With the global economy generally pretty out of whack, you’ve heard the calls for a shift to the gold standard. (If not, here’s Ron Paul.) And you’re probably still wondering what Bitcoin is, too. Then there’s this list of alternative currencies Katherine Ward put together for New York magazine in April. And now: there’s the kissing economy.
The world will run on affection, where hatred is a fine. You can buy a go-kart by hugging your husband or wife.
The Metro St. James Cafe in Sydney, Australia, is allowing its customers to buy coffee by kissing their partners between 9 and 11 a.m.
So, you walk in, get your coffee, and then the waiter/waitress tells you that you can kiss—it has to be a “real kiss”—instead of paying actual money. As the very French dude in their video says: “At Metro St. James, we don’t want you money. We want your kisses.”
But, I guess, “kisses” are actually a kind of money, right? If “money” is just an object that’s accepted as payment for goods and services, a “kiss,” the thing the two people are creating, is the object that’s being accepted as payment for your coffee. It’s harmless and kind of great—although one couple really kisses and it’s sort of uncomfortable depending on how you feel about two people making out in front of a cash register at a coffee shop—and maybe not all that insane? I don’t know. The “promotion” will only last until the end of June, and it’s not really sustainable to have a cafe that presumably uses standard currency to buy its goods and record profits to then sell their coffee for kisses, but maybe one day. The world will run on affection, where hatred is a fine. You can buy a go-kart by hugging your husband or wife. Hedge funds will monitor and trade on eskimo kisses and multi-part handshakes. Goldman Sachs would be the purveyor of all things good.
Haha yeah, not a chance. But the video will make you feel good for a few minutes.
