Stone Money—gobirds115

Posted on February 13, 2023 by gobirds115

How does the economy work and what even is currency?

Growing up in the United States, I learned that a rectangular piece of paper with numbers in each corner represents a unit called dollars and whatever number is in the corner determines the value in dollars. This is something I’ve never fully questioned and have accepted for all of my lifetime. After listening to “The Invention of Money” an NPR Broadcast and reading the articles “The Island of Stone Money” by Milton Friedman and “Opinion: Bitcoin Has no place in your – or any- portfolio” by Jeff Reeves, my perspective on currency changed completely. My initial reaction to both of these sources was that they were wild. But then upon some further thought, I was in total agreement with them.

The NPR broadcast starts out with a discussion on the economic collapse of 2008 where the United States “lost” trillions of dollars. One of the members of the broadcast was confused as to how all of that money can just be lost and I was also confused. That same member had asked his Aunt, a businesswoman, the same question in which she answered “So the answer to the question, where did the money go when the housing market collapsed turns out to be that the money never existed in the first place. All those houses used to be worth a certain amount and now they were worth a lower amount. Simply because that’s what everyone now agreed.” No actual physical money was lost or vanished. It was the opportunity to make money on certain items and the valuation those items (in this case, houses) that were no longer worth the amount of money that society had once deemed them to be worth. Gaining this knowledge from the broadcast helped me develop my first claim.

Society dictates how well an economy can do. A society that stays constantly engaged in exchanging of goods/services and can identify the correct values of those goods/services will stay afloat, will allow more money to be produced, and allow its money to maintain its correct value. Why? When society correctly values goods/services and they support the value with the funding needed, more money can be distributed because the goods/services represent a need and society and the more money they can get, the more productive they will be in producing for society. But when that good/service is no longer of need or the funds stop coming in, it can create a crash. How? When a good/service becomes obsolete, members of society may be left with funds that once were used on that good/service and they now have no use for them. This causes prices to go up on items that weren’t once as expensive and it causes people to hold money to do nothing with it. What does that do? It devalues money which is a sign of economic downfall. The opposite, meaning still having goods/services but no funds can also cause economic crash. If a good/service is still a need but there aren’t any funds coming in to support it, the situation can get very ugly. The producer will be end up charging top dollar for their good/service because they won’t have enough money to keep producing it due to insufficient funds in society which creates a lose-lose situation. The lose-lose is that no one will likely be able to pay for the good/service and because no one can pay for it the production stops creating an economic crash.

The NPR broadcast was huge in helping me find answers and developing my claim about economics. But I was still left with some questions on why different types of currency are recognized as valuable. Thankfully, articles “The Island of Stone Money” by Milton Friedman and “Opinion: Bitcoin Has no place in your – or any- portfolio” by Jeff Reeves were able to provide some insight and answers to the questions I had. Friedman’s article documents the different types of currency that exists among different societies. The most interesting form of currency documented in this article in my opinion is the stone money from Caroline Islands. The article states “their island yields no metal, they have had recourse to stone…Their medium of exchange they call fei, and it consists of large, solid, thick, stone wheels, ranging in diameter from a foot to twelve feet, noteworthy feature of this stone currency … is that it is not necessary for its owner to reduce it to possession” I was truly blown away for multiple reasons when reading about fei. What I first thought was wildly interesting was the fact that there were no metals on the island. The reason this was shocking to me is because most currency around the world regardless of material, holds its value due to precious metals such as gold and silver. The other big shock to me was the size of this currency. Because the currency was so large, the owner didn’t even have to possess it to have the rights to it and they were just the assumed owner by good word. You would think this type of currency could only be useful to the island natives, but that wasn’t the case when Germany took over the islands. To get natives to cooperate with their takeover they used their one of a kind currency against them “he simply marked a certain number of the most valuable fei with a cross in black paint to show that the stones were claimed by the government. This instantly worked like a charm” Although the currency didn’t hold any value in Germany, the Germans were able to use its value to the natives as a black mail tactic.

Now to Reeves’ article, which discusses the potential of Bitcoin which at the time was a brand new virtual currency. At the time(2015), Reeves makes what I think is a good/reasonable point when he says “bitcoin has no central bank or authority behind it… A bitcoin, then, is simply worth whatever a random person is willing to pay” I would’ve agreed with Reeves in 2015 because in order to have valuable currency, it needs to be backed by some kind of authority and have a market for which it can have genuine value in.

