Paying the reaper
I
wonder if there is a word that means paying extra so that the change
you get back is in a more convenient form. For example, if something
costs $16.30, instead of paying with a twenty-dollar bill I would pay
with that bill plus thirty cents, so that I am conveniently given back
two toonies instead of one toonie, one dollar, two quarters and two
dimes. Or, as happened to me earlier today, there was a 30-cent fine to
pay for a book returned a day late, I gave the librarian a one-dollar
coin and a nickel. I have noticed that if you do this to Asians, they
don't even bat an eye but understand immediately, but clerks of other
ethnicities might immediately give back the nickel and then start
counting change for the dollar.
Small-denomination coins, which here means anything smaller than a dime, are useless and pretty much just dead weight. It's not like they are that heavy to carry around in your wallet, but somehow they are just more annoying than they logically should be. However, the best argument that I have ever seen for keeping them around is that these small coins allow a way for the entropy of the universe to express itself harmlessly. Were the one-cent coins and nickels removed from circulation, this entropy would have to find some other way of expressing itself.
Of course, the best thing to do would be to get rid of small cash completely. I don't see that happening, though. In my own life, there are only a few places that require cash, the most important of which is perhaps the TTC subway token machine. Most other places that I use accept Interac. (Side question: how come every single store seems to have a totally different type of Interac card reader?) I am somewhat skeptical about the potential of systems such as Dexit, since people won't join in until enough stores accept it, and stores will not start accepting it until enough people have joined in.
Small-denomination coins, which here means anything smaller than a dime, are useless and pretty much just dead weight. It's not like they are that heavy to carry around in your wallet, but somehow they are just more annoying than they logically should be. However, the best argument that I have ever seen for keeping them around is that these small coins allow a way for the entropy of the universe to express itself harmlessly. Were the one-cent coins and nickels removed from circulation, this entropy would have to find some other way of expressing itself.
Of course, the best thing to do would be to get rid of small cash completely. I don't see that happening, though. In my own life, there are only a few places that require cash, the most important of which is perhaps the TTC subway token machine. Most other places that I use accept Interac. (Side question: how come every single store seems to have a totally different type of Interac card reader?) I am somewhat skeptical about the potential of systems such as Dexit, since people won't join in until enough stores accept it, and stores will not start accepting it until enough people have joined in.
I'm asking on amptoons about the calorie theory of weight. check it out.
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2006/02/17/link-farm-and-open-thread-10
Posted by Anonymous | 1:56 PM
Heh. Leftists sure are funny when they deny that laws of thermodynamics apply to them.
But obese gluttons will grasp any straw for an excuse to keep up their gluttonous lifestyle.
Posted by Ilkka | 5:40 PM