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Description
A (rough) calculation of how much an Equestrian gold bit is worth by weight. Keep in mind this was made four months ago, so the price of gold has likely changed in the meantime, and the numbers are probably overly precise anyway. But as a ballpark it’s pretty good.
Source
not provided yet
Could it be from the post that it says “continued from”, by any chance?
Glad you don’t mind. I feel pretty confident that Humania is Earth unless otherwise noted (they even have cellphones), but it is conceivable that they, too, have cheap gold and abundant gems…
Given Sunset’s tendency to rush into things, and to assume that she knows more than she actually does, I could definitely see her being a scrupulous vegetarian who doesn’t realize that she’s been wearing a dead cow for three years. They do have leather in Equestria, but not black leather with modern processing, so she might assume that her coat’s synthetic.
Thanks for your feedback, ExOttoyuhr.
Yeah, the stuff about Sunset Shimmer is what I had been considering as well. But with regards to her “expensive clothes,” keep in mind that when Twilight arrived she had a set of clothes on by default, a full set of clothes that fit her both in form and personality. It’s not unreasonable to assume the same was true for Sunset Shimmer. In which case – and this is a scenario I like to play out in my head – she may not have realized her jacket was leather, or what leather was, until it was pointed out to her.
Anyways, yeah, even spare Equestrian change would be worth a great amount in Earth money – which reminds me that this research also assumes the location shown in Equestria Girls uses a monetary system comparable to ours.
I think she was referring, not to Sunset cashing in a few bits and living like royalty (speaking of which, diamonds in our world that weigh more than about two grams have names and biographies), but to the hypothetical in which an inventive Equestrian businessman arbitrages away the stock market, and in the process makes gold about as valuable as copper. (Or less.)
Something like this happened with silver, when a poor Peruvian farmer pulled up a sapling on Mt. Potosi and discovered that the ground sparkled; it turned out that Potosi is about 50% silver by weight. Silver fell from about 12:1 against gold to about 20:1 against gold over the next 300 years (it’s now 35:1 or more), and today, after having been worked continually for about 500 years, there are still about 48,000 tons of silver ore in there.
All that silver didn’t destroy the world economy, but it certainly did tilt the scales in Spain’s favor. Most of the silver was shipped directly to China on the “Manila Galleon”, in exchange for all the luxuries the Chinese could produce; the small amounts that were sent back to the Old World allowed Spain to be a superpower for 200 years despite not really having an economy or a population.
(And Japan stubbornly attempted to keep up Confucian exchange rates of 4:1 or 5:1; I’ve heard both, but the point is that this was not a very high rate. As a result, the koban, originally a gigantic plate of gold worth 3 years’ rice rations, fell from 16.5 grams of gold to 1.5 grams of gold over the course of the Tokugawa Shogunate…)
$800,000 worth of gold would be a drop in the bucket a .00000001% increase in the total tonnage, based on the first google result.
In any case, the increase of one resource won’t crash any economy that isn’t primarily based on extracting that resource. A sudden windfall of gold would cause the price of gold to go down, which would be hilarious to watch happen (can you imagine how much the Ron Paul/zerohedge crowd would flip their shit if the price of gold dropped by 50% or more?) but gold is not important. Money is the physical manifestation of debt.
…And then the economy would crash, because gold would become so common as to become utterly worthless. Assuming you’re not cautious, of course, but then has anyone in a similar situation (think: European traders with natives) ever been cautious?
To start with, it looks like I can’t headcanon Sunset Shimmer being homeless or living in poverty anymore, and I’m going to kind of miss that headcanon. It underlines how tough and determined she is, how she can keep going undaunted in circumstances that would reduce you or me to tears.
We know Sunset ran off with more than nothing, since she brought that book with her – the comics can’t be 100% accurate. If she just grabbed a little walking-around money (by the standards of the third most important pony in Equestria), 30 bits or so, then she arrived on Earth with 675 troy ounces of gold (assuming that the Equestrian Bit is 90% pure, the typical purity for 1900), which weighed 48 pounds and were worth $800,000 in July 2010 (three years before Equestria Girls’ release; the price of gold was low by post-Great-Crash standards then).
If Sunset somehow ran off with ten bits, which is about enough to make one meal for a finicky rabbit and is an acceptable extra expenditure even for Fluttershy with her meager income, she had $275,000.
I can imagine Sunset’s reaction when she found out that rent for a cheap apartment was close to a thousand of the local currency per month… and also her reaction when she discovered that the local currency was Monopoly money. Well, now we know how she bought those expensive clothes with no relatives or visible means of support…
Also – since gold is so dense that it feels like a bug in the universe – Big Macintosh could break his back hauling back the proceeds Applejack was expecting from the Gala, a daffodil-and-daisy sandwich costs significantly more than its own weight in gold, Equestrians are uniformly slim and good-looking because their daily shopping is a very demanding workout, and the ten or so bits Fluttershy spent on that extravagant salad for Angel weighed significantly more than he did.
(And now that that mirror is open permanently, imagine the chaos you could cause trading Equestrian Bits for flashlights, antibiotics, matches, and other basic products of industrialism. Better yet, if you’re an Equestrian noblepony or especially the Equestrian government, you could buy Earth. Exxon-Mobil, the largest company in the world by market capitalization, costs 14 million bits.)
Or else, since back injuries and serious workouts aren’t really associated with open-air markets in the show, maybe the bit is mostly alloy – 25% gold or something. Even then, it’s hard to imagine Sunset showing up on Earth with less than $100,000, and Angel Bunny still might not outweigh the coins used to buy his lunch.