With the takeaways from both articles, I was able to develop my second and final claim. Any form of currency can find a way to hold value as soon as a market is developed for the currency to thrive in. This claim is supported by what happened on the islands because fei which was once useless to the Germans, became useful when they established a way for it to be used during their takeover. Eight years since the release of Reeves’ article, we now know that Bitcoin has an established market due to technological and digital advances globally. Therefore, I don’t see a reason that anyone can come up with any form of currency to be used as long as there is an established market for it.

Based on the knowledge I’ve gained from these sources, I’m able to claim and conclude that a society that stays constantly engaged in exchanging of goods/services and can identify the correct values of those goods/services will stay afloat, will allow more money to be produced, allow its money to maintain its correct value, and all currency can hold value when given the correct market.

References:

Reeves, Jeff “Opinion: Bitcoin Has no place in your – or any- portfolio” Market Watch 31 Jan. 2015 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-has-no-place-in-any-portfolio-2015-01-28

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

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

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Stone Money—Senpai Pio

Posted on February 13, 2023 by Senpai Pio

Is Money Real?

When thinking about money, many people imagine green one hundred dollar bills or rooms filled with riches and gold. But what we often overlook is that money could also be a piece of monopoly paper, a big stone, or even this Starbucks coffee cup right next to me. What is considered money changes will differ from person to person. Like squares and rectangles, cash is considered money but money is not considered cash. Cash will always stay the same. Twenty dollars will always be twenty dollars. However, the value can differ. Twenty dollars thirty years ago will get you a lot further than twenty dollars in today’s society. In order to be considered money, something has to have value and worth. Between different societies what is considered money will change, but whatever they consider their money is because it has value to them.

Previously in America, all currency was backed by gold. In order to buy something, you had to have the value of the product in gold. After 1933, they would get rid of that system. America started using dollar bills that represented the idea of money. Likewise, as explained in the NPR broadcast, most transactions in today’s society are not even with paper money. When getting paid, the company does not handle you a bunch of one hundred and twenty dollar bills. Instead, it goes right into your bank account. Likewise, when paying bills, you are not handing the cable company Eighty-seven dollars in cash which is the average cable bill per month according to cable.tv. How is money so important in our society if most of the payments do not even require anything of value. What I thought extremely interesting during the NPR broadcast is that they do not even know how much cash there is. When depositing money into the bank, that money is used elsewhere like giving someone a loan. Although you still have the money in your account, the physical money is somewhere else. If they tried to count, it would be impossible not to count the same twenty dollar bill multiple times. It is known that the government cannot print money due to an increase in inflation, but since there is a larger amount of money than physical cash how would that truly affect anything? Since the amount of money out there is unknown, how can there even be a value to it?

Another interesting topic in the NPR interview was when talking about the Yap’s. The Yap’s were people on an island that used gigantic stone coins that were taller than a man and heavier than a car. Although these were not for everyday purposes, they had extreme value. Due to their weight, they would not move them around. Rather everyone knew whose stones belonged to who. What I found most interesting about the Yaps was the story of the guys bringing the coins back over to the main island. One day, there was a big storm, and in order to survive, they had to throw the coin overboard into the ocean. When going back to the main island everyone believed them that the coin was at the bottom, so they still had the value of the coin without having the physical coin in sight. At first I thought that was crazy and absurd, but that is just like how our money works. We do not need the physical copy in order to give something its value. Whatever has value in their society will be considered their money. Since they need to get the stones from neighboring islands, there is a lot of work just to get one. Therefore, each stone will have a lot of value. 

When listening to the podcast about how money does not have physical validation to explain its value, it made me think of NFTS or Non-Fungible Tokens. These were created in 2015, but they have recently spiked the interest and popularity amongst many millennials and gen z. The whole point of these tokens is that they are in the form of some kind of digital content. It can be a picture, writing, a skin in a character game, but they are all online. There can even be multiple versions of the same NFT. For example, there are two-thousand different versions of the Karma Key NFT which is just a teddy bear sitting on top of a key. If you buy one of these, you now own the rights to whatever it is you just bought. Many of the more famous NFTs have sold for thousands of dollars with the most expensive one selling for 91.8 million dollars. Like the dollar bill and stone coins, NFTs have nothing to back up their value. And although many people might disagree, they are often just pictures online. We might think the Yaps were crazy for giving value to large pieces of rocks, but we are giving extreme value to a digital picture. Likewise with the Yaps, these tokens are valuable to some people, so their worth is going to increase. Especially ones with limited supply or rarity, they are going to be worth a lot to obtain.

