The dollar can be used once a day. It has to be a dollar’s worth of a product, service or use of a product. For example, A dollar’s worth of a $100 TV would be the life of the TV divided by 100. You would get to enjoy the TV for that amount of time. The product or service is instant and doesn’t require any preparation. It just appears and disappears. Or you could have a TV permanently that is worth one dollar.

  • Theo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    1·
    21 days ago

    You can have one dollar’s amount of gold to keep forever or you can have any amount of gold for one dollar’s worth of time. It would depend on who you are ‘renting’ the gold from. If they say for a dollar you can have a pile of gold bars for X amount of minutes and then you give it back etc. You ask the magic dollar and out comes a ‘Spyro-esque’ Moneybags character lol. He might only let you touch the gold if he is stingy. The TV metaphor assumes the average life span of a TV these days. Or that particular model. So for a 1K TV, it would be a fraction 1/1000 of that TV life span.

      • Theo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        2·
        21 days ago

        For the TV it is the second scenario you explained. It’s like you are renting it based on its overall price. For the gold, it is not yours, you can have any amount for a price negotiated by the seller. Then, it disappears OR you have one dollar’s worth of gold. Essentially the gold would be useless to rent so save up money each day and then buy the gold to keep. You are basically never really buying anything of value just renting it for whatever the seller decides is a fair amount of time worth a dollar. To illustrate, Rent a center could charge you to use a TV by the day, week, month and you make payments until you own it. The difference here is you don’t rent to own, but the calculations are the same. If they charge 100 per month to rent something you have one 1/100th of that month. But the dollar is mysterious so you could theoretically ask the magic dollar to just have the TV or gold appear for whatever is a fair amount of time to use it for. You can do the calculations or just see what the dollar calculates is fair. But if you want to keep the gold, it is 1 dollar of gold. And if you want to keep a TV, it is however big a one dollar TV could be. It’s magic, it defies normal conventions. You could ask to have one dollar’s worth of a gourmet meal if you want and it appears.

          • Theo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            2·
            21 days ago

            For gold that practically lasts forever, you use how much longer you have in your lifespan, by average. Like how much longer could someone live to.

            The gourmet meal would be the meal divided into a part equal to one dollar. Calories won’t disappear. I just realized I forgot how to do math so I am looking up how to convert it, lol.