Time and money. Two things that we would probably all agree we don’t have enough of, right? But what is the relationship between the two?  Can we just say, “Time is money,” and leave it at that? No, that wouldn’t make for much of a blog. Pink Floyd had a song called Time and another called Money, the latter being mostly in 7/4 time, which is a very unusual time signature, and I’m sure they made a lot of money on both. But I’d like to examine both, and perhaps question the logic behind some very basic assumptions. After all, it’s never satisfactory to leave well enough alone, is it?

There have been proposals floated for many years now that the USA should get rid of the one cent coin. It’s value in transactions is so inconsequential that many business keep a penny jar at the register, just to avoid having to ask customers for a couple of cents, or provide them back in change. Do we even bend down to pick up pennies any more? Even penny candy must cost, what, a dime or more? The US Mint would tell you that it costs more than a penny to make a penny, so that can’t be very efficient. In the 1800’s, this country had two cent coins and three cent coins, both of which were discontinued before the end of that century. There was also a half cent coin, which lasted from 1793 to 1857. All of those have been discontinued, so why not do the same with the current one cent coin? I suspect it’s because doing so might feel like surrendering to inflation. So I have another idea …

Let’s get rid of the dime. And while we’re at it, let’s ditch the $10 bill as well. Would it really be that much of an inconvenience to carry two nickels instead of a dime, or two $5 notes instead of a $10? Of course not. And wouldn’t it save some money too?

Often, we in the USA refuse to adopt ideas from abroad, even if they make more sense (the metric system, for example). So, let’s look at what the coinage of the euro is. Um, OK, never mind. The euro has coins in 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cents, and 1 and 2 euros. But the 1 and 2 cent coins are not commonly used, and, in fact, in Finland, Belgium, and the Netherlands, all cash transactions are rounded by law to the nearest 5 cents. It’s probably too logical to ever be adopted here.

We all know about the fluctuations of various currencies, and, for example, that Europeans can enjoy great deals in the US now because the dollar is so weak. So what would happen if we were to create a worldwide currency? No more foreign exchange markets, no more conversions when traveling - effectively, take what Europe did and spread it around the globe. It could work, you know. About ten years ago, after suffering through horrendous inflation, the country of Ecuador tied its currency to the US dollar, and shortly thereafter discontinued its currency completely. The official currency of Ecuador is now the US dollar. If it can work there, and if Italy can go to a euro from their drastically devalued lira, why wouldn’t it work worldwide?

Do we have any time left to talk about time? Don’t worry - I’m not going to propose eliminating time zones, or replacing our 24-hour, 60-minute, 60-second system with something more metric (but why not?). I just got to wondering about the absurdity of our AM/PM system. How so? Well, let’s say you wanted to divide a day into two halves, called AM and PM. OK, that works. Now, we want to number each of the 12 hours in each half. So, we’ll number them 1 through 12, right? And the clock progression should then be 1 AM, 2 AM, 3 AM, through 12 AM, followed by 1 PM, 2 PM, etc. But wait a minute! Which minute? How about the one after 11:59 AM? Logically, it should be 12:00 AM, followed by 12:01 AM, and so on. Uh, oh … we have a problem. Hour 12 is mislabeled! Shouldn’t 12:45 AM be one hour after 11:45 AM? We need to either flip-flop the AM and PM on the 12th hour, or change it to zero hour.

Well, military time and international time do that, using a 24-hour clock. Half past midnight is 00:30 (or 0030, depending on the format). And mid-day times go from 11:30 to 12:30 to 13:30. Seems like it would be easier to learn that way, don’t you think?

I wonder how this particular time system became so universal (well, only on our planet, not the entire universe). I wonder how other civilizations measured the time during the day, or if they even did so. Perhaps ignoring time is a solution. Somehow, though, I don’t think we could ignore money.

Time and money. Both can be saved, both can be spent, both can be invested, both can be wasted. Which would you say you did with your time reading this blog today?

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Al. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.