
Zero Rupee Note - aaronharnly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_rupee_note
======
aij
That reminds me of when my university kept sending me a $0 bill every month
after I graduated. They kept sending them, so eventually I wrote a $0 check
and sent it back in the business-reply envelope. I guess they were happy I had
paid my bill because they finally stopped sending them.

~~~
denzil_correa
I once read a similar apocryphal narrative. Someone, kept receiving 0$ credit
card bills and the company sent repeated reminders with warnings. The person
called, sent letters to discuss the situation but to no avail. The person
finally gave up and wrote a 0$ check and they stopped sending letters.
However, it led to a computer systems crash as the credit card company
software encountered a "Divide by Zero" error due to eh 0$ check.

~~~
thomasahle
I'm having a hard me thinking of a case where you'd want to divide by an
amount of money. What am I missing?

~~~
Ma8ee
For example to calculate the expected time left to pay the remaining debt if
you make a monthly payment of that amount.

~~~
delinka
So dividing by number of months, which is not dividing by an amount of money.

~~~
vollmond
var balance = 0

var lastPayment = 0

var remainingPaymentsAtThisRate = balance/lastPayment

// divide by zero error

~~~
cbzoiav
Surely that doesn't account for interest?

~~~
vollmond
My goal with this 3-line pseudocode snippet was not to reproduce a banking
loan administration system in its entirety, but just to show a place where it
could make sense to divide by currency.

------
throwmex
> One autorick-shaw driver was pulled over by a policeman in the middle of the
> night who said he could go if he was "taken care of". The driver gave him
> the note instead. The policeman was shocked but smiled and let him go.

Too good to be true.

On another note, what people usually do (when they are asked a bribe) is to
notify the vigilance officer. The vigilance department provides marked
original currency notes powdered with Phenolphthalein. Once the official
accepts the bribe, the vigilance enters the office and arrests the official
who took the bribe red handed (literally). But there are ways to circumvent
this by depositing the bribe indirectly to the guy(proxy) who sells tea
outside the govt. office from whom the govt official later collects it from.

~~~
cryptozeus
It is too good to be true, police would have smashed him just out of ego

~~~
fellellor
Only if you want to see the worst in people.

The bribe accepting police is also, in many cases, not doing this out of
malice. Police financing in India is pretty fucked up, and I find it
surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and
overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas.

Anyways if you are the police in that situation, it makes much more sense to
let the "activist" sort of guy, who has gone to the trouble of procuring such
notes, go away and just wait for the next sucker to show up. Creating a scene
which will definitely get you attention, and fired/suspended is a more
stupider course of action.

~~~
brianfen
> I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such
> underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas.

At the risk of being downvoted, I feel compelled to offer a foreigner's
perspective here. As a foreigner who has lived in Bangalore, Mysore,
Hyderabad, and Mumbai for 2 to 6 months many times, I have to agree with the
other commenter that I did not find a functioning society. Things I saw during
my visits:

\- Cops refusing to file a report after a theft.

\- No medical or police help during accidents. It's up to the untrained
passers-by to administer some form of first aid and take an injured person to
medical care facility.

\- Motorcycle riders driving on sidewalks.

\- Cars driving on the wrong side of the road.

\- Drivers not yielding to pedestrians at crosswalks.

\- Tuk-tuks refusing rides in gross violation of government regulations.

\- Damage and pilferage of public property in Indian Railways.

\- Eunuchs extorting money from unsuspecting people in broad daylight.

