Unique ID for each dollar?
Hmmm. We have unique identifiers for every citizen, every vehicle, every tube of toothpaste, every lake, every internet resource, every financial transaction. Why then can't we have a unique identifier for every electronic dollar circulating in our economy? Then all uses of all money could be known. No more money laundering. No more identity theft. No more tax evasion.
When new wealth is created, a number is assigned, the method of creation established, and the date. The exact location of every dollar could be known. The unique IDs would have to be cancled when electronic wealth is changed into actual cash, I guess, but the serial numbers on the bills could be recorded and the numbers re-activated when the bills with those serial numbers turn up again. If wealth was destroyed, then the unique IDs would be permanently deactivated. Then you could have a really interesting map of where pools of wealth accumulate and where wealth is created and destroyed.
This is obviously a pretty stupid idea since it will multiply the size of any online transaction by hundreds of kilobytes. This is probably why I can't find any mention of this idea anywhere. If you make an online purchase worth 1000 dollars from savings into checking, and each dollar has a 10 digit identification key, then ten thousand characters get added to the transaction. Well, then we would have the answer to the fiber-optic glut and the unemployment in the tech sector, I suppose.
Questions. How else are we going to control electronic funds? Might technology some day make this a viable proposition? Does the treasury have a huge database of every serial number for the bills they print? Isn't it strange that quarters have no unique serial number on them? What information is contained in the serial number on my dollar bill: B 82488712 D ?
10:44:10 PM 
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