Counterintuitive Spring 2023

I am a nanny. I clean, I cook, I change diapers, and I also play board games. I am a professional Sorry player, a whiz at Chutes and Ladders, and not one to be messed with when playing Clue. But there is one game that I cannot seem to get into. In fact, I have never even sat down to a game of Monopoly in my life. A game that teaches children thievery and politics?  Count me out. Monopoly, however, introduces banking to children. In simpler words, it is about money. But when was the last time you were playing Monopoly on family game night and someone asked for your giant rock sculpture in the shape of a coin in exchange for their property?

The island of Yap in the South Pacific is remote in many aspects. They are off the beaten track geographically, and they are unique in the way they do many things, including payments. Giant stones in the familiar round shape of coins are traded and used as a currency system, something that any civilized person or group of people would think ridiculous. But is it? Milton Friedman’s paper titled The Island of Stone Money puts into perspective what these island natives have going for them. The currency, called Fei, provokes all sorts of thoughts for me as Friedman shares that the Yap will even leave their money where it lies. Literally too big to be moved, the Fei is not something that the Yap need physical protection over to sleep soundly at night, prompting me to ask the question “What is wrong with our society?”.

Us millennials have grown fond of the idea of money. It’s everywhere, it can do anything for you. People build their lives around it and put their trust in it like it’s their Lord and savior. Five reporters podcasting The Invention of Money challenge the existence and purpose of money. Is it fictional? More importantly, is necessary? According to the Yap, not the way we do it it’s not.  Another reporter from The Lie that Saved Brazil speaks of money giving people nightmares. She warns that messing with money is dangerous and has consequences, like the incident in Brazil where the currency system completely fell apart. Japan is seriously in debt, but has a differing factor in their country’s currency system. An article titled The Curious Case of Japan’s Economic Stimulus states of the prime minister  “Mr. Abe may be ignoring the conventional wisdom on spending, and bullying the Bank of Japan, for all the wrong reasons — but the fact is that he is actually providing fiscal and monetary stimulus at a time when every other advanced-country government is too much in the thrall of the Very Serious People to do something different. And so far the results have been entirely positive: no spike in interest rates, but a sharp fall in the yen, which is a very good thing for Japan”.

My generation is conditioned to think in terms of rich and poor; High and low class, wealth and poverty, professional NFL player’s mansion and homeless. I have seen money break down families, and I have seen it build up lives. I want to be indifferent towards the subject but unfortunately that is not possible in this day and age. Although I don’t remember when gas was lower than a single dollar or penny candy was all the rage, I remember when one hundred dollars was a huge amount. I remember when Christmas had a lot more presents under the tree.  These memories bring me back to questioning what is happening in today’s society. If the people of Yap can be comfortable and civilized by dropping off a huge stone in their neighbor’s yard for a couple chickens and cows, then why can’t we? If a man from the southern pacific island drops his Fei into the ocean, he will be content knowing that albeit gone, it is his. He owns it and he is rich in that knowledge. I believe that money is the source of controversy, feuds, and disagreements. After reading and listening about the Yap, my only question is why can’t we adapt their ways of thinking?

Friedman, Milton. “The Island Of Stone Money.” (n.d.): n. pag. Feb. 1991. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.

“The Invention Of Money.” N.p., 07 Jan. 2011. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.

Walt, Chana. “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR. NPR, 4 Oct. 2010. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.

Krugman, Paul. “The Curious Case of Japan’s Economic Stimulus.” truth-out.org. 22 Jan. 2013.

Your house is for sale and I’m going to purchase it with a large rock at the bottom of the ocean. Deal? This may sound crazy to you but this actually happened on an Island called Yap. Well I’m not so sure about the house part but they use large, carved stones as currency called fei. You’re probably wondering what’s so significant about some crazy people on an island using rocks, some heavier than a car, as currency. Well hopefully this will help you understand why these people are  so crazy.

Everyone wants to live the American dream, right? And in most instances an American dream involves wealth, money, and the green paper everyone seems to be obsessed about. What if I told you money isn’t real? It’s completely fiction and is merely just a legal tender. It represents an exchange but the actual bill isn’t literally worth what is says on it. An example, used in the pod cast “The Invention of Money”, when you pay an online bill all you do is click a button. And the money goes from your bank account to your supplier just like that. You don’t have to literally walk the money to the seller.