Some of these things are not exceptions but the rule. This does not
consititute a functioning society per my expectations and standard of living.
This is a total breakdown of law, order, civility, decency, and courtesy in
society.

~~~
naruvimama
Agree with you entirely.

When the British left India, there was officially a transfer of power to the
congress party. The first prime minister was appointed by the party. The
constitution, the police, the bureaucracy and the court system was inherited
by the people.

Unlike the developed world or China or Vietnam, India did not go through a
bloody revolution. What that meant is that systems that were explicitly meant
to harass and exploit the people is what we have inherited.

India runs two parallel systems, the official system and the traditional
system. In the past [up until recently] urbanites [directly or indirectly
worked for the govt] who were also the elitists suffered the official system
but also benefited from it. The rural masses [80+%] were out of the official
system.

Today with greater urbanisation, more and more people not used to the official
system and forced to deal with it in their own way. First generation urbanites
out number the original city dwellers.

There is a need to have a small government, lower red tape, hopefully the new
government which has an overwhelming majority can carry out the overhaul
necessary to set things right.

In a way Trump and his trade war can be a good thing and push Indians to
realise, that they can not continue being the "source of raw material, cheap
labour and a huge captive market" \- exactly how the colonist always wanted us
to be.

~~~
naravara
You’ve diagnosed the problem well, but I don’t understand how that leads to
“smaller government” being a solution. In many regards are relate to civic
responsibility, India probably needs bigger government. They need it both to
enforce the small laws (litter, traffic rules, safety regulations) as well as
building the sustained infrastructure to make life more convenient (mass
transit to deal with traffic, public housing so people aren’t in slums,
sanitation services to clean up after everything, etc.) And then there is the
need to create and maintain the public spaces to accommodate all these people,
like parks and libraries.

~~~
1024core
I think both of you are right. We need a smaller _existing_ type of
government, and we need a bigger _new type_ of government, which is more
answerable to the people.

Consider, for example, the police force. They are not customer (inasmuch as
you can call the voter/taxpayer a customer) oriented force; they are a
_subjugation_ force. They carry sticks around, which they wield with gay
abandon. Many of the forms of power in the current system are meant to keep
the people down and subservient.

To continue this example: what we need are fewer state-level (where "state" is
the region in question) police, and more local (city-level or district-level)
police. We need more power on quality-of-life issues devolved to the local
bodies, and less with the state or the feds.

~~~
naravara
Local control is a double edged sword. It may make them more sensitive to
local issues if they’re part of the community, but it can also lead to
arbitrary enforcement or non-enforcement from one area to another or between
one group or another.

The smaller the political unit, the more likely it is to be dominated by a
clique of people. This can lead to corruption, but even in a non-corrupt
setting it can lead to racist, casteist, or other kinds of discriminatory
decisions about enforcement or resource allocation.

------
oconnor663
I wonder how similar bribery culture is to tip culture. In the US where we tip
restaurant workers, restaurant wages are often much lower than comparable
positions in industries that don't have tipping, so much so that the
difference is often explicitly included in minimum wage laws. Do countries
with more bribery experience a similar effect, where the wages of police
officers and other bribery-prone worker are much lower than they would
otherwise be?

If so, that creates a pretty tricky equilibrium problem. Even if I think
bribery is ethically wrong, I don't want to be in a position where I'm asking
someone else to accept less than their "fair"/expected/equilibrium wage.
Higher wages might be a prerequisite for getting rid of a culture of bribery,
but at the same time, raising wages per se probably doesn't do much to reduce
bribery in the short term?

~~~
vbezhenar
Yes. Policemen are getting pretty low wages. But there are always a lot of
people who want to work there, because they can get bribes. And they actually
paying percentage of those bribes to their higher-ups and so on, so it's like
a pyramid. And a lot of people want things to stay that way. Policemen are
getting good income. Their masters are getting huge income. Ordinary people
can pay much less to policeman, than they would pay in fines. It's that
terrible win-win to everyone situation and that makes it very hard to destroy.

~~~
oconnor663
> It's that terrible win-win to everyone situation and that makes it very hard
> to destroy.

It does make it sound like there's a bribery-free equilibrium really close by
though. Like imagine all of these things happened as part of a single reform:

\- Policeman and management salaries go up.

\- Fines go down.

\- Taxes go up.

\- Anti-bribery enforcement goes _way_ up.

