Hug Mining

Hug Mining Certificates are now available for purchase on eBay!

Hug Mining Certificates - Gold - Eight cards - Free case included

Hug Mining Certificates - Blue - Thirty cards - Free case included

What is hug mining?

1) You meet up with a friend you haven't seen in a while. At the end of the gathering, you both sign two Hug Mining Certificates. You write a short description of the gathering on the back. You keep one. Your friend keeps one. Instant and completely unique memento of a moment in your friendship. Maybe you literally hugged. Maybe you are still being Covid-careful and air-hugged. The memory doesn't even have to include a hug. Fist bump, elbow bump, or just eye contact. If it made you happy, that's a Hug.

2) #1 above, but you and your friend sign four Hug Mining Certificates. Why four? You keep two, your friend keeps two. You both hold on to one each for your permanent collections. You both also wait about a year and then sell the extra ones on eBay. Or wait until you and/or your friend becomes famous, and then sell them. I can't promise the signed cards will sell, but have you seen what people sell on eBay?

3) Hug Mining is also a way to correct small market failures by locally expanding the money supply. Suppose you buy a new shirt. To use round numbers, let's say the shirt costs $100. So, when you buy the shirt, it is worth $100. However, as soon as you walk out of the store, the shirt is now worth much less, even though you haven't worn it yet. The shirt has $100 of use value, but if you attempt to sell it, it may have a resale value of $50, or less. Or, suppose you have worn the shirt. Maybe you have used half of its original value. So, now you have a shirt that has $50 of use value, but if you attempt to sell it, maybe you can get $25, if that. You can donate the shirt, but you get almost nothing back for it on your taxes. (And clothing is often dropped off at donation sites in garbage bags, and then is sold overseas, causing problems for local economies there.)

Short of getting elected to the US Congress and reforming the tax code, what can you do?

Mine a Hug!

In the first scenario, you sell a used item with $100 of use value for $50 of cash. That's just the market for used goods. Fine, but you can make up for it by signing two Hug Mining Certificates with the buyer. This allows the transaction to create new value, for both people in the transaction.

If you are donating the item, mining a hug creates value by acknowledging the value of the giver and the receiver, as well as the value of the item. While we are at it, I recommend donating clothing and other items in gift bags, not garbage bags. This would require some restructuring of the donation system, but if we are going to offer help, let's do it right.

4) Similar to #3 above, Hug Mining is an updated way to implement the Free Silver and Bimetallism approaches to expansionary monetary policy of the 1896 and 1900 US Presidential elections. Sixteen to One!

5) The idea behind Hug Mining Certificates is loosely based on "Gold Certificates" and "Silver Certificates" which were forms of US paper currency, hence the "certificate" in "Hug Mining Certificate". The idea is also loosely based on ideas which have motivated local currencies, such as Ithaca Hours, and emergency currencies: if people locally don't have enough money to conduct business with each other, create your own local currency to reduce barriers to local commerce.

6) Hug Mining is like Bitcoin Mining, but no servers burning forests worth of power are required, and you can hold Hug Mining Certificates in your hand.

7) Use Hug Mining Certificates as a base for Autographed Musical Quotations (AMQS), or any autograph collecting.

8) Hug mining is fun!

More Hug Mining Ideas

There are currently Hug Mining Certificates in four colors: Gold, Silver, Blue and Red. Instead of rushing a life decision with a single date, try a four-part not-date (no expectations and no pressure, no rapid rejection and no ghosting). Assign each color to an activity or attribute. For each activity your person successfully completes, give him or her a signed Hug Mining Certificate of the corresponding color. When s/he has earned all four Hug Mining Certificates, then you will know your person may be worthy - or at least has a sense of humor.

More thoughts on monetary policy courtesy of 1896

Hug Mining creates value and respect, using mutually verified hugs and other good deeds.
Hug Mining is undergirded by a monetary philosophy descended from the Free Silver movement of the 1896 and 1900 US Presidential elections.
"Sound Money" may have won the day in 1900, but its lie was demonstrated by the Panic of 1907 and the subsequent creation of the Federal Reserve.
The US went off the Gold Standard in 1934.

For whom is the money sound, and for whom does the money fail?

(This poster shows how Sound Money proponents used thinly veiled racist and classist prejudice to divert attention from their economic arguments, or lack thereof, for a rigid gold standard monetary policy which would primarily benefit the most wealthy, while creating economic volatility for most everyone else.
The economics for Hug Mining will be developed in more detail later; the basic concept is that an expansionary monetary policy, within limits and not infinitely expansionary, benefits the many by correcting or compensating for small market failures, which failures tend to flow in one direction.
Hug Mining affords localized correction of small market failures by allowing people to realize the value of their otherwise undervalued goods and deeds.)

Rah Rah, Three Cheers for Sixteen To One!

Join the Hug Mining movement - turn your hugs (verified with mutual consent and Covid safety precautions) into value!