Confused By Dope

by Paul Hein

The people of the tiny Colombian town of Camelias are hooked on dope.  No, they’re not drug addicts.  They use the coca powder as money.

You can buy pills in the town pharmacy for from one to 45 grams of the stuff, depending on the pills:  aspirin or antibiotics.  The druggist gives you change in the coca powder after weighing it out on his high-tech digital scale.  Indeed, the prices in the pharmacy are stated in grams of coca powder.

Surrounding towns have much the same policy.  If you are paid in coca, as many are, you can buy essentials of food or clothing with it.  You can bet on sporting events with it.  Locals are apt to declare the coca as good as gold.  Sadly, however, they don’t seem to appreciate the significance of that remark.

Drug traffickers arrive, from time to time, to purchase the coca powder.  They do so with currency.  According to some, this process establishes the “value” of the powder, which is, therefore, said to be “variable.” The tangible evaluated in terms of the intangible! A yardstick “measured” in terms of cubits!

A restaurateur accepts the powder, but declares that he would prefer currency.  However, for him to refuse the powder would be the end of his business.  How sad!  They perceive their situation as through a lens:  upside down and backwards.  They regard as valuable that which can be exchanged for nothing whatsoever of value from its issuer.

Perhaps you have an inventory of shoes which you manufactured yourself, at considerable exertion of time and energy.  I, on the other hand, have rectangles of paper, in various attractive colors,  nicely engraved with portraits and scenes, and bearing numbers divisible by five.  I printed some of these myself, but had the rest printed for me, using my original output to “purchase” the rest.  I haven’t worked since, except to keep records.

My paper chits are labeled “notes,” but I won’t give you anything for them, and have set aside nothing for their redemption.  Indeed, should you be naïve enough to present one for payment, you will find yourself ridiculed as a simpleton.  The numbers on the chits, in other words, mean nothing.  There is no quantity of anything involved.  One “note” may be labeled TEN and another TWENTY, but exactly what these numbers refer to is unknown, and it is considered absurd to even ask.  Now:  For what number on one of these chits would you exchange a pair of your shoes?

Suppose, after some deliberation, you decide that the number FIFTY on the lovely purple chit, is about right.  I give you the bill, and walk off in your handiwork.  Noticing that you have about a hundred pairs of shoes for sale, and deciding to establish my brother-in-law as the premier shoe merchant in the area, I instruct my printer to print a chit bearing the number FIVE THOUSAND.  He says that will cost me TEN, so I instruct him to print a TEN as well, and keep it for himself.  He is glad to do it!  I then take my FIVE THOUSAND to your store, and purchase your entire inventory.  Indeed, the use of my chits has become so commonplace that the people of the place begin to evaluate real wealth--useful artifacts--in terms of the admittedly undefinable numbers on my chits!!  Amazing!  Some thing valued in terms of no thing!

The use of the coca powder in southern Colombia is tolerated, even encouraged, by the revolutionary army, which comprises what passes for government in the area.  The powder, however, is not produced by the guerillas, nor by the drug traffickers who drop by from time to time to “buy” it with chits.  It is produced, and therefore owned, by the people themselves, on thousands of acres.  It is these producers who hold the real power, but give it away for bits of grandiosely-engraved pieces of paper.  What if they decided they would not yield this product for nothing, but only for something? Gold, for instance.  Their efforts in producing the crop--their life’s work--would not be erased by the issuance of a new series of chits, rendering all previous ones worthless.  Gold, like coca powder, derives its value from its utility.  Never in recorded history has it become useless or worthless.  Indeed, as money, it beats coca powder, which is much less useful.  Nicely engraved chits, on the other hand, have become useless as a medium of exchange countless times in the past, and will continue to do so, despite superior management and the use of sophisticated psychological force.

Pity the poor merchants of Camelias, and surrounding towns.  They are building dream castles, and trying to live in them.  If they ingested the coca powder, instead of bartering with it, they could not be more befuddled.

March 9, 2002