Another issue mentioned on the pod cast, that may help you better understand this concept is what happens when someone tries to count all of the currency out there at once. It is hard because you may end up double counting some money. For example, I deposit my cash into my bank account. Then the bank loans it to someone else to start a new business. So this man may have just bought into the system but he used my money right? It’s a very hard thing to understand and that’s why it’s so surprising to hear that money is fiction.

Of course we are the ones who place the values on material items. In an article I found called “Billionaire mind: Money Is NOT Real” the author goes on to say, “The material things have no ‘money’ value in themselves – we give that to them.” In the end it is a truly amazing concept that we place so much trust and value on a green piece of paper. Imagine if money just didn’t exist. Everyone would go out and do their jobs for no pay. It would seem as if there would be no point but then again you wouldn’t have to pay for anything. Everybody would help each other for free, what a great world that would be.

Works Cited

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” (1991): 1-5. Feb. 1991. Web.
Glass, Ira, and Chana Joffe-Walt

Friedman, Milton. “The Island Of Stone Money.” (n.d.): n. pag. Feb. 1991. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.

“Billionaire Mind.” : Money Is NOT Real ? Web. 9 Sept. 2015. http://mynikaya.blogspot.com/2009/05/money-is-not-real.html

Money is fiction, that is, according to the dispositions and conclusions of certain outspoken individuals, including, primarily, reporters from an NPR broadcast and an essayist from Stanford University by the name of Milton Friedman. These parties, and more, discuss the ideologies behind the concept of money and currency and how it differs and parallels among dissimilar cultures and different scales. Ranging from a tribal culture from an Island called Yap, to the modern United States Federal Reserve and even some samples that were on an international scale. They all seem to bring to light how intangible the reality of money actually appears to be and they write it off as fiction. However, anthropologically it would not seem so fictional, it may even appear beautiful.

Edward Burnett Tylor, father of modern anthropology claims culture “in its ethnographic sense, is a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, morals, art, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habit acquired by man as a member of society” This means, simply, culture is how humans in a society behave. All over the world all people are part of individual segmented cultures, divided by tradition, environment, and perhaps most importantly, language. Money, however, seems to be immune to these societal boundaries and is more than just fictional, it is an ideology shared among multiple cultures, linking them together.

The tribal culture of Yap, used limestone disks as a form of currency. These disks varied in size and the bigger the disk the more wealth it represented (some even went up to 12 feet in diameter). All it took  to claim possession of one of these disks is simply a general consensus among the villagers of to whom it belongs.

Eventually this island became part of a German colony. The Germans wanted these islanders to clean up the paths they used to get around the village, but to the villagers, the paths were perfectly fine as is. After failing to convince the islanders to clean up the paths, they resorted to the one thing that was understood against these highly contrasting cultures; money. The Germans took black paint and painted crosses on the largest of the limestone disks and claimed ownership of them. This acted as a sort of fine to the Yap people for not being obedient. They then immediately got to work cleaning the paths. After the job was complete the Germans removed the black crosses and restored the wealth to the islanders. While sharing no common language, tradition, lifestyles, and overall culture between the Germans and Yap; the concepts of fines, debts, wages and wealth was understood equally from both parties.

Culture originally exists because humans needed cooperation in order to survive, due to them not having any phenotypically superior traits other than intellect and perspiration. It took banding together under a common ideology in order to ensure their survival. No beast was too great for humanity to overcome due to their ability to cooperate and adapt. Culture itself is not represented as a physical item, it is represented through behavior, just like money. Money is as real as culture, and it is the only common cultural trait shared worldwide. Perhaps the idea of money is the first step towards universal cooperation among all of humanity. Which may never happen, but either way, money is, most assuredly, more than just fiction.

Work Cited

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

“The Invention of Money | This American Life.” This American Life. N.p., 7 Jan. 2011. Web. 04 Sept. 2015.

Tylor, Edward. 1920 [1871]. Primitive Culture. New York: J. P. Putnam’s Sons

“Japan’s Latest Economic Transfusion” nytimes, 13 January 2013. Web. 8 September 2015.

Money in this day’s age as well as thousands of year ago, still plays an important role to our society. In order for most of us people in the United States and other countries around the world to live, we need money. We need money to purchase food to eat, need money to buy clothes to wear, and we also need money to shelter ourselves.  Money today in the United States is determined by the government. They are the ones who give each bill its specific currency, like the dollar bill or ten dollar bill, as well as the metal coins. In other countries its the same way. For an example, the Philippines; their type of currency they use in their every day life is pesos.

