The best reason so far not to do the coin trick

[drwex]

Props to Felix Salmon in his blog for pushing commonsense reasoning against the coin trick: it's just going to make the situation worse.

To wit, we get into this mess because the Republicans in the House are intransigent. Who here thinks doing an end-run around them is going to make them more cooperative?

Comments

[docorion.livejournal.com]

This. It's the reason I have a minor love for the coin trick; it strikes me as a way to basically say "If you're going to act like children..."

At the same time, the coin trick is (forgive me) a one trick pony, in the sense that it will only work once. Congress will look at it, once it's done, and say "Well, no more of *that*, and pass a remarkably restrictive coining law. Bad juju, and thus bad choice all round. But still, it would be a neat hack in the MIT sense...("a clever prank that amuses and delights everyone")

(OK, not everyone. But you get the idea...)