The idea would be to acknowledge that regardless of the bribery culture, the
typical policeman might be doing a decent job and doesn't necessarily deserve
an effective pay cut. The amount of money they're getting today is in some
sense their "market rate", and the goal is to improve the efficiency and
transparency of the system in other ways without shifting that market rate.
Likewise the goal would be that the tax increases for citizens would be
designed to match what they're paying in bribes and fines today, so they
wouldn't actually end up paying more.

I assume the hard part is that each of these things by itself might make the
problem worse, and it's only if they all change at the same time that you get
a coherent result that's "good for everyone". And there are probably a ton of
other factors to add to the list. (Like tax enforcement. Is it even possible
to raise taxes to accommodate salary increases and fee decreases? If the tax
code needs to be reformed before people will accept stricter enforcement of
it, what are those reforms, and who would fight them?)

~~~
vbezhenar
People don't respect police, so when government would want to massively
increase their salaries, people would protest against it. Fines go down is a
good thing for sure, but it'll reduce amount of money going to local budgets,
so people in government will protest against it (because they'll need to find
money to replace those from reduced fines). Taxes go up: nobody likes it.
Anti-bribery goes way up: when everyone's corrupt, nobody wants it.

It might work when someone like president or minister really wants to do that
and have support. But it's more like mini-revolution. It's hard to go there
evolutionary. But may be I'm wrong.

~~~
zahrc
Hah I really love discussions like that, everyone is right to some certain
point.

If there would be one size fits all solution, we’d had one of those.

Generally the quintessence is the big role of money. But you just can’t create
money out of nothing. Money comes from actions, money causes actions. If the
Cashflow is redirected, something else will suffer from it.

------
hirundo
Could negative currency be useful? For instance a fungible, negotiable debt
instrument, registered on a blockchain so it can't be unilaterally destroyed.
Put contractual language on it to the effect that "Registering acceptance of
this note obligates you to pay $X to the U.S. treasury by date Y."

Bob buys an apple from Alice but doesn't have the cash, so instead
accepts/registers a -$1 note from Alice, who now has less of a tax obligation
to the treasury. A portion of the negative purchase price is for insurance and
interest, so the positive price of the apple is a lower absolute value.

It could be a low friction mechanism for small loan transactions.

~~~
skykooler
What's to stop someone throwing negative value currency in the trash and
thereby gaining money?

~~~
rtkwe
In OP's proposal it's all blockchain (jazz hands) so there's no disposing of
it.

------
aaronharnly
Zero-currency notes have been generated for most of the world:
[http://zerocurrency.org/](http://zerocurrency.org/)

~~~
aatharuv
The website hasn't been updated for at least 2 years though.

(Under America, it still lists Barack Obama as the President.

~~~
ketralnis
That doesn't seem like a problem unless you're trying to rely on their
population figures or something

~~~
Waterluvian
It's a pretty great example of the wisdom of "doing one thing well." This site
should just have a Wikipedia link to each country.

~~~
acct1771
Or scrape/API, at most.

------
thtthings
I don't think people actually use the note though. I don't see anyone having
guts to give that note to policemen or government officials in India.

Everyone in India just like the US is scared of the Police and know not to
mess with them.

~~~
swamy_g
People in US are scared of the police? I am from India and have been in US for
a while now and have never been scared of the cops (unlike my time in India).

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
Indian cops may take take bribes, but they're unlikely to shoot you at a
traffic stop. (Unless you "encounter" them in the wrong place, that is.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounter_killings_by_police#I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounter_killings_by_police#In_India)

------
bifrost
Wow, thats pretty cool, I had no idea. I am a bit shocked that it works
though.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I am a bit shocked that it works though_

It's a shaming mechanism.

If an official is committed to collecting a bribe, it will be useless. But
some corrupt officials might be responsive to a verbal dressing down. Handing
over a zero-rupee note is less intimidating than delivering a lecture.

~~~
travisjungroth
I think it’s also a strong statement of your position when it comes to bribes.

