Stone Money- MellowTacos

Posted on February 14, 2023 by mellowtacos

Needs a Title

We all believe that money is physical, we can all hold a twenty dollar bill. That paper itself isn’t quite worth anything. In the podcast The Invention of Money, by The Planet Money Team they discuss the idea that “money isn’t real”. They start off by talking about when the stock market crashed in the financial crisis due to the housing bubble popping. Where did this money go, is the question asked. One of the members, Jacob Goldstien shared that he asked his aunt, a very successful business woman, where all this money went. She replied with the most mind boggling answer, “money is fiction”. When the prices of houses significantly dropped no money was psychically exchanged.

 Ira glass shares a thought provoking statement, “Money is not solid. Its value could disappear”. Trying to count all the money in the world would be impossible due to the fact that not all money is physical. When banks give out loans they have to take it from somewhere. If your money was loaned to someone else, do you still have your money or does someone else have it? Almost impossible to count how much money there is without doubling it. 

Stone money on the island of Yap is a large coin weighing more than a car that is used as a means of currency, however they are never physically exchanged. These massive coins are owned by someone and the majority of the time exchanged only in special circumstances. For example they may be traded when trying to get back the body of a soldier who died on the opposing territory. These larger than man coins sit on a path and everyone who sees it knows it’s yours or definitely knows it’s not theirs. This concept is not logically different from what we do. 

Owning a credit card is a brand new concept in brazil. The thought of purchasing something and getting to pay it off later is a “miracle” to them. The idea of paying for goods and items in six monthly installments would never have been able to happen a while ago because Brazil had very high inflation. Goods that you could buy now within 6 months would have cost 80% more each month. Since prices went up everyday people were required to change it every day. People used to try and get ahead of this worker to pay a lower price. 

Inflation in Brazil started in 1950 when the president built a new city when they didn’t have the money to afford it. The government decided to print more money in order to build this city, however it lowered the value of money. There was a man that stopped making and selling beer because by the time it was ready to sell it was worth a lot less. Many presidents tried to fix this issue and failed, like President Sarney. He decided to make it illegal to raise the praise causing a price freeze. This created another issue where business owners started hoarding the items, waiting for the price freeze to end so they could make more money. 

After many trial and errors 4 students came up with a masterful idea to fix Brazil’s inflation. Two of the men, Edmar Basha and Andre Lara, refused to help at first because it would be a very long drawn out process and they didn’t want to move to brazil. Members of parliament tried to butter them up by taking them to dinner begging for their help. They received many calls and Basha was even invited to meet the president, they would do anything for their help. They eventually were convinced and decided to try and put the plan into action. 

Their plan was to stop the printing press and change the people. They believed they needed to change the way people viewed money and make them think money had value. Their plan was to make a new currency but this currency would never be physical, they called it “unit of real value, URV”. People still carried around the local currency, Cruzeiros. The way URV worked was if you went to the store to buy a gallon of milk it would cost 1 URV but the value of URV would change from day to day. Since you can not pay with a URV you would look up how much one URV cost today. Wages, taxes and prices were all listed in URVS. The four men explained it to the country and stores started to adapt these prices and inflation went down. 

In act two of the podcast they discuss the federal reserve, the one institution that is able to create money. The federal reserve is its own institution and is not a part of the federal government. In 2008 during the financial crisis banks were doing things that they were not supposed to do. The bank firms had assets that were decreasing in value and needed someone to lend them money. The federal reserve holds a meeting every six weeks where they discuss the economy and decide if we need to print more money or not. When they decide we need more they put this money into the economy through loans and interest.

References

“423: The Invention of Money.” This American Life, 14 Dec. 2017, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/transcript.

1991 Island Stone Money – Hoover Institution. https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/215061/full.

Posted in MellowTacos, Stone Money | 2 Comments

Purposeful Summary-Tlap12

Posted on February 14, 2023 by Thomas Laperriere
  1. https://theworld.org/stories/2015-02-04/vancouver-combats-heroin-giving-its-addicts-best-smack-world

It seems counterintuitive that the government of Vancouver is helping addicts with their addiction by giving them some of the best heroin on the planet with nurses and police nearby, however they believe it is helping their drug problem greatly. Vancouver has always been a large port city, which means it is a hot bed for drug imports. According to Allen Schauffler, Pacific Northwest Correspondent for Al Jazeera, only 26 people in Vancouver are receiving this treatment. Schauffler argues that giving those addicts heroin on a daily basis with help nearby negates all of the horrible side effects that come with the addiction, and overall improves the likelihood of death.