As explained in the Milton Friedman essay, “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.” Unlike previous times, money is never backed by anything of true value. Given by people, what we consider money is whatever object our society has established as value. We may think the stones on Yap’s island are impractical. Likewise, they may think our paper money is impractical. I even believe NFTs having such value is extremely impractical. However, they are all still worth something in our different societies. Value will always be subjective. Some people may want cash over a Venmo. However, they are both worth the same amount in our society. So, next time you go to your local Wawa, try paying for your $1.69 pretzel with a random object. They might find it has more worth than the $1.69 itself.

References

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

“The Invention of Money.” This American Life, 19 Feb. 2018, http://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money.

The Most Expensive Nfts Ever Sold – Top 10 List – Business 2 Community. http://www.business2community.com/nft/most-expensive-nft.

OpenSea. “Karma Key 5 #402/1000 – Whisbe.” OpenSea, opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xa53e7fd6abc0fe9769690af55f19c2b4a13f2bc3/25600050402.

Randy Harward Edited By Mikayla Rivera Share | Nov 17. “How Much Is Cable per Month?” CableTV.com, 17 Nov. 2022, http://www.cabletv.com/blog/how-much-should-i-pay-for-cable-tv#:~:text=TV%20plans%20run%20between%20%2420,plan%20costing%20around%20%2487%20monthly.&text=The%20average%20cable%20TV%20plan%20costs%20around%20%2487.

S, Ravikiran A. “What Is NFT and How Does NFT Work? Everything You Need to Know.” Simplilearn.com, Simplilearn, 27 Jan. 2023, http://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/blockchain-tutorial/what-is-nft#:~:text=NFTs%20are%20individual%20tokens%20with,transfer%20of%20tokens%20between%20owners.

Posted in SenpaiPio, Stone Money | 2 Comments

Summaries-FatJoe

Posted on February 11, 2023 by Matt Loesche

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/05/toms-shoes-buy-one-give-one/

It seems counterintuitive that Toms “buy one-give one” program, which provides a pair of shoes to someone in a progressing world when a pair is bought, does not actually work. But it seems that it can only really work in certain scenarios and areas. Only the people that are in the country really know what is needed, and shoes might not be the answer to other countries problems. In reality shoes are a specific thing to be donating to other countries. Most other countries likely need donations in food and water, rather than shoes. But buy one-give one programs can work, if a company works with the actual communities they can get help with identifying where their issues lie, and what they need to provide to solve the issue. Toms shoes has not taken this approach.

https://theworld.org/stories/2015-02-04/vancouver-combats-heroin-giving-its-addicts-best-smack-world

It seems counterintuitive to give heroin addicts heroin, in a way to help them. In Vancouver there as a program where heroin addicts can do heroin under the management of nurses and without the stress of having to worry about the police. The program gives the addicts methadone and suboxone, which are alternatives to actual heroin. The idea of this program is that giving these people heroin everyday, but making sure they are comfortable and passive, will keep them alive instead of overdosing. But this program actually does more harm then good. If you keep giving these people doses of heroin, it won’t matter if they under supervision because they will never be able to become clean, they will always be addicted. You can’t fight an addiction by giving them what they are addicted to.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/09/counterintuitive-world/

It seems counterintuitive to armor planes on the areas where they will not be shot. When a plane returns to base with a bunch of bullet holes in a certain area, it seems logical to put armor on those areas, because they keep getting shot there and you want to protect the plane. But if the plane is able to return again and again it must not be that dangerous, or at least must not be as dangerous as getting shot in other areas. But the reason you don’t see bullet holes in the other places is because the plane does not return when it gets shot there. So when the plane returns, don’t put armor over the places with all the bullet holes, instead armor the places that don’t have any bullet holes.

