In 1890, William Jennings Bryan pontificated his way into historical relevance by proposing a monetary standard based on silver. Experts roundly condemned Bryan’s choice in precious metal as ridiculous, and further derided his selection of pocket-watches. “Brings out his stomach roll,” said one oft-quoted but rarely cited Yale scholar. Eighty years later, Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon decided he’d had it with gold, and promptly sent the treasury off into the vaguely mystical land of arbitrary value. Things seemed okay for a while. The 1980’s happened: Thomas Dolby was generated. And then, in September of 2008, the world economy collectively looked down and realized they were standing on a psychologically based currency, and promptly freaked the fuck out. Millions of people lost their jobs, hyper-inflated sectors of the economy burst, and numerous CEO’s had vigorous night sweats, forcing them to Wash Their Own Sheets. It was a nightmare.

Circa Thanksgiving 2009, the economy is starting to show signs of life, although is still pretty severely traumatized, and responds to any kind of direct question with a grunt and an averted eye. After a crash like that, the economy is having an identity crisis. The truth is, the economy hasn’t really found itself. After all, what the hell is it based on? Goods and services? But what are ‘services’ when whole swaths of the U.S. population make a living by watching YouTube videos and bitching about upper management?
Relax: we’re not going to get into a big heated argument about the perils of farming out our manufacturing sector to other countries, nor are we going to pound the tired drum of the dwindling returns of short-sighted management and overly aggressive unionization. The world needs to start collectively thinking about what ‘value’ is, and start making an economy based on that. Forget the dollar, or the euro, or even a chunk of glowing meteorite: we are now living in an abstract century, and as such must derive an abstractly based currency to match.

This, of course, is why I’m a writer, and not an economist. I have no idea how one goes about deriving an abstractly-based currency. I have a notion that it probably involves, like, a whole weekend, and also an open and honest evaluation of how different sectors of the economy relate in a de facto setting. I’ll buy Thomas Friedman and Malcolm Gladwell a beer each, if everybody else will agree that we at least need to start re-thinking how to define value.