today would probably not be any where near so dramatic.
https://tontinecoffeehouse.com/2020/06/15/silvio-gesell-and-the-worgl-experiment/
 
I can't believe that you are asking such ignorant questions. Is snail mail such an old fashioned concept that nobody knows how it works any more? I can remember when my mother paid her bills by check. She would regularly buy a sheet of stamps and a box of envelopes so that she could mail her payments. Stamps don't expire. Is this such a foreign concept?

When a currency note is full, it is exchanged for a new one. This is not some pie in the sky theory. It was actually put to use in the Austrian town of Worgl in the 1930s. (there you put a stamp on monthly). It worked spectacularly well - until the Austrian central bank shut it down. Of course, this during the gold standard days. Results today would probably not be any where near so dramatic.
https://tontinecoffeehouse.com/2020/06/15/silvio-gesell-and-the-worgl-experiment/

It worked spectacularly well, you say? What, in your opinion, was the most spectacular measure of its success?
 
So if you buy the stamps in advance, are you not paying in advance for a thing that might not happen? I presume you would not have to buy the full number at once, but if you're not going to go often to the stamp source, are you not basically just borrowing from the government?

If you buy too many stamps and have them left over, have you just paid out for nothing, or can you get a refund? If the latter, are not the stamps themselves a form of undemurred cash?

I still have a feeling that the bureaucratic hassle here might prove daunting. Of course we can presume that non-paper money would disappear, or somehow be exempt. But paper money would also have to be distinguished by date of issue. How would cash work? Who prints it? Who is tasked with inspecting every bill that is spent at every venue where cash is spent, to determine if its stamps are up to date?

I realize we're moving into a cash-free economy, but it hasn't all happened yet, and I'm not convinced it would be a well accepted move.

When I worked for a small firm, one of my tasks was to buy 'tax stamps' monthly, to past into two 'books' one was for the my tax return and the other was for my record that the tax had been paid.

This was a form of income tax for employers with very few employees (I was one of three, the other members of the organisation were principals/owners).

NB. It was a real pain and we could be audited at any time to make sure that we were complying, I'd have hated to have to do that for every piece of cash that we accepted.
 
I can't believe that you are asking such ignorant questions. Is snail mail such an old fashioned concept that nobody knows how it works any more? I can remember when my mother paid her bills by check. She would regularly buy a sheet of stamps and a box of envelopes so that she could mail her payments. Stamps don't expire. Is this such a foreign concept?

When a currency note is full, it is exchanged for a new one. This is not some pie in the sky theory. It was actually put to use in the Austrian town of Worgl in the 1930s. (there you put a stamp on monthly). It worked spectacularly well - until the Austrian central bank shut it down. Of course, this during the gold standard days. Results today would probably not be any where near so dramatic.
https://tontinecoffeehouse.com/2020/06/15/silvio-gesell-and-the-worgl-experiment/

Stamps do kinda/sorta expire.

During my life postage costs have increased rather significantly, so a stamp you buy today, typically isn't sufficient to post a letter next year.

Costs $1.20 today to send a standard letter, when I was a kid, it was 5c (IIRC).

I did find a way around that.

Australia Post used to sell 'postage paid' envelopes, that didn't have a numerical value, just an empty rectangle that stated 'postage paid'.

Unfortunately they realised that was an end-run around the rate hikes...
 
I can't believe that you are asking such ignorant questions. Is snail mail such an old fashioned concept that nobody knows how it works any more? I can remember when my mother paid her bills by check. She would regularly buy a sheet of stamps and a box of envelopes so that she could mail her payments. Stamps don't expire. Is this such a foreign concept?

When a currency note is full, it is exchanged for a new one. This is not some pie in the sky theory. It was actually put to use in the Austrian town of Worgl in the 1930s. (there you put a stamp on monthly). It worked spectacularly well - until the Austrian central bank shut it down. Of course, this during the gold standard days. Results today would probably not be any where near so dramatic.
https://tontinecoffeehouse.com/2020/06/15/silvio-gesell-and-the-worgl-experiment/

My mistake in language. I meant that the stampings on the bills would expire, not the stamps. If currency is to be used in transactions, then the person receiving the currency must have some way to tell that the currency in question is up to date, presumably calculating from a printed issuance date what stamps are needed on it. If the calculation deems that the stampings are not up to date, the recipient would have to calculate what the discounted value of the cash is, and recalculate the purchase accordingly. This would undoubtedly work all right for purchase on account, but for physical cash it seems problematic. I would not look forward to grocery checkout lines in that future.