However, many of the people in the program actually have seen great improvement in their every day habits. One man by the name of Kevin Thompson says that he is able to get and keep a job with the program. He argues it is a type of blackmail, to tell these people they are heroin addicts, but also saying that there is no getting clean so heroin will be provided.

2. http://bioethicsbulletin.org/archive/what-are-the-ethics-of-a-three-parent-baby

It seems counterintuitive that a third parent would be able to provide DNA for a child, however the UK will become the first country to provide DNA from three people. The idea was created to reduce the amount of genetic mutations found in babies. The mitochondrial DNA is given to the baby by the mother, but if the mother is not healthy, then a healthy women can come in and donate an egg. According to Dr. Moon, only one tenth of a percent of the third parent’s DNA is given to the child, so what is the big deal?

The deal is that these DNA strands will be passed down through generations of strictly females. Since the mitochondrial DNA is in the mother, it has no effect on male children. The DNA in particular has a very specific function, which is it codes for how cells create energy. Mutations in this cause seizures, muscle weakness, and more.

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofissTmcsDU

It seems counterintuitive that a Pizza Hut and KFC are set for business directly next to the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx. A form of Americanization is taking place because the Great Pyramids are one of the most traveled attractions in the World. Built in Ancient time, many people have great theories on how they were built. However, most people also believe that the pyramids and Sphinx are sitting by themselves, however they are directly next to the city. The pan of the camera in this video from the Pizza Hut and KFC to the pyramids created a depressing feeling for those watching.

Something similar occurred in China, where a Starbucks was placed inside a major attraction, but the people came together and forced them to get rid of it. Installing a huge fast food organization near one of the biggest attractions in the world only takes away from the significance of them, and museums give a much different impression on how the pyramids are set up.

Posted in Purposeful Summary, tlap | 1 Comment

My Hypothesis – Charlieclover

Posted on February 14, 2023 by charlieclover

1. Social media is bad for your mental health.

2. Excessive use of social media has a negative impact on your mental health.

3. Young children should not have access to that much information because it negatively impacts their mental health.

4. If you are under the age of 13 you should not have social media.

5. Children under the age of 13 should not have access to social media due to the vulgarity and rapid spread of information.

6. Social media negatively impacts mental health and should not be accessible to children under the age of 13.

Posted in CharlieClover, My Hypothesis | Leave a comment

White Paper – Charlieclover

Posted on February 14, 2023 by charlieclover

Hypothesis –
Excessive use of social media by teenagers negatively impacts their mental health and should be monitored to prevent unsafe use with the potential for physical and emotional harm. It would be a waste of energy trying to keep kids offline, and it is almost impossible to go through life unplugged. Instead of outright banning the use of social media sites real success can be found in teaching kids how to use it safely. This way you can enjoy all the benefits of having an Instagram or Snapchat while knowing how to avoid the disadvantages. With an increase in cases involving children getting into trouble online by sharing personal information or risking physical safety, parents may think it is better to outright ban phones. However, this idea has proven to be problematic because instead of keeping kids off of social media it promotes unsafe usage mainly by teenagers who are unaware of the true dangers.

Five Sources –

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/tween-and-teen-health/in-depth/teens-and-social-media-use/art-20474437#:~:text=Social%20media%20harms,much%20social%20media%20teens%20use.

Background – This is a website from the Mayo Clinic that gives potential ways for parents to advise their children on how to use social media safely.

How I Intend To Use It – I would like to use this source in order to provide specific examples. It can be hard to think of successful ways that can help deal with the problem at hand and I appreciated that this website gave specific examples of how to do that and how effective they have found these to be.

https://www.wellandgood.com/social-media-fast-benefits #:~:text=%22Fasts%20can%20increase%20positivity%2C%20decrease,and%20assuage%20feelings%20of%20depression.%22&text=A%20social%20media%20fast%20not,a%20positive%20sense%20of%20self.

Title of this Article (So I Don’t forget which is which)

Background – The authors of this study chose adolescents only as subjects. They tested them first to establish baseline mental health, and during the study to track any changes, and one month after the study to follow up on potential lasting effects. his source is set up similarly to a blog run by a professional psychologist who was able to identify ways that she benefits from talking a “social media fast”.

