The Birinian Minister for Industry and Greedy Bankers ascended his podium and waved to the reporters assembled before him. Now, a shitty peasant living in the past such as yourself might describe what was occurring as a "press conference", betraying your backwater, yokel pastness. But this wasn't even remotely close to anything you might hamfistedly call a "press conference". Because this was happening in the future times. For instance, you might think that the only surfaces that are white and/or shiny are ones that make sense. But you'd be wrong, it's way more surfaces than that. You might also think that everything was just "on the ground" like a piece of shit at this thing that was not a "press conference". Wrong again, almost nothing was on the ground. It was, like, all hovering. The podium was hovering. The stage was hovering. The chairs were hovering. The Minister was hovering. The walls were hovering. The floor was hovering. The ground below the floor was hovering. Everything was hovering, all the way down. Because, again, this is not a shitty "press conference" like the ones you have in your horrible past-times with your plagues and strange hair.
"Thank you for coming to this press conference." The Minister said, beginning the press conference. "We have a lot of things to tell you are true, so let's get right into it. As you know, millennia ago, Birinian society was run by large corporations and shadowy, wealthy elite all behind the scenes. But then we had a massive shift in thinking called 'Democracy' which is where we decided to change from corporations and the wealthy running everything in the shadows to just making it official and having them do that in broad daylight. Then we introduced taxes, which was the beginning of the modern economy. There may very well be evidence to contradict that, but I reject it on principle."
The futuristic press conference had been called on very short notice. So most of the Minister's favorite journalists had already been bribed to pay lip service to the Birinian administration elsewhere that day. As a last resort he had had to allow in some journalists who, instead of pushing his narrative, consistently pushed their own narrative. In the future, we call this "journalistic integrity". Several of these journalists with integrity rumbled their discontent. As with all discontent, the Birinian government ignored it completely and plowed ahead.
"But I'm not here to talk about that, even though that's what I've just done. I'm here to talk about... hard work. A can-do spirit. Tractors in fields of wheat. The smell of fresh baked bread early in the morning. All of that is what's going to be backing our currency, the Spacebuck (which is what it's always been called), from now on. Questions."
One journalist was particularly intrepid. He had the bravery and fortitude to present opinions that 99% of his peers agreed with. "Uhm... So we're going to have a currency backed by wheat?"
"Well, the concept of wheat being harvested by a hard-working, no-nonsense Birinian who loves his family."
"So like a labor-backed currency."
"Well, the concept of a hard day's work and a cold beer afterward. A gumption-backed currency."
"How do you back a currency with gumption, Minister?"
"Can you tell me what the currency was backed with before?"
This was not entirely fair; journalists don't answer questions after all, they ask them.
"Uhm... I want to say it was like... uhm. Maybe gold?"
"Nope, it hasn't been backed by gold for thousands of years. It was backed by debt; a debt collateralized against the Birinian economy as a whole. In theory, a Spacebuck entitled you to a certain amount of ownership of the Birinian economy insofar as it represented a promise from the Central Bank to pay you back that debt."
"Right... Well, that all sounds reasonable."
"Okay, well that's basically backed by nothing, right? Because you can't pay someone back a denomination's worth of something that it is denominated in. So we're moving from a currency backed, essentially, by fuckall to a currency backed by gumption, which I can at least show you slides of in a presentation."
Another reporter piped up. Fortunately this was one that had been bribed. "Sir, what do you say to detractors of your government's gumption-backed currency plan who claim that a gumption-driven economy will put too much power in the hands of back porch rocking chair-sitting, elderly elite?"
"Great question. Look, we've explored all our options, including a dual currency system backed by gumption and chutzpah, and this is clearly the best path forward. Will your annoying relatives who harp on how things were back in their day temporarily have more spending power? Yes, but that's what we want because that will actually create a natural subsidy whereby gumption flows from the gumption-rich towards the gumption-poor. Mostly useless fucking journalists. This is in addition to social programs where are inherently redistributive and also primarily benefit journalists."
"And what about a fractional reserve system based on moxie?"
"That is reactionary non-scientific tripe. And frankly coming from a publication of your stature, which is to say one that is mostly words, I'm shocked you're even asking that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've been at this press conference so long that I am now dangerously close to being sober."