People in the United States and other countries around the world have mainly known and realized that money has became a way of life. You follow the given currency the country/government provides and value it to follow the life you live. Not only do other countries besides the U.S, Philippines, Brazil, and others live this kind of way of money following a lifestyle, but also small islands of a small population live a similar way. The island of Yap, which is a small island in the Pacific Ocean doesn’t use paper bills or metal coins, they use chunks of stone found on another island 400 miles distant from the people of Yap. Although many of the stones were ranged at a high value they never moved from the spot they were first left in. These stones weren’t pocketable like money in the United States, so they remained in the same place just traded from and to different people. Many islanders of Yap who owned these stones made trades for anything they needed to live, whether it was their type of clothing, jewelry, or even food.

Other than the Island of Yap using stone as their way of “money” or “currency” to live their life, the country of Brazil used paper bills like the U.S, but called it Cruzeiros. Cruzeiros were their form of money/currency they used to buy food, or any necessity that was needed to live. The problems Brazil faced with the Cruzeiros was the inflation rate booming to a high value. For an example, one day a piece of food would cost $4, then cost $10 months later, eventually it can cost thousands later on. A way people found to live with these such problems due to the dramatic inflation rate was to create and use fake money called, URV, Unit of Real Value. People created this to stop people from seeing the inflation arise every other day or month.URV’s adapted quickly to people and found it to be better to everyone in Brazil. In fact, URV eventually took over was the new currency, called the real and inflation ended.

Money has became an important factor of living life. Money through-out the world is in different matters but all used in the similar ways for the similar things. In the United States we call it dollar bills, other countries they call it pesos, or cruzeiros, and islands along the ocean use stone. Everyone including myself need it and use for almost the same thing, to live. We need it to buy food to keep us from starving, need it to buy clothing for our bodies, any necessity we need to live the lifestyle we want.

                  Works Cited

Friedman, Milton. “The Island Of Stone Money.” (n.d.): n. pag. Hoover Institution, Feb. 1991. Web. 8 Sept. 15.

Walt, Chana. “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR. NPR, 4 Oct. 2010. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.

Bellis, Mary. “The History of Money.” About.com Inventors. About.com, n.d. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.

“The Island of Stone Money, WWI History & Traditional Culture – Yap.” Yap Island History & Culture. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Sept. 2015

At a young age I was told money could buy you happiness. After all, as a child who would get whatever I desired, I began to believe it was true. No matter how I felt at the moment, whether I was filled with frustration or sorrow, whenever money was given to me my face would light up. This belief that money could buy happiness stuck with me until I saw people who were much happier without the materialistic things money could buy and also when I noticed that money in certain areas of the world didn’t hold value.

In Milton Friedman’s essay, Island of Stone Money, he talks about the small island of Yap and how he was impressed with their monetary system that revolved around stone. I found an immediate contrast between American society and Yap society, as Americans hold gold with much more value than stones would ever have. Unlike American society, Yap society holds stone with the same value as we Americans hold gold, which is why stone or as the Yap people may call it “Fei” is the currency of the island. As I continued to read the essay, I found it interesting that “it is not necessary for its owner to reduce it to possession.” Meaning if the stone could not be carried, the ownership would be switched, marked as a form of exchange and left undisturbed. I was surprised to know how easy it was for the people of Yap to trust someone with their stone but I noticed that it isn’t any different than me putting my “money” into a bank account.

As I continued on with my readings, I didn’t understand how Americans have allowed money to cause so many economic issues and control us. Then I remembered the time I believed money could buy happiness. In the article, “How Fake Money Saved Brazil”, the people in Brazil believed that “people have to be tricked into thinking money will hold its value”. In this article, four economists trick the people of Brazil into saving the country from inflation by slowing down the the creation of the Brazilian currency and developing a new currency called the “real”. The catch to the real was that this currency could not be carried like the people of Yap could not carry the Fei because of its weight but because it wasn’t real. It didn’t involve coins or bills because it never existed. Although the real wasn’t physical, it was virtual and was involved with anything that had real currency. The trick behind this new, fake currency is that people would think prices weren’t going up because it was listed as something different. This demonstrates how people control the value of money and can continue to control the value of money because money itself is fiction.