Oh, that was for me? I thought you were responding to that one from before. Right. (\
Yeah, the penny really isn’t cost-effective, so we’ve wanted to take care of that for awhile, but it would probably be a major effort. You have to remember, though, that coins are also way easier to counterfeit, too, whereas bills can fit all kinds of sensitive electronics and special ink and other security features.
If the total ends it 3 or 4 = rounded up.
1 or 2 gets rounded down.
Motivation for the changes to Canadian currency was to save taxpayers a metric shit ton of money. Coins last way longer than bills, especially small bills because no one cares about them and treats them accordingly, and the penny costs more to mint than it was worth.
Where’s my brohoof?
Don’t leave me hanging!!
Nah. Coins are way too easy to lose, but I wouldn’t mind having a single dollar one as an alternative. As for rounding to the nearest nickel…that would depend on whether it’s rounded up or down.
Sorry, I should have been more specific…
In Canada, we ditched the dollar bill, and later the 2 dollar bill for coins. Initially there was an uproar over it but now we prefer it.
Later, the mint stopped production of the penny. Merchants now calculate totals to the penny, but then round them off to the nearest nickel.
Would you personally welcome similar changes to your own money? I’m not asking you to speak for your nation, just your own opinion.
My question had nothing to do with the decimalization of currency.
and before I forget…
brohoof /)
Okay, I’ve–and by extension the US has–never been against the decimalization of money. And no, we still need the bill, but the introduction of a coin as well–one replacing the penny–does work.
Two-dollar coins are still stupid, though.
How do you feel about a dollar coin to replace the bill?
The elimination of the penny?
Indeed, indeed.
Well, hey, that’s not a bad idea.
That makes sense.
Just so you know, I am a ‘gray stallion’. I just turned fifty and am looking forward to April 4 just as much as you :)
I’m half metrified. I still use MPG and good ol’ Fahrenheit (for room and outdoor temp), and measure my own height as ‘5 “10 (I use cm and mm for most small objects).
<rant>
Some things that piss me off about metric;
The Pascal, a unit of pressure that was completely unnecessary. They could have honored Mr. Pascal by using the Pascal as an alternate name for Kg/cm2 (replaces PSI). But NOOOOOOO. Let’s make it more complicated and toss in an extra unit which COMPETES with Kg/cm2 !!
Gas Mileage. It used to be MPG (higher numbers were better). Now we have l/100km (LOWER numbers are better). Why not go with Km/l which is simpler and retains the ‘higher numbers are better’??? What were they smoking??
Machine Screw sizing. Prior to metric we had #2, #4, #6 up to #14. Any bigger than that was 1/4 inch and up. These were non-denominational and the metric people should have left it alone. They did not. Now we have two bolt bins for machine screws. Thanks a bunch, Metritards.
Nuts, Bolts & Drill bits…
Instead of changing the physical size of these items, they could have just added the approximate metric converted value onto the box of bolts, or stamped it onto the other end of the wrench.
For example, a wrench would be stamped with 1/2 inch on one end and 12.7mm on the other. This would eliminate the current need to have two sets of sockets and wrenches. Every mechanic would save a shitload of money, time, and shop space with this system.
</rant>
Ha, thanks. And yeah…that’s always a problem. (Also, 45 MPG? Holy heck.)
Anyway: America doesn’t change just because everyone else is doing it. (See: soccer, and the complete apathy relating thereto.) Metric would be nice and all, if we didn’t already have a perfectly good system. I don’t know if they have this saying overseas, but if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Furthermore, the fact that it was enthusiastically adopted by communist governments the world over doesn’t help its reputation among the laity. And that’s the thing–scientists can go and use it all they want, but the rest of us don’t need to forget everything we ever learned because some foreigners say how great it is, and we’re even less willing to teach it to kids for the same reason. Also, this is just a personal thing, but using meters for height, what the heck? It’s clunky and almost impossible to remember. Now, “5’3” for instance I can remember, because one can visually place each foot on top of each other in relation to average objects, but “1.6m” by comparison just doesn’t do it. So long story short: it’s an awkward, arbitrary system despite its claims of ease of use that would work only if you had no other means of measuring something, and we don’t care what other people are using. Probably because we’re large enough that we don’t have to cooperate to make anything. (You in Canada only do it, I’m sure, because Britain does, and Russia and China? Aforementioned communism.)
I love your icon. I saw some shot glasses laser etched with the famous RD salute a while back. They looked so cool, but I had no money…
Funny and true story. I live in Canada. A friend bought a car and said it got 45 MPG. I asked him if he meant Imperial or US gallons. He paused for a bit and then said he didn’t know.
What is it exactly that you don’t like about metric? The US is one of the very last world holdouts, and I would love to know why.
And? What’s your point? That it’s simpler? Here’s a hint: simpler =/= better.
I just have one of those faces I guess.
@Lawful Girly
You only need a calculator if you use imperial measurements.
1 Cubic meter of water = 1000 liters of water = 1 ton of water.
No need for a calculator for that.
Hello there Background Pony #EFD8.
By some strange coincidence, you look exactly like me.
————
You bring up a good point there.
metric brohoof
/)
5280, duh. Not that you’d ever really need to know that, unless you have a very specific job.
@Background Pony #EFDB
So…buy a calculator. Hard, I know.
Most americans memorize that crap by heart. But a real challenge, try converting from cubic feet of volume to gallons of water it can contain, as compared to converting cubic meters of volume to liters of water it can contain.
One conversion is a piece of math, the other just moves the comma 3 spaces.