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Stone Money – Rowanluver29

Posted on February 10, 2023 by rowanluver29

Money: A Figment of Our Imagination

Money is an item we are all familiar with. It is a piece of paper with green lettering and a number on it that determines its value. Or it is an electronic number that is on our technological devices, that represents the amount of money we have that is located in our bank accounts. But what IS money, truly? Why do we need it? Is it just a form of trade? Many most likely have gone back and forth with themselves about this thought, I know I have. By listening to a podcast and reading two essays about money and it’s past, it allowed me to delve even deeper into the conspiracy about money. And the things I learned are quite fascinating.

In the podcast “The Innovation of Money”, there is discussion about the history of money in the island of Yap. In Yap, they would use giant stone coins as their source of money. Now, you would think they would trade these coins and in return get the item that involved the trading in the first place. For example, you give someone a stone coin to get more wheat. But in reality, there was no trade at all. The podcast had used this story to describe how stone money was used: If someone from your village got killed in another village, you would use the stone money to get your warriors body back. But you would never actually give them the stone, you would just say that they now owned the stone. The stone had remained one consistent place, it was never in one’s physical possession. But its value remained because owning the stone was their form of payment. In fact, in one of Yaps journeys to go where they made these stones, they dropped it in the ocean on the way back to their homeland. The people expecting the stone did not give it a thought, they believed them and still used this sunken rock as a form of currency! Although that sounds crazy, we are still using a variation of stone money today. No, we do not use rocks as payment, but we use electronic money and that has the same concept. When we get paid with direct deposit (meaning the money goes right from the employers account to your account) we never actually see or have possession of physical money. It is just shared and known information; we don’t have it in our hands, pockets, wallets, etc. It’s practically a figment of our imagination.

The article “The Island Of Stone Money” by Milton Friedman restates the story told in the podcast above, but also warns us as readers to think about the U.S and how our past forms of currency relate to the innocent people of Yap before criticizing them. In 1932-1933, France was hesitant in trusting the U.S and our ability to live up to the expectation of the traditional $20.67 for an ounce of gold. To avoid this uncertainty, France had the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S convert their dollar assets in the U.S. into gold and put them into France’s bank account. So, the Federal Reserve Bank went to their gold vault and placed the correct amount of gold into specific drawers indicating that they belonged to the French. We now come across the same idea as before, people seem to not need physical validation that they own a form of currency. How did the French trust the Federal Reserve Bank (still in the United States!) to put gold bars in their name and not another country, but not believe the U.S would live up to the price per pound of gold? This leaves us with another question: How can we judge history and how people in the past used their money/ what they object used for their money, when we are doing the same thing? Whether it was stones, gold blocks, or paper money, we all believed/believe they hold significant value. But in the end, we all never needed/don’t need to see, hold, or even visit the source of our income. We put enough trust in people to respect that it is ours, and it is someplace reachable, like the French did with the Federal Reserve Bank and their gold.

Lastly, the article “The bubble bursts on e-currency bitcoin” written by Anne Renaut shows us again how money, in reality, doesn’t make much sense. Bitcoin was created in 2009 as a form of investing in currency without the burden of a central bank or financial institution. Understandable reasoning, but what is bitcoin? After reading this article, I truly am still not sure. But what I am sure of is that the money you are invested in is not guaranteed. In the article, it stated that on a Wednesday, a single bitcoin was worth $266, then dropped to $54 by Friday. As I kept reading, I realized that if you want to cash in the money you invested in in bitcoin, you can’t unless someone else is willing and able to buy your bitcoins. What? Bitcoin is electronic money, that is not really ours, unless someone buys our own bitcoin from us, and you can’t get physical money proving you were not scammed from bitcoin…that sounds about confusing and fake as money can get! So, again we are shown that money is pretty much a figment of imagination. Bitcoin shows us that even it is in someone’s (electronic) hands, it is not guaranteed that it is ours until someone buys our own bitcoin from us. This again relates back to stone money, and how it does not matter that money is in our hands, it only matters that it is in our name.

After reading and listening to these sources it has truly convinced me that money is not real/has never been real. Although it is what we use to survive, it still somehow holds no specific value, it is simply a form of watered down, extremely simple, and sometimes invisible trade (if it is not physical money.) I never thought that something so simple like the concept of money, can make an individual think so much about how something practically fake affects our day to day lives.  