The belief that money can buy happiness is fiction. The idea that money can hold value is fiction. In various articles, the value of money is whatever we allow ourselves to believe it is. For instance, the Yap use stones to determine their wealth and how much they have. Also, the people of Brazil allowed four economists trick them into thinking prices weren’t going up and that they were saving more money. Money is nothing but an idea, that can involve value and trust. Most importantly, money is what we allow it to be.

Works Cited

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” The Island of Stone Money (1991): 1-5. Print.

Joffe-Walt, C. (2010, October 4). How Fake Money Saved Brazil. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil

“The Invention of Money.” This American Life. N.p., 7 Jan. 2011. Web. 7 Sept. 2015. <http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/423/the-invention-of-money&gt;

https://www.amazon.com/gp/gw/ajax/s.html/192-5947810-9671627

Money is, to this day, primitive. While the monetary system has certain adapted over time through different cultures and time periods, the basic principles that rule our wealth have never shifted from its concrete foundation. Whether a strip of paper, a hunk of metal, or a towering, chiseled stone, money’s value has never resided in the physical form, but rather in the abstract concept of trust. Trust in one’s community or in a higher power has, since the invention of a monetary system, dictated the value of an area’s currency. In times of crisis. asking ”Where did the money go?” is a fruitless effort, because we will never hold the value of a lost dollar, a lost hundred dollars, or especially not a lost trillion. This concept that has ruled our civilization is no more than an abstract thought, accepted as fact.

As mentioned before, money has taken on many forms throughout our history. Let us begin with the island of Yap, a society that has based their monetary system on gargantuan chunks of stone. These stones hold tremendous value to the people, yet, while occupying a physical form, the ownership of these stones are imaginary. Large transactions would have no effect on the physical world, as some stones of larger value would be too heavy to move. The people were content with the knowledge that the ownership of the stone was traded, and that trade was honored and respected, without the stone moving so much as an inch out of place. While many may think this practice is ridiculous, idiotic even, I beg to differ, as the U.S. followed a system very similar to that of the Yap people. It could even be argued that we made this system more complicated. Our system began with chunks of metal rather than stone; blocks of gold ruled our idea of wealth. This gold, becoming too much to carry at one time, began to be deposited into banks. With the gold stored away, our version of ownership were dollars, a paper token that proved one person owned so many pieces of gold. When this got to be to much, the value was shifted from the gold to the dollar, the piece of paper that rules our system today. Over the course of however many years, the U.S. collectively agreed and honored the idea that the dollar now held value, and made this idea fact. The Yap don’t seem so crazy now, and at the very least were decisive enough to keep their money in one physical form.

This idea that monetary value comes from trust is evident in several instances. The Yap had an event where a ridiculously valuable piece of stone fell overboard on a trip back to the island. When those on the ship shared their story that could have very well been faked, the people of the island had the power to deem whether or not this family would have possession of this money, even though the physical evidence of it was at the bottom of the ocean. By the power of trust, the people made that family rich, without so much as a blink. On the flip side of this, Brazil was recently in a bit of turmoil in their economy. Inflation was rising to ridiculous percentages, and the people were losing faith in the value of their hard earned cash. Every day priced rose, but thanks to four friends, crisis was averted. They had created a new unit of money which they referred to as Unit of Real Value, or URV, which, in my opinion is hilarious due to the fact this money was as fake as fake can get. This system worked as follow: URV’s were a constant value that did not change, as opposed to the current in place currency. Because the URV prices did not rise, the people were much more comfortable in spending their money, and the value of their URV would skyrocket over time due to the sheer confidence and trust that this money was real. Then, in some weird otherworldly way, the overpowering idea that URV was real actually made URV real, viable currency in Brazil. In a way, when the imaginary is pleasing, we make it real.

The U.S. has recently been facing a new style of currency as well, referred to as a bitcoin. Bitcoins are strictly virtual and are a potential small scale version of the U.S. dollar, blown ridiculously out of proportion. Its value is placed solely in the people who exchange them, as there is no central bank to regulate how much everything balances out to. This measure of currency follows the same rules as all others around the world, with a few changes. The transactions have no service fee or protection from banks. While transfers of bitcoins are easy and instant, they are also dangerously drastic and shows how powerful trust in an idea can be. In just two years, the value of a bitcoin went from $13 in January 2013 to $1,150 in November 2013 to $178 at the end of December 2014 (Reeves, 2015).

