"The shadow economy of FPC Morgantown runs on pouches of mackerel. Yes, the fish. Much like any fiat, or precious metal standard there is no intrinsic value to the currency, to the mackerel. You might be a smart ass thinking to yourself that surely you can eat the mackerel if you wanted and there is some amount of protein that some prison economist has a model for deriving intrinsic value based on caloric density and protein richness. But alas, no."
"Most of the mackerel in circulation is so old that eating it would most certainly result in a visit to the medical station or worse a nasty case of the runs. Trust me when I say the last place you want to have the runs is in a communal toilet block that 100 other guys make use of as well."
"So no, the mackerel - also known as Macks - are certainly not for eating. But why mackerel? Why not chicken, salmon, tuna, or like other prisons, stamps? Stamps seem like a more logical choice, they have multiple face value denominations, they are a form of government tender, they have some value on the outside, they are hard to counterfeit, they do not go rancid after time, and in the words of the gentleman I met in the laundry room last night "doggon thangs smell like pussy that gon' rotten"."
Prisoners at FPC Morgantown use pouches of canned mackerel, called Macks, as the primary medium of exchange within a shadow economy. Most Macks are inedible because they are old and rancid, so they function as tokens rather than food. Alternative items like postage stamps offer denominations, outside value, and durability, but Macks remain dominant due to local supply and preference. Federal prisoners obtain dollars either through outside deposits into Bureau of Prisons trust accounts or by working mandatory prison jobs. Prison job wages range from $0.20 to $1.00 per hour, making earned income insufficient for most needs.
Read at Bitcoin Magazine
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