References:

Renaut, Anne . “The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin.” Yahoo.com. 13 Apr. 2013. 30 Jan. 2015.  https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html/ 

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

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

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Stone Money – Sunflower

Posted on February 10, 2023 by sunflower0311

Ridiculous Money

Money is something all of us are familiar with, we use it in our daily lives to buy everything, both things we cannot live without and things that simply make us happy. Money is the very reason we get up every day and work a full-time job, we truly cannot live without money! However, despite how important money seems to be in our daily lives, most of us have never stopped to truly think about the concept of money and see how truly ridiculous it is. 

When we think about the concept of money it is important to think back on examples of currency from the past and compare it to our own. One truly baffling concept of money was highlighted in Milton Friedman’s “The Island of Stone Money”. On the Island of Yap their means of currency were large stone wheels called fei which could be anywhere between a foot to twelve feet in diameter. Learning about the concept of using these giant stones as a form of currency seemed ridiculous to me. I could not imagine trying to keep track of who owned what stones. If the idea of having giant stones for money is not crazy enough, what happens when they actually spend the stone will make this whole idea sound even more insane. Once the fei is spent on something the new owner is fine with leaving the stone on the buyer’s property and simply knowing that they own it. While the whole idea of fei seems ridiculous the thought comes to mind of whether our own system of money is really any different.

The NPR Broadcast brought up a very interesting point when talking about inflation in Brazil. When you truly think about it the concept of inflation truly makes no sense. The idea that a thousand dollars can be worth that value one day and the next day it could be worth half that amount is truly a scary thought. Now add that in with the prices of goods going up and now you have a real nightmare. Brazil tried various different methods tor try and fix inflation but it all resulted in people trusting the government less and in extreme cases even caused some to commit suicide. After so many failed attempts to try and fix the problem of inflation Brazil’s government brought in four economists who had a plan. Their plan involved URV which was basically just a fake virtual currency. This completely fake version of money single handedly fixed inflation in Brazil. This leads me to think that perhaps money truly is a ridiculous concept given the fact that we seem to be able to make up whatever form of currency we need in order to fix a certain situation. 

The NPR Broadcast also put into perspective our money today and how even that is fictional. When you get paid you never actually are handed over dollar bills, instead the money is sent straight to your bank account. When you need that money to pay bills you do not even have to go to the bank and get it instead you simply pay it online. By this logic it is safe to say that money is not much of a physical thing anymore but is increasingly becoming digital. However if money is digital does that make it a real thing at all or is it simply just numbers on a screen? Nobody actually has the physical money, it simply does not exist. We just exchange numbers that now count as currency. When putting it this way money starts to seem as if it has no real purpose and the only reason it means anything at all is because we as people put so much value in it. 

Continuing on with the idea of fake money, the idea of Bitcoin as spoken about by Anne Renaut in her article “The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin” is truly mind boggling. Bitcoin was created in 2009 by an anonymous programmer who simply wanted a currency that was independent of a bank or financial institution. Now a question that instantly plagued my mind was how could somebody simply make up their own currency? It sounds absurd really thinking that you can wake up one day and just create a whole new form of currency to better suit your needs. However, when you stop and think about it, every form of currency that has ever been in the world was made up by someone including our own system of the dollar bill. Bitcoin itself seems like it could cause a lot of problems. The high degree of anonymity that Bitcoin allows makes it a good alternative when it comes to drug dealing and money laundering. Now with this information another question that plagues me is that if all of this is just made up how can it carry that many problems? Can’t we just shut it down without any real consequences in order to prevent these problems? It seems plausible that any form of currency could just be thrown away if need be. Perhaps the only reason we have currency at all is to help us feel somewhat secure in a world full of problems. 

After thinking about all of these forms of currency and how they were created it really makes you question money and why we even have it in the first place. Money holds no real value, it’s only worth anything because we as people put so much value in it. The whole concept of money from every aspect is truly ridiculous and it begs the question of if money will become obsolete. The physical sense of money has already become almost entirely obsolete. We certainly do not use giant stones anymore and not many people walk around with physical money either. Instead, we tend to put all of our faith in plastic cards that hold digital currency. It truly makes you question as money evolves what will come after digital money? Will the idea of money just one day cease to exist? It is certainly a possibility and perhaps will become even more of a possibility the more that people see how truly ridiculous the whole system is.

