Cigarette gold

I saw an un-smoked cigarette on the ground and nearly picked it up. I don't smoke, but many people do, and people are always asking for them from friends and strangers alike. They're expensive to purchase - they're valuable. Perhaps someone dropped this one and, later realizing it, felt a loss... like the loss of a dollar.

I imagined if it was a dollar, then I would pick it up. But imagine if cigarettes were acceptable for trade... I think I'd charge 20 cigarettes for a copy of my CD, knowing that I could trade those for two meals. I could get a good shish taouk for 12 cigarettes, or fish and chips for 6, or a burger and fries for 10. Thick milkshakes are 5 or 6 cigarettes, depending upon the quality of the ice cream in them. A cheap beer might be 3 or 4 cigarettes, and then a lot of people might smoke 3 or 4 cigarettes while drinking a cheap beer.

The bank would have to reserve and store cigarettes and issue notes that were legally "backed" by cigarettes - that way we could pay rent and make major purchases without moving boxes of cartons of cigarettes. A new Subaru WRX Wagon might cost 100,000 cigarettes (probably more)! Eventually the banks would commence fractional reserve banking, and only a portion of our cigarettes would actually exist at the bank. Perhaps the missing cigarettes would have been smoked by wealthy bank owners and aristocrats.

Eventually the bank-issued notes would become legal tender (no longer backed by cigarettes) and commonly accepted for trade, instead of cigarettes. Cigarettes would become rare and coveted, and the majority of the world's cigarettes would be in the hands of the wealthy. People would be disgruntled, feeling tricked out of their wealth of cigarettes. People would pass by banks and wonder where all the cigarettes in the world are truly residing.

Cigarettes would still be traded on the global stock exchanges as a commodity. Investors and brokers would trade bank-issued notes for bond documents that prove ownership of a specified amount of cigarettes. When the market was good, people might sell their stock of cigarettes (for bank-issued notes). Ultimately, nobody would actually see the cigarettes.

Anyways... I wonder if anybody after me picked up that cigarette?

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