Peter: I think your reader’s entropy theory is superb. Pennies also serve

an educational purpose, though. I have one of those battery-powered

gadgets — you buy them from Staples — that sorts your spare change for

you. I wrap the coins when the stacks are full, then save them. At Chinese

New Year, as a family tradition, I take them down to the bank and cash them

in, for an average deposit slip of around $120. The kids are kept aware of

all this. From it they learn the very useful lesson that many a mickle maks

a muckle

Here is a penny story. The eccentric American psychologist W.H. Sheldon (he

popularized the terms “ectomorph,” “mesomorph,” “endomorph”) was also an

expert on early American pennies, and wrote the definitive work on them. To

help with this book, the American Numismatic Society gave Sheldon access to

its collections. Long afterwards, when Sheldon was dead, the curators of

these collections noticed that Sheldon had taken particularly valuable

specimens for his own collection, substituting inferior specimens of the

same coins. I believe he did the same thing with another collection.

On your earlier question — how did the British people let their govt get

away with currency conversion? — I offer the following explanations.

(1) The British are more deferential to authority than Americans are — the

legacy of centuries under a confident landed aristocracy. When told to do

something they don’t like, they will do it, venting their unhappiness by

grumbling and slacking. Americans, in the same situation, would be much

more likely to organize against the authorities, or just refuse orders. We

Americans are a difficult and rebellious people — long may we remain so!

It is for this reason that the post-1960s loosening of social bonds and

de-legitimization of authority has had much more devastating effects in

Britain — see any article by Theodore Dalrymple

— than

here.

(2) The late 1960s-early 1970s were the high tide of postwar British

collectivism (do a Google on “Butlin’s Holiday Camps”). British govts got

away with all sorts of atrocities. Even worse than the decimal currency

business was the “rationalization” of the ancient British county system, in

which domains like Rutland and Middlesex disappeared altogether, and fine

old Scottish counties like Kirkcudbrightshire (pronounced

“keer-coo-bree-shuh”) disappeared into monstrosities named — I am not

making this up — “Central,” “Borders,” and “Highland.” This was too much

even for the British to swallow, and some of it was reversed in 1998.