Member-only story
Fiction. Any resemblance to carbon credits is purely intentional.
He had enough killing credits to get Jeffrey Dahmer off death row. Murders were down. Well, not quite. The rate of increase had slowed. The point is: the system was working.
Nominally.
As the Earth rapidly grew hotter, tempers and violence flared. People were on edge. And, in America, everyone had guns. Naturally, murder became even more common. Instead of a random mass murder twice a week or so, there were dozens every day. EVERY goddam day.
The government sprang into action. The market could fix this. The market fixes everything. We just needed the right plan, the right incentives.
We didn’t want to move too fast. So, the wizards of Wall Street came up with a financial vehicle to do the job: Killing Credits! It would make murder reduction financially attractive. And Wall Street would make, well, a killing.
How It Works
Ambitious killers (of the Jeffrey Dahmer type) would be given a murder target — and over time the number of murders allowed would be reduced. Meanwhile, the Dahmer-like people could by a Killing Credit, for $5 or so, allowing him to purchase the right to commit an extra murder. The Killing Credit would be sold by another mass murderer who, that year, had killed fewer people…