References

Friedman, M. (n.d.). 1991 island stone money – hoover institution. Retrieved February 10, 2023, from https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/215061/full

Renaut, A. (2013, April 13). The bubble bursts on e-currency bitcoin. Yahoo! News. Retrieved February 10, 2023, from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html

423: The invention of money. This American Life. (2017, December 14). Retrieved February 10, 2023, from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/transcript

Posted in Stone Money, Sunflower | 3 Comments

Purposeful Summary – Cleveland Brown

Posted on February 10, 2023 by clevelandbrown03

Smaller class sizes do not necessarily create an environment more conducive to learning. 

This statement from 5 More Incredibly Counterintuitive Statements from Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath – B&N Reads (barnesandnoble.com) talks about how smaller classrooms don’t mean that the students learn more. Their reasoning is that the students won’t be as engaged and won’t be as excited to know if there are fewer students. But a smaller learning environment is more intimate and gives all the students room to engage in the learning. Versus when you are in a big classroom although more students are engaged not everyone gets a chance to be heard or seen by the teacher. 

 There are times when it’s better to be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big pond. 

5 More Incredibly Counterintuitive Statements from Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath – B&N Reads (barnesandnoble.com)

This summary talks about how it’s better to be somewhere you can stand out. They say that if you go to a big university, you are 30% less likely to graduate from that school. Because they have so many students, you either keep up with everyone else or you fail and fall behind everyone else. This is true because teachers at big universities don’t have the time to keep up with every student that struggles or needs one on one help, and they are usually the ones that don’t end up graduating. 

There are such things as “desirable difficulties.”

5 More Incredibly Counterintuitive Statements from Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath – B&N Reads (barnesandnoble.com)

This summary talks about how it’s good to go through struggles. They said it makes you work harder than your peers and teaches you how to deal with adversity. In the article, they have  A recent study by Julie Logan at City University London states that around a third of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. They said this difficulty help them come up with ways to compensate for the disadvantage they had and find new ways how to do things that their peer might not have ever come up with. This is what separated them from their competition and keeps them innovative and without their difficulty, they would have never created what they did.

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Purposeful Summaries- PitAndThePendulum

Posted on February 9, 2023 by pitandthependulum22

Avoiding the Curse of the Oil-Rich Nations

https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/avoiding-the-curse-of-the-oil-rich-nations/

It seems counterintuitive to assume that oil-rich countries would find themselves facing conflict after striking it rich, however, that seems to be a common theme among many of them. Stanford professor Terry Karl states that oil-rich countries “eventually become among the most economically troubled, the most authoritarian, and the most conflict-ridden in the world.” Countries such as Nigeria, Chad, Libya, and Venezuela are some of the best examples of this, with Norway being an exception.

The commonality between many of these conflict-ridden countries is that they did not have a well-run or well-established government before they struck it rich. Norway, unsurprisingly, had a functioning and stable government before they struck oil. The ‘resource curse’ as it is commonly known, seems to radically effect countries whose governments are run by individuals solely interested in the acquisition of personal wealth and not the welfare and wellbeing of those within.

‘Hidden’ Species May be Surprisingly Common

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12293-hidden-species-may-be-surprisingly-common/

It seems counterintuitive that ‘cryptic’ species (creatures that are identical to their species, but differ genetically) could remain so well hidden among their physically identical counterparts.

Reports of cryptic species have grown after the rise of inexpensive DNA sequencing. Cryptic, or hidden, species could have massive effects on the biodiversity of a species population in a certain area. While these hidden species are most common among reptile and insect populations, a further investigation into other species of creatures could reveal more cryptic creatures within their populations. These cryptic creatures, through interbreeding, could potentially increase their species’ chances at survival in ever-changing environments.

Do Tom’s Shoes Really Help People?

Do Toms Shoes Really Help People?

It seems counterintuitive to think that buy-one-give-one companies, like Toms, would be dishonest in the policy that has become its most marketable feature. However, it seems that it is difficult to know for sure, as donations of that sort can be risky, since it is impossible to determine exactly what quantity is needed and where. As stated in the article, it is not sustainable to continue to send donated goods to places where they aren’t needed, and they certainly aren’t any help being given to those who already have enough as opposed to those in dire need.

Seeing as Toms itself neglected to offer any sort of commentary in its own defense, its safe to say that they are quite aware of these issues, but are not interested in resolving them.

