Introduction

Vermin Supreme champions one of the greatest platforms that any person will ever witness. Not only did he recognize the looming terror of plaque and gum disease to construct his teeth brushing mandate and the dire need to for the government to have a defense plan against zombies, of which he proposes that they be acquisitioned and placed on hamster wheels to create energy, thus solving the crisis that has plagued the nation since the Carter era.

But most ingenious of all is Supreme’s policy of providing everyone with a free pony and kickstarting the pony-based economy which he lovingly calls “Ponynomics.” How would the ponynonomy function one may ask? This is what I plan to tackle in this multi-part series titled “The Dawn of The Pony Economy” in anticipation of the day that the “tyrant you can trust” comes to power and liberates the country from its halitosis and lack of pony-currency.

The first topic I’ll tackle is how liquid (that is the ease of which one may transfer something for cash) would be a pony-based unit of currency, and what means could be employed to address some of the current issues of pony money in the ponynonomy.

A Liquid Pony

One of the most important feature of a successful currency is the ease of which people can trade and move it between parties or places of holding. Historically, this is why early economies evolved to using coin-based money usually made of precious metals, because of their ease of carrying and ability to use for purchase. If one only wanted part of the coin, they could cut it in halves or quarters to meet the agreed upon price.

As Mr. Supreme expressed in a speech given in February 2016 to the International Students for Liberty Conference, the issue with using ponies as currency is their size. “Many people ask me ‘Vermin, is it true that we will be using pony as actual currency?’ And I say that would be absolutely ridiculous until somehow we can make them very small.”

Barring Hank Pym releasing the schematics to create his “Pym Particle” (side note: thank you intellectual property laws for halting the future of ponynomics), the size of a pony would indeed be an issue for its use as money. The average pony is 58 in (or 14.2 hands because of course equestrian animals require their own system of measuring), and can weigh from 440-881 lbs. (oddly, there’s no unique measurement for a pony’s weight), making them a hefty currency. Unless every bank, business and home suddenly constructs, or is given by the state, corrals there won’t be a simple way to transfer the ponies for goods.

Of course, one could cut off hooves, ears or hairs as previous civilizations did with coins, but then everyone would have to become butchers as well as pony herders and that would be asking too much (comparative advantage is still a thing), so the reasonable proposal would be to create a sort of certificate that would designate the amount of pony worth to be transferred to the seller.

The PonyBuck

To insure maximum efficiency of pony transferability, it would only be natural that the banks would contain the majority of the country’s pony population so that these certificates, which I propose be designated a PonyBuck, could be redeemed for the appropriate amount of pony. The simplest way to do this would be to have the government decree that all farmers are now bankers, and that all bankers become paper salesman.

Portions of ponies could then be designated without having to have the physical leg or head of the pony and assumedly the new farm-banks would not redeem certificates without possessing a whole amount of a ponies (but as I will discuss in a later article, sections of pony could be transferred and used in the form of frozen meat, with a presumed deduction in value).

PonyBucks could be easily placed in a wallet and given to stores, friends or to those annoying door-to-door charities that you want to make disappear, therefore solving the issue of being able to transfer the value of a pony without trailers and loose entrails. Though, as with the current monetary system, it is probably best to keep a supply of ponies on hand in case of emergency.

Conclusion

While the ponynonomy on the surface seems to be an unrealistic form of currency due to it being not as liquid, it has been demonstrated that there are techniques that can be applied to combat that aspect. Use of certificates and policies of non-redemption for partial PonyBucks eliminate the concern of usability and will bring ponynomics one step closer to reaching Vermin Supreme’s vision upon his inevitable election.