How I Intend To Use It – During our conference and while developing a hypothesis I really considered learning more about the idea of taking social media fast. It was not something that I had personally considered as a way of combatting the harmful effects of social media. I think it is really interesting to think about that from the standpoint of a professional psychologist.

https://pedialliance.com/socialmediaguide#:~:text=It%20is%20also%20important%20for,13%20years%20without%20parental%20permission.

Background – This website is from the pediatric healthcare alliance and it is supporting the point that there should be an age restriction on social media usage.

How I Intend To Use It – It also gives examples as reasons why children should not have access to social media because it is unhealthy for them. They also discuss the potential risks and advantages of having an age limit on who is allowed to have social media and when they are allowed to use it. This was something else I was considering when I was writing my hypothesis is having restrictions that would be enforced by parents.

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/deciphering-teenage-brain#:~:text=Studies%20have%2C%20in%20fact%2C%20shown,young%20adults%20with%20fewer%20miles.%E2%80%9D

Background – This a medical journal about the mental health of teenagers’ brain and how it is underdeveloped.

How I Intend To Use It – I thought it would be good if I had a medical journal that has scientific research to back what I was writing in my hypothesis.

https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/social-media-smarts.html

Background – This is research on the dangers of social media and discusses potential ways children can be targeted.

How I Intend To Use It – I wanted to use sources like these to demonstrate the dangers on social media. As children, they are more targeted and should know the dangers and how to keep themselves safe.

Posted in CharlieClover, White Paper | 1 Comment

Stone Money—queenrandom04

Posted on February 14, 2023 by queenrandom04

Money: The Concept 

What makes the world go round, doesn’t grow on trees, and determines if you can get Mcdonald’s? Money is the deciding factor on the success of your business, life and country. Money originally had value because it was directly attached to weight in gold. If I’m handing you this many paper notes then in return I receive its equivalent in gold. What gives gold its value though? Why is paper allowed to be an equivalent? Micheal Friedman in “Island of Stone Money” tells the story of an uncolonized island named Yap. They don’t use a traditional form of currency. Their abstract forms of currency are large rocks.Their wealth is so abstract and reliant on local acceptance that a family whose ancestors are believed to have found a large rock are able to, off of belief alone, be regarded and respected as extremely wealthy. When Germans first colonized the island they couldn’t get anyone to do what they wanted until they devalued the currency that was already largely accepted by the established society.By saying, if there was paint on the large rocks it had no value. The government said rocks with paint had no value so that’s what was accepted. Nothing fundamentally changed about the rock itself  except what the government said it was worth. So, this leads to the conclusion that money’s value; though it has the ability to be explained mathematically, is at its core conceptual. 

The story of the Island of Yap seems so foreign, faraway and alien to accept the concept that a way a country is able to accept wealth through stones they’ve never seen. But if we look in the mirror it’s the reality we now live in. It’s been said by economists for a very long time that cash as a form of currency is dying. We get paid in direct deposit, meaning we never physically see or touch the money we’re agreeing that we’ve earned. We don’t know anything about all of the money we’re always spending, earning and borrowing. We work and agree that it’s worth this much, the money is deposited to our account and that money is taken and given somewhere else. But, the very money you earn and deposit into the bank isn’t yours. There’s no cash delivered into a box assigned to your bank account that’s being taken in and out each time you buy something. It isn’t real, but money is intrinsically  connected to a country’s ability to be successful. The 2008 recession took the country on by storm and its repercussions are still visible to even today’s economy and class structure. But why did it happen, where did it come from, and where did all of the money go? Are questions asked by the people that were present and remember the recession themselves and those who only learn about it through textbooks.  

To give a simple answer to complicated questions: they made more money. They as in the Federal Reserve. In the NPR podcast, “The Invention of Money” I learned that the federal reserve is not apart of the government. It’s just a company that controls the wealth and well-being of the country. I find a company being the saving grace from a national recession, dystopian. Despite them not folding to Nixon’s wants because they, “do what’s best for the political economy.” Their main goal within their solution was to not lose the societal value of a dollar. Before changing the rules of how they operated pre- 2008 recession the value of a dollar was decided by a group of people behind closed doors. If money is a made concept how indoctrinated is all of America to accept whatever they say.

