Is human life valuable or valueless?

[MarMan]

What cities don't have public transportation? The only places I haven't seen it (I haven't been too many places) is towns and wealthy areas.

[abhijit]

What cities don't have public transportation? The only places I haven't seen it (I haven't been too many places) is towns and wealthy areas.

I think you're right. I should have quit after saying "towns".

[Shaggy Hiker]

Yeah, it kind of depends on how small a city you count. However, the quality of public transportation is all over the board.

[InvisibleDuncan]

I didn't know you were from the former Yugoslavia, Baja. I spent two happy years (well, the school holidays) in Belgrade in the mid 1980s. Great place.

[baja_yu]

I didn't know you were from the former Yugoslavia, Baja. I spent two happy years (well, the school holidays) in Belgrade in the mid 1980s. Great place.

I'm less then 50 miles from there now

[capsulecorpjx]

Here's one of ours from 1993 and the hyperinflation.

That's 500 billion dinars. You could buy almost 10 loafs of bread with that you know.

Man that's worse than Zimbabwe

[baja_yu]

Almost I think they printed a trillion dollar bill a year ago.

[MarMan]

You forced me to look for it baja, and know what I found?

[baja_yu]

LOL. Why do I have the feeling that you can by a half of a decent lunch with that

[InvisibleDuncan]

My parents were in Zimbabwe for a while, and practically had to take money around in a wheelbarrow. Rather inconvenient.

[FunkyDexter]

How did they carry the money to the shop when they went to buy the wheel barrow?

[visualAd]

The wheel barrow doesn't exist. It is just a utopianism designed to floralise the idea that you need a lot of worthless, colourful printed paper to exchange for goods.

[honeybee]

How did they carry the money to the shop when they went to buy the wheel barrow?

That was a good question, FD

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[baja_yu]

You wouldn't believe how valueless the money got at one point. You didn't need a wheel barrow because there was no point in taking it anywhere. First, you couldn't buy anything with it, and even if you could there wasn't much to buy. Petrol was rationed, you were only allowed about two gallons per month per car, and even then you had to wait days in lines miles long at petrol stations to buy it. Stores were mostly empty so you couldn't buy much even if you had all the money in the world. Cooking oil for example, when they had it in stores (maybe twice a month), you again had to wait on line and it was on bottle (litre) per person.

And the money, people were using it for all kinds of stuff, some burned it to heat their houses, some even used it as wallpaper.

[honeybee]

Pity, it makes capitalism sound almost good.

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[EntityX]

There are billionaires in US dollars but there are no trillionaires but obviously there are trillionaires for other types of currency. I'm curious to know how much 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars can buy you. As a joke you could tell one of your friends that you came into some money(you don't say how much) and you're going to send them 100,000 dollars(which would be believeable) because you're feeling generous. You send them a 100,000 dollar Zimbabwe note.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Is there still a 100,000 Zimbabwe note? If they have denominations ten orders of magnitude larger, why bother with such a small denomination? I would also expect that there are quadrillionaires there.

[EntityX]

I considered that that might be the case. You could find some type of currency that does have a 100,000 dollar note but cost next to nothing in US dollars and use that.

I found the wikepedia article on Zimbabwe currency.

The first Zimbabwean dollar was introduced in 1980 and replaced the Rhodesian dollar at par. The initial ISO 4217 code was ZWD. At the time of its introduction, the Zimbabwean dollar was worth more than the U.S. dollar, with ZWD 1 = USD 1.47. However, the currency's value eroded rapidly over the years. On 26 July 2006, the parallel market value of the Zimbabwean dollar fell to one million to the British pound.[4]

That would mean that in 2006 100 trillion Zimbabwe dollars would translate to 100 million British pounds which is a healthy sum of money. So 100,000 Zimbabwe dollars would be 0.1 British pounds which would be around 20 cents US.

[honeybee]

The thread seems to have (been) driven off from the value of human life to the value of currencies of different countries

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[Shaggy Hiker]

The thread seems to have (been) driven off from the value of human life to the value of currencies of different countries

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After two pages, if a thread is still refering to even a single word of the original subject, it is doing very well indeed.

[honeybee]

After two pages, if a thread is still refering to even a single word of the original subject, it is doing very well indeed.

And probably gets moved out of chit chat to a serious forum? That would be dreadful!

Btw, I am reading The Ascent of Money, which contains a trillion-dollar worth note from Germany, after WW-1. The book also mentions the inflation rate in Zimbabwe as measured in 2008 was 100,000 per cent!

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[InvisibleDuncan]

How did they carry the money to the shop when they went to buy the wheel barrow?

I'll have to ask them that!

[FunkyDexter]

I am reading The Ascent of Money

I read that a couple of months ago. He explains things very well.

I just noticed the tags on this thread: [Derailed Thread] and [Eastern European Geography]. Inspired!

[abhijit]

[Derailed thread] could apply to most thread in chitchat.

[EntityX]

Since they are not using the Zimbabwe dollar any more you can get the Zimbabwe trillion dollar bills for next to nothing. They are selling them on ebay.

http://coins.shop.ebay.com/?_from=R4...y&_sacat=11116

This is a very good investment. It's not every day you can spend $ 2.99 and get 100 trillions dollars for it.

[honeybee]

This probably doesn't fit with the original thread title, but now that it has been derailed, let me post it here. The recent India visit of Obama is supposed to be costing INR 15 lakhs every hour. With the detailed security measures taken by the US, Mr President has been creating a virtual White House everywhere he goes. With the US economy more derailed than this thread, can you guys actually afford to spend so much money on a visit that achieves nothing? Couldn't he just have had a teleconference?

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[baja_yu]

It wont seem much when you look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militar..._United_States

[honeybee]

How much would it seem if we put it against the average per capita income of the average joe?

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[baja_yu]

average joe

Nobody cares about him.

[MarMan]

Nobody cares about him.

Except on election day.

[Shaggy Hiker]

The median income in the US is right around $50,000/yr. The population is somewhere above 350 million people. Therefore, you can do the math. I come out with 17.5 trillion annually. I have no idea what that means, though, as I have totally lost track of what the point was....assuming I ever had a grasp of it.

[baja_yu]

So the total US budget is something over 3 trillion, and they spend the third of it on the military... I have a great idea on how they can fix the economy.