John Jones's Dollar
John Jones's Dollar
Take a board with 64 squares on it. Put a grain of wheat on the first square--two on the second--four on the third. Keep doubling in this manner and you will find there isn't enough wheat in the world to fill the sixty-fourth square. It can be the same with compound interest.
Book Excerpt
cial reservoirs together with the components from thousands of other corpses; how these elements are then synthetically combined into food tablets for those of us who are yet alive--thus completing an endless chain from the dead to the living. Naturally then, agriculture and stock-raising ceased, since the food problem, with which man had coped from time immemorial, was solved. The two direct results were, first--that land lost the inflated values it had possessed when it was necessary for tillage, and second--that men were at last given enough leisure to enter the fields of science and art.
"And as to the John Jones Dollar, which now embraced countless industries and vast territory on the earth, it stood, in value:
2621 700 years $912,000,000
"In truth, gentlemen, it now constituted the largest private fortune on the terrestrial globe. And in that year, 2621 A.D., there were thirteen generations yet to come, before John Jones the fortieth would arrive.
"To continue. In the year 27
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A potentially interesting story ruined by poor execution and a stupid ending.
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Odd 1927 story that postulates an interesting view of the future. Unfortunately, it's presented in the form of a college lecture, and just as dull as most. Keeler's novels are much better.
07/06/2015
A rather thin story for compound-interest fans. It is presented as a history lecture to future students. I suppose the main character is the lecturer--he\'s a bit pedantic.
Bank fees make the whole premise impossible.
Bank fees make the whole premise impossible.
05/09/2013
Pedantic little short story is a socialist's wet dream. Skip it.
06/15/2012
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