A shakedown for a bribe is a negotiation. If a person is told “pay this $100
fee right now or I’ll have to take you in” and says “no”, the cop may lower
the price, raise the price, threaten more, or follow through on the threat to
try to get the person to pay up. But if you have a piece of paper that says “I
am so against bribery that I carry around pieces of paper that say so” it
makes the cop lose hope of getting the bribe. At that point, why bother with
the work of arresting them?

~~~
bubblethink
>why bother with the work of arresting them?

Sport, ego, anger, setting precedent, higher payout after arresting etc. Any
number of reasons. It's all fun and games to give 0 rupee notes, until you are
locked up. And then your bribe to get out has gone up manifold, unless you are
willing to fight it out in a court (which you aren't).

~~~
inflatableDodo
I'd get rum, cushions and a book delivered under the guise of someone claiming
to be fetching money.

edit - and a bundle of zero rupee notes to distribute round the jail, along
with half the rum and a promise to send more rum, the quicker I get out.

~~~
tedunangst
Arrested by a corrupt cop? Just send out for some rum and a book. One has to
wonder why more people don't do this. Instead they spend their time worrying
that maybe something unpleasant will happen.

~~~
inflatableDodo
This is why I have just shared the rum with people with extravagant facial
tattoos.

------
yalogin
I don't see how this is anything but a feel good idea. No one would even think
of implementing it. Get pulled over by a corrupt cop and give him this note,
he will make sure you pay him the bribe and then screw you over. Nothing but
an intellectual exercise in optimism and hope.

------
xrisk
I've never seen this note in India and didn't know that something like this
existed.

~~~
unreal37
It's not official currency.

------
kumarvvr
The type of corruption that destroys societies, does not happen with notes
changing hands.

------
benatkin
Reminds me of this quote from Billy Madison:

"At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to
anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is
now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have
mercy on your soul."

Wonder if it feels as good to give zero rupees as it does to give zero points,
or zero fucks.

------
klyrs
Some weird and masochistic part of me wants to hand my passport to a US border
guard with one of these tucked into it. Seems harmless but a dumb way to waste
an afternoon

~~~
jacquesm
And all the other afternoons that you spend in the future when you cross that
border inbound.

------
hi41
How come most of the western countries have only little corruption? How come
they did not catch the fever of corruption when previous generations practiced
such crimes as slavery and colonialism? Does Judie-Christianity look down on
corruption because it destroys ones own society while it is okay with slavery
and colonialism because it destroys other societies?

~~~
w0de0
The correlation between Judeo-Christianity and lack of corruption is
negligible. There are plenty of Christian countries with endemic corruption,
and several non-Christian countries without (Japan comes to mind).

The correlation between countries which do not pay their civil servants a
living/middle-class wage and corruption is a much better direction for your
suppositions.

~~~
hi41
Yes, I think that is a better way to understand it. Thank you.

------
xd_dino
How much do I have to pay to get a Zero Rupee note?

~~~
esnible3
If you have the right paper you can download and print your own notes from
[https://5thpillar.org/programs/zero-rupee-
note/](https://5thpillar.org/programs/zero-rupee-note/)

I believe note will be historically important. I wanted an example for my
currency collection. Although Fifth Pillar printed more than a million of
these notes and has been distributing them for six years they have been
scarcer than hen's teeth on the collectors' market.

I had no luck contacting 5th Pillar. I tried repeatedly from 2009 to 2013
without success. In 2014 I was able to obtain samples from Joel's Coins
website. They were selling for $2/note (but cheaper in quantity), far more
than the face value of the 50 rupee note they imitate. Because I could find no
examples with a provenance to 5th Pillar I am not 100% certain the examples
sold to collectors in 2014 were produced by 5th Pillar.

------
yokohummer7
> Only one side of the note is printed to resemble currency so as not to run
> afoul of counterfeiting laws.

Doesn't it? To know for sure we need to take it to the court.

