Cowrie Inflation, 1770

Lyrics

The year is seventeen seventy.
The place, the Bight of Benin.
The lesson for today is on inflation.
But the currency is not paper.
And the asset... is human.
Consider the shell. *Cypraea moneta*.
The money cowrie.
Harvested by women in the Maldives, dried in the sun.
Shipped by the ton in the dark holds of Dutch and British vessels.
For centuries, a stable store of value.
A bride price. A tax. A debt paid.
Twenty-five thousand shells for a healthy man in his prime.
A known quantity. A settled price.
Then the floodgates open.
The ships bring more. And more.
And the price of a soul begins to float.
From twenty-five thousand...
to one hundred and seventy-six thousand.
The terrible arithmetic of a devalued promise.
More shells per soul.
More shells. More souls.
Imagine the counting.
Strung on cords of forty. Bundled into bags of five thousand.
The weight of the old price was a burden.
The weight of the new one... an absurdity.
Piled high in the barracoons of Ouidah.
A mountain of cheap white gloss for a single life.
A currency so abundant it felt like sand.
Slipping through the fingers of the merchants. African and European alike.
The floodgates are open.
The ships bring more. And more.
And the price of a soul is unmoored.
From twenty-five thousand...
to one hundred and seventy-six thousand.
The terrible arithmetic of a devalued promise.
More shells per soul.
More shells. More souls.
Some might call this a mercy.
A higher price. A greater value placed on a life.
Do not be fooled. This is the logic of bad faith.
When you print more money, the money is worth less.
The life is not worth more.
The transaction simply becomes easier.
The machine is greased with worthless shells.
The ledger fills with names we will never know.
One hundred and seventy-six thousand.
A number that means everything.
And nothing at all.
The sound of the sea in a million empty shells.
Class dismissed.