Posted in PitAndThePendulum, Purposeful Summary | 1 Comment

Purposeful Summaries- Doglover846

Posted on February 9, 2023 by doglover846

“Was That Jump A 6? Subjectivity In Olympic Judging”

It seems counterintuitive that during an event that is solely based on judging, the judging seems to be very biased towards one’s country. For an example, two countries would make an agreement to vote for each other so they both get could get better scores. This article also explains that, a judge from the same country has the Olympian would score them higher than the rest. On the other hand, in snowboarding the judges would score each olympian on who’s routine was cooler. So it’s not necessarily how far you went or how fast you ran, it’s more of the style you portray that gets you the better score. There were different strategies that were made to try to keep the score fair, however those attempts actually made it worse.

“Figure Skating Judges Get a 10 for Duplicity.”

It seems counterintuitive that nowadays judges have become extremely biased with the scores and which teams they would score higher than others. Judges from the same country as the Olympian would vote higher, making them higher on the leader board. Voting exchanges has also risen in the past years for beneficial purposes for each team. One way that they have tried to reduce judges from being biased was making their scores public so that researchers can check if the score is biased or not. Hopefully there is something in the works for changes, since stats show that the biased scoring just keeps increasing.

“Do Multivitamins Really Work?

It seems counterintuitive that data shows that multivitamins aren’t as nutritional as we thought they were. Multivitamins can be very beneficial to those who are in a nutritional deficit and taking vitatimins may fulfill their needs, however for those who gets their nutrition from food shouldn’t be taking vitamins every day. You think you are helping yourself become healthier, however you are increasing the risk of having diseases as you get older. People need to understand that if they are eating nutrient-dense food they don’t need to surpass the amount of nutrition they’ve already received by taking vitamins.

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My Hypothesis—Jasrielle2

Posted on February 9, 2023 by davidbdale
  1. Broad Topic
  2. Narrower Topic
  3. Even Narrower Topic
  4. Begins to sound like a Hypothesis.
  5. A Bold Claim
  6. A Bold, Counterintuitive Claim that is Arguable and Provable.
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Purposeful Summary – Water

Posted on February 9, 2023 by Water
  1. https://davidbornstein.wordpress.com/books/how-to-change-the-world/

How to Change the World

It seems counterintuitive that the concept of who are the people that make such a life-saving contribution to the world are those who don’t make a dime for their actions. The names mentioned in the article are people who provided help to communities in grave danger at the price of 0 dollars and 0 cents, on the other side, compared to the government who are being paid in salaries are just providing little to nothing for communities that are in the danger zone. Some would strongly agree that those who provide the most help are those who have been in their shoes; others would say they are wrong and the government provides more help in the long run. names like J.B Schramm who helped low income students get into colleges, Veronica Khosa, developed a safe environment for those with aids to get proper care and feel comfortable. The list is endless, the difference being that a party that are not being paid are making more of a contribution for communities than the government who are not only being paid but being provided with more resources.

2. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/03/econundrums-do-vitamin-supplements-work/

Do Multivitamins Really Work?

It seems counterintuitive that those who believe that eating a small gummy or pill can prevent them from getting dangerous diseases, whether they do actually help or not there is a lot of money being thrown towards a market that either tries to help people or make them believe that it actually works and it is a scam. Multivitamins are marketed to help anyone who takes them to either build their immune systems towards deadly diseases or something that shouldn’t be caught. Studies have been conducted and the patients supervised had no change, in fact, some diseases became contagious. One example of how the mulitgummies can do more harm than marketed as, the elderly get their iron from rice, cereal, and bread, if they were to take a gummy it would increase the risk of heart disease.

3. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/04/paper-carbon-dioxide-sequester/

Does Using Paper Take CO2 out of the Environment?

It seems counterintuitive that the thing providing the ability for us to live longer is also being greedy and taking some of the carbon dioxide and release a worse gas. As climate change becomes a greater threat the call for more carbon or gases could reignite the flow of plant life and make the earth more green. People say more wood and recyclable furniture or products will store more carbon so that when they are decomposed they release the same air as they collected it but that’s not what it seems like. The author had strong claims that this is nothing but an attempt for people to believe that something good is being done and how the earth is being saved, without the data people are spoon fed false information/mislead. In hopes of that more would come to realization that these environmentalist ideas may not be as promising as they say it could be.

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