 We see this in the artificial inflation being experienced by the lower class of today’s society. Yes, I believe it is important to have a definitive agreed upon value assigned to a dollar. But when the people in the room making the decisions have their own agenda it leaves the billions of people outside of it ,vulnerable. It’s said that we are are currently in a recession similar to the caliber of 2008 because of the inflation on buyable goods. But large corporations are experiencing record profit margins. According to The Hill the nonfinancial sector reached a record profit of 2.08 trillion dollars. A recession is a recession when it’s felt by the entire economy not just the people who need to get paid by someone else.  

The state of our economy today reminds of the situation I learned about in NPR’s “ The Lie That Saved Brazil.” Brazil faced decades of inflation because they wanted to build a new capital and didn’t have enough money to do so. Instead of waiting until they accrued enough wealth on their own they decided the best solution was to print more money. But the unexpected outcome was that the value of the dollar itself decreased creating exponential inflation. In attempts to get it under control the government would willfully freeze the currency’s value. But the merchants wouldn’t sell anything during this time because it wasn’t profitable for the inflation to not exist. This is where I find the similarities between America’s economy today and Brazil’s before getting it under control. Corporations who benefit from the average person’s ability to spend their money will never act outside of their own interests. So in a world where money is made up and given value because of a social contract, it’s benign that the concept is decided upon by a company looking out for it’s own interest. 

Stone Money from the Yap island is absurd, it’s crazy. But so is all money. Especially in America the biggest superpowered country in the western hemisphere that’s also massively indebted to the world around it. These concepts being able to coexist supports the argument of money itself being the concept. Believing in the family’s stone is the same as Americans excepting the country being ran by families whose wealth was created by slave owners and work they themselves have never done. All money in today’s world is stone money. 

References  

Corporate profits hit record high in third quarter amid 40-year-high inflation

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money 
https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/215061/full

Posted in QueenRandom, Stone Money | 1 Comment

Stone Money – Water

Posted on February 14, 2023 by Water

“Money”

When describing money, the main definition of money would be described as a unit of value used to exchange or receive. We use money for the sole purpose to gain benefits or to use it as a means of satisfaction. Every country adopts a system or forms a set of records that track everything that goes in and out, creating an economy; one that can balance and stabilize the currency and market. However, when the stability of currency starts losing value and disrupts the flow of an entire civilization, the economy turns to shambles and the market collapses affecting everyone’s lifestyle.

In the podcast titled “The Invention of Money,” the narrators open up the discussion by asking the rhetorical question, “What is money?” by stating that money is merely a form of transaction and a unit to receive or sell goods. The word currency was used and translated from different parts of the world and how every civilization had different representations of how “money” existed. An island in the south pacific known as the yaps used stones (rai or fei stones) as a form of currency. The currency’s uniqueness compared to other countries would be if you wanted to get something you aren’t supposed to hand over the stone to someone, all you simply would do is say they have ownership of the stone and move on with your day. This was common when retrieving warriors that had been killed. The yaps would give the ownership of the stone to the people and they would get the body in return. Using the stones as a scale to make transactions, opened up many opportunities to give anything value whether it was material or a digital set of currency.

During the 1990s brazil faced high inflation percentages towards 80% a month. Such high inflation rates made buying something so casual could later be the price of a luxury good. This issue would be resolved after implementing payment installments with the introduction of URV which was a virtual currency, the currency made up of four economists that changed the entirety of a country, as a hail mary hoping the people would give it a value of what money once was. This made me realize that money can be anything as long as you establish units and what that currency can get you. For instance, if the government wanted to change their visual representation of money to glass, then all it would have to do is slowly introduce the concept. As more people start using glass they get rid of the old currency and legally establish the use of glass and engrave the purpose.

Friedman Milton’s “The Island of Stone Money” article recovers what the NPR podcast had talked about. Friedman spoke about different currencies over time and the one he focused on was the yaps from an island in the south pacific who used stone from their island nearby and used stone and gave rights to it to gain corpses or other goods. Size of the stones varied in different shapes, from sizes as small as a rock to some as big as a human. A person would simply walk over to the island nearby and collect these stones to later use for anything that accepted this currency, the idea was to give and receive.

From currency being in different shapes and forms the most common and popular one in this day and age is cryptocurrency. The currency that is commonly known that coincidentally has no physical representation would be bitcoin. The article “The Bubble Bursts on e-currency Bitcoin” published by Anne Renaut reflects the impact Bitcoin has on markets and economies. It was mentioned that bitcoin is an infrastructure of currency and how its small burst of a price increase to decrease can affect the value and shares one holds. Cryptocurrency is different from all the other currencies in that these coins can lose their value or gain overnight. By using cryptocurrency windows are opened from having different purposes, being more secure and safe to make transactions along to have different ways to store your coins. With money being different and varying in different shapes and forms and new currencies being introduced in the digital market each day, we expand the definition of what money is. it’s not your typical piece of paper, it can range from stones to cryptocurrency. Who knows what the future currency may be? 

