By Astonishing Coincidence, the L.A Fire Tragedy was Caused by My Pet Policy Issue: the Penny
This shockingly direct causal pathway between penny production and national tragedy
While I’ve been galavanting across the south east with the speed of a SR-71 and the direction of a headless chicken, Nika Scothorne produced yet another incredible guest essay for Intentionally Left Blank. Please enjoy and consider subscribing to Nika’s own substack. You really should because it’s great and there is something exciting coming soon. ~ John
99 Problems, but that would be a blessing
I have a problem. Or, to be more precise, I have 16,542 problems. 16 of them are in my pants pocket, another four in my jacket. 13 are in between my couch cushions, and another two beneath. Most of the remaining 16,507 problems are crammed into mason jars, an old glass milk bottle, and for some reason a sock. These problems are pennies. Except for two. Two of them are related to poor personal conduct on my part, but the rest are pennies!
You see, I don’t think pennies have any place in respectable society. What can you even buy with a penny? At some hardware stores, you can probably find loose washers that are listed as a cent each, but if you bring it to the register, coin and washer in hand, you’ll just be laughed at and told to just take it: it’s not worth the time to ring it up.
If you try to pay with pennies, a laugh is the kindest response you’ll get. Try exchanging 500 of them for a regular, whole milk, small, latte to-go, please and watch your chic-banged barista set a regional record for disgust crammed into a single arched eyebrow.
16,540 pennies are presently settler-colonizing my studio apartment. That is equivalent to $165.40 in real money except for one important detail, I can’t f***king spend it.
$165.40 is still a respectable amount of money, even after years of high inflation. I could buy 110 samosas at that place in Queens I like, a pair of donegal wool slacks or like, three dozen eggs and a tank of gas. But, as we previously covered, neither Pakistani cooks, British tailors, or Whole Foods will accept pennies as legal tender.
Now, I consider myself a fair-minded person, and not unnecessarily obstinate, so I will happily preempt a solution you, dear reader, are likely to proffer. Pennies may not be traded for samosas, but they can be traded for nickels, and dimes and any of the not useless coinage. But when was the last time I saw a coin-changer?! TD bank pulled their Penny Arcades following a law suit that found the machines undercounted change by as much as a dime per dollar.
I suppose I could trek around to a grocery store and see if I can find a coin changer there, accepting I’ll eat the 10% change fee and walk out with a mere $148.86. But I don’t have a car, that sort of grocery store is far away, and do you have any idea how much 16,540 pennies weighs? At 2.5 grams per cent, that’s NINETY ONE POUNDS!! 91 lbs, 6.5 stone, 2.8 slugs, 2.02 talents, or .728 Scothornes.
I suppose I’ll just have to content myself with using them to throw at the headphone-less sound enjoyers on the subway.
In Big Zinc (That’s Latin for “Against Big Zinc”)
So why on earth are pennies still being produced? “You just say that because you’ve never been poor enough to have to count pennies.” At my poorest, I had 43 cents. That doesn’t change the fact that those 43 cents could have bought me 1 single Goldberg’s peanut chew with 18 cents left over, and not much else.
The penny, rounding down, simply has zero value.
The smallest denomination coin ever minted in America was the half-cent, which was first minted in 1793. At the time, it had a purchasing power equivalent to around 16 2025 cents. To make this extremely clear: the lowest denomination coin EVER in our country’s history had a real value higher than today’s penny, nickel, AND dime, all added together.
The impecunious of 1793 survived with the half-cent, and the unempennied now will survive with the nickel (though I’m coming for you next, Nickel!)
All this useless divisibility comes at an enormous cost. In 2023, $179 million was spent by the U.S government to mint around 6 billion pennies that are all destined to end up in the pockets, change jars, trash heaps, and subway cars of the world.
“But”, the thoughtful reader might say, “$179 million spent isn’t really $179 million lost, is it?”