~~~
Piskvorrr
This usually hinges on intent. The most common money-exchange scam is exactly
this: the mark receives a stack of one-sided copies instead of actual
currency, and the perp runs away before the mark notices. People _have_ gone
to prison for this.

~~~
CoryG89
Someone has gone to prison for trying to pass off one-sided copies of actual
currency? Seems pretty unlikely to me. Would be interested in reading about an
actual case of this happening.

~~~
tantalor
> Seems pretty unlikely

Why? The example from Piskvorrr is textbook violation of 18 U.S.C. 473:
(paraphrasing here) Handing out fake money _with the intent that it believed
to be real_ is a crime.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/473](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/473)

~~~
CoryG89
Late reply here, but I was referring to the one-sided aspect. Just seems
unlikely to me that someone would realistically intend for a one-sided copy of
currency to be believed as real. Just seems like the threshold for printing
both sides is so low that anyone who only printed one side must not _really_
be intending for it to be taken as real, at least not for very long.

~~~
Piskvorrr
"Not for very long" \- that's exactly the point of the currency-exchange scam:

\- mark gets an offer of a great exchange rate from the con-man

\- mark hands over real money

\- gets a stack of something - the first few bills on the top and bottom are
actual local currency, but most of it are one-sided counterfeits.

\- con-man counts the money in a way that doesn't give this away - this
obviously requires sleight of hand and insufficient lighting

\- con-man disappears in crowd

\- mark eventually realizes that most of the stack is worthless

The whole con takes a minute or two at most: that's not very long at all.

The critical section "mark no longer has original currency but hasn't yet
realized he has been swindled" is as short as _a few seconds_ ; this has even
been done with plain paper in some particularly audacious cases.

------
manojlds
Well, we Indians did invent zero!

------
Nanocurrency
Hopefully people actually have the guts to use these with public servants.

------
hornetblack
Trier made €0 notes with Karl Marx images on them to celebrate his 200th
birthday... Which they sold for €3 each.

[https://www.thelocal.de/20180418/karl-marxs-birth-city-
sells...](https://www.thelocal.de/20180418/karl-marxs-birth-city-sells-zero-
euro-bills-for-his-200th-birthday)

~~~
huhtenberg
It's the zero-euro commemorative banknotes. Purely collectible items. I have a
couple from France and Italy, and they were €1 each.

[https://eurocommemorative.com/en/13-0-banknote](https://eurocommemorative.com/en/13-0-banknote)

~~~
jansan
We got several, too. What I like about them is the really good quality,
including watermark and other anti-counterfeiting features. It's a nice
souvenir, relatively cheap and doesn't take up much space in your luggage.

------
tareqak
For some reason, this joke/meme came to my mind immediately when I read the
Wikipedia page:

Me: I'd like a Coke please. Waiter/Waitress: Is Pepsi OK? Me: Is Monopoly
money OK?

------
arcticgeek
Zero bucks given.

------
emaster
Interestingly, the number zero was invented in India

~~~
erklik
The ancient Egyptians had a conception of zero, and used a herioglypical
symbol for zero. China had a counting rod system, with an empty space being a
zero and Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections had a round symbol being used
for zero. Other authors were familiar with the concept of negative numbers.

These are alll before Indian "invention" (probably be discovery) of zero.

~~~
kamaal
It ain't that hard to understand.

Lets say you are a hunter gatherer, you hunted a pig in the forest. You and
your fellow cave mates had a good meal. Another cave mate arrives an hour
later. Asks how many pigs you hunted, your reply 1, asks how much is left,
given you had everything, and nothing is left, what answer would you give?

Congratulations you just _invented zero_ in 100000 BC.

~~~
naniid
What you are defining is zero as quantity. Thats not that difficult. What is
brilliant is zero as a place holder which practically made counting to big
numbers a breeze.

------
bayareanative
Lmao. That's awesome. Just don't be surprised about people being disappeared
down a dark alley.