References

“The Invention of Stone Money” 423: The Inventionn of Stone Money. This is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago. 7 Jan 2011 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money

Friedman, Milton, “The Island of Stone Money” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1991https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/215061/full

Renaut, Anne. “The bubble burst on e-currency Bitcoin” , 13 Apr. 2013 – 30 Jan 2015 https://phys.org/news/2013-04-e-currency-bitcoin.html

Posted in Stone Money, Waterdrop, You Forgot to Categorize! | Leave a comment

Stone Money—rowanstudent6

Posted on February 13, 2023 by rowanstudent6

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

Money is worthless. Despite our society being completely reliant on the exchange of dollar bills, currency, in the United States and in many other countries around the globe, does no retain any value. Throughout most of American history, our currency and the quantity of it was based on the amount of gold present in the Federal Reserve. However, in 1933, the Federal Reserve transitioned to a more abstract currency as the amount of money in circulation was now determined by the Federal Reserve. This resulted in the US Dollar being essentially meaningless.

The NPR Broadcast, “The Invention of Money” further explored the question what is money? It did so by providing three stories, each showing how the value of money is dependent entirely on the user. The first of which was a telling of currency used by a tribe known as the Yaps. In this tribe, large stones are used as currency among the population. The currency belongs to the user and it is understood by the entire tribe who the stone belongs to unless the stone is willingly passed onto someone else. Therefore, the value of a stone is the same as every other stone owned on the island and the owner of the stone remains the same regardless of the location. The second story explained was that of the Brazilian transition from the Cruzeiro to the Real. This transition was dependent entirely on the belief that an electronic currency had value. After decades of financial turmoil, a brilliant solution was proposed; create a new currency. This new currency would replace the Cruzeiro over time and would reduce the inflation that had crippled the economy. The implementation of the new currency depended entirely on the acceptance of the people. They needed to believe the currency was worth what they were told. In time, inflation was reduced and the Real became the only currency in circulation in Brazil. The final story told was an explanation of how the United States Federal Reserve works which, since 1933, has been entirely dependent on the belief of the citizens. The Federal Reserve can create or subtract money if they believe it will benefit the American economy. However, this money is created virtually out of thin air as the US is no longer on the gold standard. Therefore the money is only of value because the population believes that it is.

In 2013, Paul Krugman wrote an article analyzing the debt crisis and a solution proposed by their Prime Minister. The plan involved printing more money in order to attract investors and create an economy boom. However, the question remains where is this money coming from? As was the case in Brazil and the United States; nowhere. The money is created because the central bank in Japan deems that more money should be created and circulated through the country. In “The Island of Stone Money” by Milton Friedman, a situation is retold in which Germans needed roads repaved on a island inhabited by the Yap tribe. In order to coerce the Yaps into completing this task, black crosses were placed on the stones used as currency. The crosses signified that the money had been taken under government control until further notice. This plan was successful as the Yaps became motivated to repair the roads.

In conclusion, the value of currency is dependent entirely on the individuals that use it. As shown by the two stories with the Yaps, money is created when an item of valued is adopted by a community. This is why currency is not of value. Whether it be a bag of dirt or a United States dollar, the worth of currency is nonexistent unless the people using the currency has agreed upon its worth. As seen in during the resolution of the inflation crisis in Brazil as well as during the transition from the gold standard in the United States, money becomes of worth when the people decide to adopt the form. The United States dollar, stone currency of the Yaps, and a mountain of gold are all worthless until it is agreed upon by the people that this resource is of a certain value. Money has become abstract as there is no true way of determining how much a certain currency is worth other than by having the citizens of the civilization agree upon the value. This also leads to a discussion on why certain objects are “worth” more than others. Yet again, the answer is simply due to the value that is put on objects that we purchase. The US Dollar used to be an indicator of gold in the Federal Reserve, but has evolved to simply indicate how much we as a society have agreed a certain amount of money is worth. Therefore money is only worth something because we are told so.

Glass, I. Chana, J.W. Blumberg, A. Kestenbaum, D. (2011). “The Invention of Money.” NPR.

