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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

It is already big a deal to change the images on currency (no matter what country). Given the US dollar is viewed as somewhat of a standard, you can imagine that to change its size/shape would be quite difficult to generate enough political enthusiasm for.

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The insistence on cotton paper money is part of the problem.

Canada’s banknotes are all the same size but because they’re polymer, have a brail punch in them.

Edit: not braille but a system of raised dots nonetheless: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/audience-specific-reso...

There is one private company that either directly manufactures or leases the machines out to produce every polymer banknote in the world. In theory Romania already has 80% of what they need to produce Australian bank notes and vice versa.

There isn't anything other than US bills you can use to get the raw materials for US currency.

The Swiss company Orell Füssli prints the Swiss currency as well as currencies for 16 other central banks.

>There isn't anything other than US bills you can use to get the raw materials for US currency.

You are very confident when you have no idea what you're talking about.

https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/102/

All you need is the cotton blend of paper. There's no secret ingredient. Either find a paper pulp manufacturer who sells the blend like this guy from Quebec or build your own processes like North Korea. Many developing world currencies are more secure than the USD.

I personally far prefer the cotton paper money over any polymer notes or coins and hope we keep using it despite any other potential changes to the sizes or designs or whatever.

Why?

Probably just the texture and feel.

I think it is a nice material that is highly robust, tolerates creases and heat significantly better, and feels much nicer. I don't really understand why anyone would prefer polymer notes.

The last iteration of German paper money was cotton-based and had raised markers, so it's not an either-or. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Mark#/media/File:5_Ma... (the : in the bottom left area, next to the 5)

These bills also had sizs that increased with their denomination.

True, but is that unusual? I know that U.S. notes are same size, but that seems to be the exception to me?

I wish it was the reverse. I’d prefer to have the smallest denominations within easiest reach by being the biggest and the largest denoms tucked away and hard to get to.

But retailers would protest I’m sure: it’s not the psychology they want.

I still keep a 5 DM coin in my wallet. DM was the best!

The US has last partially defaulted on its currency in 1971, surely a change of the design is possible too.

> surely a change of the design is possible too

It's changed plenty of times [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_d...

The printed design has remained the same but the form factor has been pretty static for the last century or so. Things like bill readers are a big reason for that once they appeared it became a lot harder to swap around bill shapes.

I remember hearing that the Susan B Anthony dollar coin failed because there was no extra position in the coin drawer of cash registers to put it in. Can you image if every cash drawer now has to be redesigned to have different sized bills?

(I know, I know, it's not actually that big a deal. The drawers have removable inserts, but you get the point of it.)

(actually, on second though, automatic bill readers in vending machines, etc. would need a big retrofitting, that's probably much more a big deal).

The cash register issue I think could be papered over by just having the bills be smaller than the existing bills, ie $100s stay the same size and we cut off a bit of the bill for each denomination step downwards. That would keep them fitting in the drawer and be in line with the pattern of other countries who also make larger denominations physically larger.

1971 wasn't such a big deal. Between the 1930s and 1971 only foreign central banks could redeem their dollars in gold. So I would put the 'partial default' in 1933, if you care about gold.

But they had suspended convertibility of dollars into gold every so often before that. (And, of course, the dollar wasn't always about gold. They also experimented with silver and bimetalism.)

> But they had suspended convertibility of dollars into gold every so often before that.

They suspended redemptions of the certificated amount. You could not own gold until 1933 from 1974, but excluding of that, you can always convert your money into gold outside of the government if you want.

IMO the primary issue is that the US still has people on it.

In a democracy it should be the values of the country that should be represented not individuals.

Everyone from left to right should be able to agree on what the US stands for. How one gets there is what people argue about.

> the primary issue is that the US still has people on it

This is hardly unique.

> In a democracy it should be the values of the country that should be represented not individuals

The world's oldest (Britain, Iceland) and largest (India, America) democracies have people on their currencies.

Democracies are a human institution. It's dangerous to forget that.

And people seem to forget that the U.S. is not a pure democracy. It's a democratic republic that is becoming more and more republic-like than democratic-like.

More and more compared to when?

Since the founding we’ve changed to direct elections in the senate.

Many states have passed faithless elector laws for the electoral college and 17 states (or 209 electoral votes) have passed the national popular vote law.

The U.S. is controlled by an ever shrinking collection of people and institutions, namely corporations and extremist groups. That's how it's more and more republic-like.

Sure, you could even bring a national voting system, but it wouldn't make it any less of a republic because of the outsized influence that the sub one percent of people have.

It’s a feature (or bug)of US democracy that one of its primary values, its reason for existing, is to support individuals and their freedom. Individuals are the values.

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