What is the currency?
Money is denominated in ‘cowries’ or ‘shells’, a reference to one of the oldest known currencies, cowrie shells. These are coins denominated 1, 10, 100, and 1000, minted by Project Zero here on Haven, using a secret process. Almost no one uses the coins, as there is also a bank and everyone pays electronically. You may ask why even have coins, and there was a pretty seriously debate within Project Zero whether physical coinage should exist at all.
Project Zero decided that it should, for two reasons. One was that people from certain eras, such as 1930 America in any timeline, are unlikely to trusts banks, and the other was that there has to be some level of unmonitorable economy to make society function.
People often ask for the exchange between cowries and dollars when they get here, but it’s impossible to generalize that, as everyone from a different time and timeline and seen different levels of inflation. And we can’t generalize much off the price of most goods, because a lot of them are easy to obtain infinitely so are basically free.
If you want an estimate, construction labor is approximately 40 cowries per hour, or 300 per day. A locally constructed time machine, which requires about a week of skilled labor and some parts, is about 10,000 cowries.
There is no tax on income or sales.
It is not legal to use gold or silver or other precious metals as currency, because that is a very good way to cause massive inflation.
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