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Chassignite Interest

William Loughborough once raised the question of how people would get tickets for sports finals in a hyper-egalitarian society. In a way, we already use money in its capacity as a measurement of economic worth to let us into such things. Sadly economic worth doesn't tacit well with things more traditionally considered virtuous such as morality and charity; indeed the more charitable you are, the less money you'll have!

Plenty of things are different from sports finals though in that the only bar for being allowed to participate or own or whatever is that you're interested. Whoever wants a particular book in a library can usually get it: libraries try to make sure that really popular books are stocked, but books of moderate worth are almost always there when you need them. These days, even particularly rare books can be not too bad to track down, especially if you're an acedemic.

Probably the best illustration of what I mean, however, and the reason that this pattern is named as it is, is the idea of wanting to own Chassignite. Chassignite is a mineral that's only found in certain (not all) meteorites that come from the planet Mars. Most meteorites derive from the asteroid belt, with only an extremely small portion of meteorites coming from the moon, and an exceptionally small percentage coming from Mars. Indeed, there are only two Chassignite meteorites known, and not many other non-Chassignite Martian meteorites. The point is: Chassignite is rare.

And yet I own some Chassignite. How? Because the demand for it is relatively small, probably for two intercombined reasons: not many people know about Chassignite, and not many people probably care. The meteorite trade is a bit seedy in a way, in that probably more interesting finds end up getting sold off to collectors rather than be put in museums, but given how low purchasing demand is, I'm not too sad since it indicates that museum demand would probably be quite low too. At any rate, the first very famous Chassignite meteorite to have fallen is mostly in the hands of museums as I understand it; it's only the more recent find that's being sold off in any great quantity. The scientific value of all the bits sold off, too, seems to be very minimal indeed. It would be possible to write a very long essay on the intricacies of the meteorite trade; but that's not necessary for this pattern.

The point is that internal interest is a powerful egalitarian currency, and possibly even the best one that we currently have; so we should teach ourselves and others to utilise it.


Sean B. Palmer, inamidst.com