What if cars did not have speedometers?

Imagine cars without speedometers.  How would you judge how safely you were driving?  There would be no speedometer on your instrument panel and no speed limit signs along the sides of the road.  One way you could estimate your speed would be how fast things are passing by.  That could work for a while at least.  But you know your sense of speed changes as you travel along.  At first, especially on a long trip, Your first few miles feel like you are driving fast but after a while, you find yourself driving a bit faster, even feeling like you are going slow when you are actually going a lot faster than when you started out.

Another way you could estimate how fast you were going is to watch other cars.  It would be reasonable to suppose that going as fast or as slow as they are is a safe speed.  That could work for a while, but remember how you sometimes feel that you are going too slow when you follow a car for a long distance.

With all drivers having no speedometers, instead feeling their speed by the seat of their pants, by watching the sidelines and other cars, that there would be a lot of accidents from going too slow or too fast.  We can imagine an industry evolving to build better cars, cars that would withstand the crashes better.  We have such devices even with speedometers and speed limit signs.  Without them, people would misjudge speeds more often across a wider range of speeds and have more and worse accidents.  The there would be calls for more crash resistant cars.

So it is with money.  It has no “speedometer,” only a word, in our case, “dollar.”  The word has us feeling like we have a measure of “speed” but we judge the value of our money by watching many prices and wages and salaries of as many people as we can.  It’s not easy because stores don’t mark prices like they used to because they now use barcodes and people rarely tell one another their wage or salary.  Variations in prices, wages, and salaries would grow wider and we would hear calls to limit them, but no one would know how or by how much.

Time money denominated in Hours would give us all the “priceometer” that we need.  Wages and salaries would still vary just like roads and speed limits vary, but the range of variation would be more reasonable because when people talked money they would talk time.  Hours on money would empower everyone to judge the fairness of prices and wages on their own, just like you can judge your speed simply by looking at your speedometer.  Think about this the next time you are driving your car.  Of course, keep your eyes on the road except for an occasional glance at your instrument panel.  Remember, Safety first.  Speed kills and so does money without a proper denominator.