Of course all that would go away if we just do away with cash, but I suspect there's a reason why credit purchases cost businesses money, enough that some add surcharges and specify minimum purchase amounts.

It might be that the advantages of some such system would outweigh the disadvantages, but the disadvantages are not nothing at all. The scheme envisioned would appear to require a considerable amount of printing, which would have to be secure, and given the large amount of cash in circulation would have to be efficiently and readily distributed all the time, and would require a pretty substantial amount of administration. It would, one presumes, make certain forms of transactions nearly impossible if they involve automated acceptance or distribution of cash.

As I think I and some others suggested, in the system that seems to be envisioned, it would appear that stamps themselves would become a substitute currency, since they do not expire. One poster above notes that they are also not inflation proof, but in the United States they are not only monetized but inflation proof in recent years. We now purchase "forever" stamps whose postal value remains whatever the current purchase price of new stamps is. This is an intentional runaround of inflation. The Postal Service presumes that the float they receive for advance sale of stamps is a good tradeoff, given that most people don't hoard that many stamps for that long anyway. Of course if the entire monetary system were to change, they could presumably do away with "forever" stamps any time, but at least for now, to the extent that postal rates track inflation, the stamps do too.
 
It worked spectacularly well, you say? What, in your opinion, was the most spectacular measure of its success?
Looking at the article cited, I think its success was very dependent on its local nature. The currency not only expired, but was convertible to Schillings only on payment of a tax to the town. What this meant was that full value of the currency was only present in the town where that currency was current. It's noted that some other towns were on the way to setting up their own taxed currencies when the whole thing ended. If they had done so, then either those from Worgl would have had to pay the tax in Worgl to shop in the other towns, or the whole scheme would fall apart as the new currency would be negotiable in other towns without paying the conversion tax.

The expiration of the money might still work, but the tax would not.

It does look as if it worked very well for the town itself, at least for a while, because it was an incentive for citizens to prepay property taxes and the like before their money went cold. I suspect this would not have been so sustainable once all the arrears were paid, and taxes caught up with. It would favor promptness but have little other benefit to the town, and none to the taxpayers.
 
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Stamps do kinda/sorta expire.

During my life postage costs have increased rather significantly, so a stamp you buy today, typically isn't sufficient to post a letter next year.

Costs $1.20 today to send a standard letter, when I was a kid, it was 5c (IIRC).

I did find a way around that.

Australia Post used to sell 'postage paid' envelopes, that didn't have a numerical value, just an empty rectangle that stated 'postage paid'.

Unfortunately they realised that was an end-run around the rate hikes...
I think you mean depreciate in value due to inflation (they still don't actually expire). This wouldn't be a consideration if you were using them to pay demurrage on currency notes.
 
If currency is to be used in transactions, then the person receiving the currency must have some way to tell that the currency in question is up to date
Sure, they would be able to tell at a glance if the note had the correct number of stamps on it (no need to complicate this). If the note was deficient then the proprietor would not accept it (or, if they thought they were savvy, they would offer to place the necessary stamps on the note and charge a premium for doing so).

Of course all that would go away if we just do away with cash, but I suspect there's a reason why credit purchases cost businesses money, enough that some add surcharges and specify minimum purchase amounts.
Eletcronic payments are displacing cash at most establishments. It is just more convenient. Simply wave your card (or mobile phone) at the EFTPOS terminal and the payment is done. I don't know how many notes you think the average person would be carrying at any one time but I doubt that it would be much more than what you could count with one hand.

Looking at the article cited, I think its success was very dependent on its local nature. < remainder snipped for brevity >
Various regions in the US replicated the Worgl experiment in the 1930s and those that did it properly also had success (and also ran into trouble with the US treasury).

In fact, it there was a proposal to apply demurrage nationally. As history shows, Roosevelt went down a different path. He took the US off the gold standard and adopted a policy of perpetual inflation.

As I said upthread, this is not a new discussion.
 
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