When coins cease to exist – as is inevitable – some of the acceptable and unacceptable behaviours associated with tangible cash will be forced to change too. According to psychiatric studies, a miser is a selfish person addicted to physical money. This tendency stems from childhood, as often seems to be the case. With parents with little money, misers were often sent to work as children, from as young as 12 years old.
Taking the miser as my protagonist, I was Intrigued by the ways misers tend to express themselves, such as developing a paranoia that pushes them to hide their money from their family (usually in their home).
The miser’s family often develops pathologies around money too. If a miser has a wife, she will often develop frustrations surrounding her husband’s behaviour. When their child grows, he might become a compulsive spender, deriving pleasure from the act of buying rather than from what he buys. If he (or she) has a daughter or a son, they tend to be spoiled.
With no desire to change them or judge the miser, I began to imagine what might they do within the new context of e-money? How could they express themselves with this new medium, Instead of cash? Simple solutions such as a digital screen which tells them their bank balance, and which they could hide wherever they want might help. It is important to me that we consider misers and their pathologies in the way we develop the future of money.