No, you’re quite right. Money is money after all, and you still have 6 billion units to multiply by practically worthless. It’s really only around $100 million in real value that was lost. How is that? The metal, mostly zinc, that is used to mint a penny has a value approaching 3 cents per cent. That’s right, were it not a federal crime to do so, you could more than double your money by melting down your pennies and selling the metal for scrap.
Yet despite this incredible perversion of all that is good and right in the world, I have had the hardest time convincing anyone that this is a problem that affects them, let alone one that they should get incensed about! Even standing on the street corner reciting these basic facts while throwing pennies at people has failed to earn a single convert to the Defund the Penny cause!
Which is why, I admit, I was the tiniest bit happy when I heard the news of the horrific tragedy in LA.
Molotov Change Drawer
As of Jan 10, 2024, more than 10,000 homes and businesses have been destroyed in L.A. The footage, photos, and stories coming out of that city are apocalyptic. Nether the scale of the human tragedy nor the property damage will be measured in such a diminutive scale as pennies. And truly, my heart goes out to everyone affected.
But.
Finally.
People were going to see the true cost of indulging Big Zinc and the Penny-Producing PAC.
You see, by unbelievable coincidence, the very thing that gets me out of bed and onto a sidewalk soapbox every morning is the incredibly direct and proximate cause of the L.A. wildfires.
Yes, that’s right! The penny you were just handed back in change is, undeniably, the reason why millions of people are now choking on smoke and preparing for evacuation.
WAKE UP!
There are more than 60 zinc mines in California, each one sucking up water and divorcing the land from its natural processes. Yes, most California zinc mining happens closer to San Fransisco, in Alameda county, but unjust mining anywhere is unjust mining everywhere!
But the real problem is even closer to you than you realize. Your cashier probably doesn’t tell you this when they hand you a pile of pennies, but that zinc in your hand is FLAMMABLE AND EXPLOSIVE! That’s right, zinc + oxidizing agent = big boom! One of those oxidizing agents is sulphur and, wouldn’t you know it, just a little bit north of L.A. is Sulpher Mountain.
The government is basically forcing these chemical bombs into our pockets, and it’s only a matter of time before some poor sap encounters some sulphur runoff and BOOM! Sparks fly, conflagrations break out, and whose fault is it really?
Although it appears the firefighters themselves are working admirably, surely, on the margins, there were firefighters that couldn’t perform at 100% because they were weighed down by too many cents.
And of course, the real problem is always with management. As questions are being raised about budget allocation, reservoir maintenance, and pump redundancies, is it possible that these all have their root in penny-related distraction? There’s no doubt in my mind!
Hope and (less) change
I know this is a horrible tragedy, but the 90% pure silver lining is that we can learn something from it. After you donate to a relief fund (only donate in multiples of five cents, please!!), take the time to write your local politicians about the most pressing issue of our time: the one I, personally, am unhealthily preoccupied with.
In case the tone of this essay did not make this abundantly clear, this is a satirical essay. Pennies are a problem, but I doubt they bare any responsibility for the awful wildfires now ravaging Los Angeles. Genuinely, our thoughts are with the victims of these fires. It is, of course, important to investigate every potential contributing factor in the hopes of preventing this tragedy from happening again, but it is a good rule of thumb that one should avoid pointing fingers in the throws of tragedy. Time plus prudence and doggedness will probably lead to a better postmortem than hot takes that just so happen to align with our priors.
If you are so inclined, please consider donating to two of our friends who have lost their homes in these fires.
This artist may be able to help: https://www.staceyleewebber.com/enameled-cents
At my poorest, I paid for a (partial) tank of gas in pennies. I think it's the most ashamed I've ever been in my life, but the cashier was really sweet about it.
Now I just go to Coinstar at the grocery store. Still embarrassing (is there a reason that has to be the loudest machine known to man?), and I don't get the full amount, but it beats the pounds of metal weighing me down!