In a new exhibit opening in just a few weeks, conceptual artist Jonathon Keats will propose an antimatter-based mirror economy designed to boom as the regular-ole economy continues to tank.
"Economic equilibrium is upset by our unbalanced pursuit of material wealth," says the artist. "My plan is to offset materialism with modern science, by exploiting the economic potential of antimatter, which is the physical opposite of anything made with atoms, from luxury condos to private jets."
More:
The bank will serve as a hub for antimatter transactions worldwide, eventually financing the building of antimatter infrastructure and providing the public with a full range of investment opportunities. "But our first order of business will be printing money," says Mr. Keats. "Cash is the foundation of any economy, and an anti-economy is no exception."The First Bank of Antimatter show opens Nov. 12 at Modernism, Inc. gallery in San Francisco.Issued in three convenient denominations, ranging from 10,000 positrons to 1,000,000 positrons, and initially trading at an exchange rate of $10 to $1,000, the anti-money will be backed by antimatter stored in the bank's vault. Because matter and antimatter annihilate each other on contact, antimatter positrons will be continuously produced on location by decay of the radioactive isotope potassium-40.
Press release (PDF)
Jonathon Keats (Wikipedia)
(thanks, Mark Robinson!)
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The only problem is that within such a paradigm "economic potential" would be negated, as that potential would dwell in a world defined by anti-materialistic laws.
PS - when I grow up I wanna be a conceptual artist
Totally brilliant - this makes my day! I'm glad he has the antimatter to back up the currency, however with it continually decaying I'm worried that the anti-economy might collapse were there an anti-run on the antibank.
Theoretically speaking, an anti-matter economy would reflect materialism just the same. Saying anti-matter is opposite regular matter is correct, but misleading. It's opposite, but the same. It just spins the opposite way.
That aside, I'm stoked, let's do it!
Additionally, hasn't this concept already been tried? I think they call it Wall Street. Put money in and nothing comes out.
Sorry, won't work without "anti-BS"
'the stars are matter, we are matter, but it doesn't matter" (Captain Beefheart, 1972)
I predict explosive growth in this new sector. Harr-harr.
Make that "explosive anti-growth"
I already have an account based on the concept of anti-money: massive student loans. :(
I hear the economy is booming in Bizarro World due to the above-prime mortgage crisis.
No! We must found an ectoplasm based, dematerialistic economy.
I think someone is confusing anti-matter with bizarro world.
However, if you actually had a significant quantity of antimatter and a viable way to control it, you wouldn't need to make anti-corporate-jets out of it or whatever, because you'd have something like nuclear power only more so.
I'm cautiously hopeful that this is meant to be a commentary on counter-cyclical spending & Keynesian economics. If it is, then I'm still not sure what the artist is saying.
On a longer time horizon, the economy has generally grown, although it's easy to forget that in a crunch. If you ran an anti-economy starting in the late 1800s, it's been in a depressing decline most of the time, punctuated by a few periods of incredible growth.