Friedman, M. (1991). “The Island of Stone Money.” Stanford University.

Krugman, P. (2013). “The Curious Case of Japan’s Economic Stimulus.” truthout.

Posted in rowanstudent6, Stone Money | 1 Comment

Stone Money-blueee

Posted on February 13, 2023 by blueee04

Money is weird

When I first read this assignment I didn’t quite understand what was meant by “Stone Money” but now that I have researched and read, I have a better understanding. I never thought about it but money has an interesting historical background, beginning from how it was even thought of and first created.

When reading the article by Milton Friedman, Frances situation with gold and the U.S. is the same as what the Germans did. For example, the Germans claimed the stones as theirs by marking them with a black cross. Similarly the French put the gold they took, into a bank and labeled the drawers they were in as Frances property. But exactly what was the point in this? All the French wanted was for people to know they were “wealthy” or that they had gold but the gold wasn’t used. It just sat in a bank labeled. The Yap islanders wealth was much different than the French, they believed stones were their “manifestation of wealth”. Countries have different ways in interpreting the idea of money. In the U.S. we have grown up to the idea of money being controlled by a system but others may think differently, or have different beliefs.

In the podcast I listened to, it really made me think twice about money. You may think money’s value can’t disappear but how come when housing markets collapsed, they were worth a lower amount afterwards? Money seems to be all just a big fiction, that we have come to believe. At some point paper was swapped for gold but that changed and they decided dollars couldn’t be traded for gold, dollars were just going to be an idea of money. An example used in the podcast Invention of Money states that even when you pay for a bill online, it’s just information, money isn’t getting passed from the bank to pay your phone bill. Money doesn’t exist. Now that I think about it, it makes so much sense. Money isn’t much different than the stones at the bottom of the sea that the Yap islanders believe to be just as wealthy. It’s kind of scary how easily people are convinced things just because the government says so.

It’s also interesting how ownership of stones could be anyone even without moving the stone, it would just be your property no matter where it is. The Yap used the stones to get back the bodies of their loved ones that died on other islands. They would make a swap, and then that stone would be someone else’s property. There was also an attempt to transfer a stone across the sea and the people had to drop it in the water because it was too heavy but it’s still used as a manifestation of wealth. These islanders aren’t much different from us, although they use stone for money, we use paper to represent money. Money is just an idea.

In addition, I read a speech stating how much money’s appearance has changed over the years. In the Money and the importance of confidence speech, Governor Oystein Olsen explains how bank cards and mobile phones are used to transfer money. Its all just digits on a screen. He believes that money will retain it’s value over time. The monetary systems history is “an account of how the authorities at various times have tried to build confidence in the value of money.” We are told to trust the process of it basically. Many wars have even broken out due to the money issues over around 500 years. There’s still money issues to this day.

After learning so much more about money, it has really opened up my eyes and come to a realization that money’s value is very difficult to understand. I believe that everyone has been scammed and they’re too blind to see it, we have been raised to believe that this is normal so I don’t think anything will change. It’s too late for someone to try to even make an opinion, money is used for so many things, the government wouldn’t be able to have some type of control over us if there was no money. I will never understand how people were so easily convinced into this decision though, to just use a piece of paper to symbolize the value of money is absolutely insane. The government also makes sure to make dollars a certain way so that we can’t make duplicates.

I believe that the world would be more fair if everything was equal. Money causes so many problems. It’s only going to get worse because now the price is going up dramatically on everything but the work salary is the same, how is it that they expect people not to struggle when the pay isn’t being evened out. And the only thing thats controlling the way we live is paper. Nothing makes sense. Money is very weird.

References:

“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.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.

Olsen, Oystein. “Money and the importance of confidence” At the Museum of Cultural History, 3 June, 2014.

Posted in Blueee, Stone Money | 2 Comments

Stone Money – Oatmealvibes

Posted on February 13, 2023 by oatmealvibes

Money: The Mythical Currency That Never Was

When the topic of money is brought up in conversation, most people in North America will think of green rectangular-shaped bills with former presidents or founding fathers printed on the front. However, what I perceive as most interesting is that almost anything can be seen as money. Stones, coins, gold, and even something abstract like a paper bag is considered money. Depending on where you live, money is considered and represented by different things. Green paper bills represent money to us in North America but somebody in France who uses colored-coded rectangular bills called Euro would recognize that as money. For something to be considered money, it must have a value attached to it. Is the value that we put onto money real? Is money a real thing or a made-up concept?