The power of trust in an idea is truly remarkable, especially when viewed through such a short window as is with the bitcoin. Perhaps, this is where the future of money is headed, a high-paced, instant transfer of terrible unstable currency. The bitcoin, in this case, is the perfect example of how feeble our monetary system is. After all, the value is simply imaginary, and universally accepted without much debate by those who use it. By a simple shift of the mind, a society can flip its economy right side up. An island can give a fortune to a family without actually handing them anything. A country can put itself itself on the edge of crashing all because we have collectively decided to tack a number to a worthless piece of paper. Money, while based on this idea of trust, truly is intangible, dangerous, and a spectacular display in the power of a community.

Works Cited

“The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” (1991): 1-5. Feb. 1991. Web.
Glass, Ira, and Chana Joffe-Walt.

“The Invention of Money | This American Life.” This American Life. Planet Money, 17 Jan. 2011. Web. 07 Sept. 2015. <http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/423/the-invention-of-money&gt;.

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 30 Jan. 2015. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&gt;.

Reeves, Jeff. “Bitcoin has no place in your—or any—portfolio.” Market Watch. N.p., 31 Jan. 2015. Web. 4 Sept. 2015. <http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-has-no-place-in-any-portfolio-2015-01-28;.

The idea of money has evolved over thousands of years; beginning with the simple process of bartering goods between merchants, and now to the belief that dollars, cents, francs, and euros have an identifiable worth to them. I have sometimes questioned how our dollar bills came to be and how we announce their worth. “Money, in and of itself, is nothing. It can be a shell, a metal coin, or a piece of paper with a historic image on it, but the value that people place on it has nothing to do with the physical value of the money” (Beattie). We can all walk into a store with a few pieces of paper and buy an item that does not exceed the amount we have in our pockets. But we do this without ever wondering who says that what we have is worth what we think it is. There does not seem to be anything to gain from questioning the idea of money, we simply go on about our days and carry the bills we believe have worth attached to them. It is interesting, however, to trace our beginnings and see how far we have come, and see how we have actually become rather lazy with our wealth. From trading goods, to exchanging metals of value for products, to developing paper money that everyone in the world believes has worth, just because we have some people in positions of power that say what is actually worth a certain amount.

An interesting take on the beginning of our seemingly irresponsible valuation of money is brought up in the NPR Broadcast titled “The Invention of Money”, they discuss the history of the Yap people of the Caroline Islands and their “stone money”. The Yap developed  a system of carving huge stone wheels out of limestone for large purchases between islanders. However, since the large stones weighed thousands of pounds, and there were no roads or carts to move the stone between people, it was simply known and trusted to be owned by that certain islander. Pretty preposterous how an islander could have wealth that is made true by a stone that is on another man’s property. How could such a system work, when there is no actual piece of worth behind the stones? But it is eerie how we question the simplistic monetary values the Yap people had, while we have established our own make-believe system of money in the present day. We have our dollar bills and our pennies and quarters, as do other countries with respect to their own currency, but we have not had a backing to our money since the gold standard was eliminated in 1933. It has been 82 years since our money has actually had a material worth attached to it, yet our economies and monetary systems have been kept in tact for the entire duration. There has been ups and downs in markets, but eventually, the “dollar” gains its worth back just because some computers on Wall Street say it is so. “Money is like Tinker Bell in the final scene of the play, Peter Pan. If people do not believe, it will fade away. But, of course, people do want to believe and the spot-light on Tinker Bell brightens with the loud cheering of the audience” (Livingstone). We have surpassed the point in time where we can question the system in place, and we must carry it on for as long as we can because there is no way to attach values to the dollars and cents we speak of. It is very interesting to look back and see similarities between our society and societies in early history, but it is even more exciting to evaluate and hypothesize what our future holds for us. Hopefully, our imaginary money can outlast all of humanity, before we reach the point of no return and have to go back to building stones of limestone to express our worth, as if our monetary policy isn’t as “cavemen-like” as it was then.

Works Cited

Beattie, Andrew. “The History Of Money: From Barter To Banknotes.”Investopedia. N.p., 17 Apr. 2007. Web. 07 Sept. 2015.

Livingstone, Zuerrnnovahh-Starr. “Money, a Belief System.” Money, a Belief System. N.p., 15 Oct. 2002. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.

“The Invention of Money | This American Life.” This American Life. N.p., 7 Jan. 2011. Web. 08 Sept. 2015.