The Big-Brained Superheroes' Handbook: Appendix 1 of X

One learns many things at The Big-Brained Superheroes Club that one might find nearly impossible to learn anywhere else.  For instance, did you know that a shiny, hot pink foil wig is worth less than $5 because it’s made out of a lowly synthetic material instead of being made out of real hair?  You just try finding that bit of information in your economic textbooks.

Big-Brained Superheroes, on the other hand, have something better than textbooks.  We have the Big-Brained Superheroes Club store.

The Big-Brained Superheroes Club store and bank combination is a mechanism we’ve adopted to help us rapidly reward Club members for using their superpowers.  Our BBSC bank includes singles, quarters (which are literally singles cut into quarter pieces), fives, and tens.  (We haven’t printed out any benjamins or base-twelve-specific bills.  Yet.)  Our store includes toys, games, books, etc that have been generously donated by various community-minded folks (and we’re always looking for more!). The evolution of the store and bank combination is something we’ll cover in an Origins post at some point, but here’s the structure of the thing so far:

At the beginning of each Club meeting, all the Big-Brained Superheroes get together and collectively price out several of the most recently donated items for the store.  Our pricing model is evolving, but as of now, it’s based on some ambiguous combination of diplomatic consensus and the very visible hand of the meeting moderator. After the pricing and other meeting opening ceremonies are complete, the Big-Brained Superheroes collect their bank accounts (pocket folders containing all the Big-Brained Superhero Bucks they’ve saved so far) and get to work earning more and more and more BBS Bucks.  Then, at the end of the day, the BBSes decide how much they’re going to spend at the store and how much they’re going to save in the bank for (currently) 10% interest (though we’re thinking of moving to a Wheel of Interest that ranges from 6-12% just to keep the math interesting).  Then, they tally their savings and spendings on the fronts of their bank accounts and put them back in the bank.

Some intriguing observations we’ve made during this process:

1. It’s been enlightening to see how guileless our young Big-Brained Superheroes have been in their approaches to pricing so far;
2. Much to our surprise, on the very first day, our young Big-Brained Superheroes saved almost all of their BBS Bucks;
3. The consensus-driven item pricing that takes place at the beginning of each meeting seems to engage both our Empowerment and our Teamwork superpowers;
4. There are early signs of a direct relationship between feelings of Empowerment during a meeting and savings at the end of a meeting.  That is, from day one, it has appeared that the better the meeting went for a young Big-Brained Superhero, the less the young BBS spent at the end of it.  Whether this seeming relationship would withstand more rigorous study or more incredibly awesome BBSC store items remains in question.