In the NPR broadcast, Jacob Goldstein tells the story of a book he read in 1910 about an island called Yap. Yap is in the South Pacific and they used huge stone sculptures in the shape of coins as their currency. The stones weighed thousands of pounds and were too heavy to move so the idea was that the stone didn’t have to move for it to belong to someone and be traded between people. It’s a very familiar concept society takes today with banks. Banks can deposit and withdraw funds from your account without physical money ever actually being transported. When paying for your car insurance through GEICO each month, the bank doesn’t physically take your $278.81 from your account and give it to GEICO. As Ira Glass from the NPR broadcast says, “It really is just numbers going back and forth in the computer.” It’s insane that we view money as something we strive and work for daily but, in this current day and age, money is nothing more than numbers being bounced between WiFi connections. Another interesting question asked by Dave Kestenbaum in the NPR broadcast was “how much money is out there in dollars?” It’s a complicated answer to a seemingly easy question. When you put money into the bank, the bank loans your money out to others. Your money in a numerical value is still there but the physical money is with somebody else, that money is then used to pay other people which turns into an infinite cycle. There’s no full-proof way to count all the money there is in the world, you would end up counting the same five-dollar bill multiple times causing inaccurate data. If there is no known amount of money, are we able to put a value on it? Can we be under the impression as a society that money is even real?

In Milton Friedman’s essay “Island of Stone Money,” he went into detail that in 1932 – 1933, the Bank of France was afraid that the U.S. would not stick to $20.67 per ounce of gold. They then asked the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to convert their dollar assets into gold, later requesting that the gold be put into their gold vault drawer and labeled that it was the property of the French. When headlines were made about the news, the U.S. dollar was declared weaker than French gold. This led the U.S. and the Federal Reserve Bank to believe they were “in a weaker monetary position because of some marks on drawers in its basement.” The Yap also believed they were poorer because of marks on their stone money. This is similar to the NPR broadcast when the Yap was bringing back the limestone to make their stone money because their island did not have the limestone, they had to throw their stone into the water during a storm to save their boat. When they arrived back in Yap and told the story of what happened to the stone, everyone believed them and told them that their stone still had value because someone still owns that stone even though it was at the bottom of the ocean and not in front of them. Our concept of money is very similar to Yap as we put a value on money even when we cannot see it. The value is still there when it’s sitting in our bank accounts, or written on a paper check to give to the local supermarket clerk as payment. The illusion of having money and the figment of value that is systematized with it is ingrained in societal normality. Yet, society believes money is less valuable in other countries or even if the corner of a dollar bill is cut off. Can money become less valuable? Is the worth of money based on physical attributes or numerical quantity?

Something that caught my eye and genuinely shocks me to this day is Bitcoin. In “The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin” by Anne Renaut, the virtual currency constantly changes how much each Bitcoin is worth. Trading of bitcoin can be as high as $266 and then a couple days later down to a low of $54. Who decides how much a single Bitcoin is worth on Wednesday vs how much it is worth on Friday? E-currency is risky with crashes and ever-changing price swings. Bitcoin caps out at 21 million but what happens when one day it’s saying you are a millionaire and the next day you only have $500,000? Were you really ever a millionaire or were you one for the day because that is what society’s value of Bitcoin told you that you were?

Friedman said it best “Our own money, the money we have grown up with, the system under which it is controlled, these appear “real” and “rational” to us. The money of other countries often seems to us like paper or worthless metal, even when the purchasing power of individual units is high.” Money only seems of value when we are familiar with it. We as a society give power to the currency we are accustomed to. Canadian dollars would not mean much to us even though at this current point in time it is almost double what a U.S. dollar costs. This shows us that as a society, unquestioning belief is an important part when it comes to monetary matters. Money as a concept may be a figment of our imaginations but that doesn’t change the value it still holds for us as a collective. You could try buying a new $60 smartphone with a $100 laptop and they wouldn’t take it even though the laptop is worth more money than the smartphone by monetary standards. Money is a mythical currency that was never truly there.

References

Friedman, Milton. 1991 Island Stone Money – Hoover Institution. https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/215061/full.

Renaut, Anne. “The Bubble Bursts on e-Currency Bitcoin.” Yahoo! News, Yahoo!, 13 Apr. 2013, https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html.

WBEZ. “423: The Invention of Money.” This American Life, 14 Dec. 2017, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/transcript.

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