Invention of Money – Marty Bell

Posted on January 18, 2012 by martyb68

The idea of fei by the people of Yap makes you think a lot about the concept of money. The way they based their wealth on trust made me change the way I thought about money. The idea of using large worthless stones as money sounded ridiculous to me at first. It just seems absurd that a family can be wealthy for generations because of a large stone that is some where in the bottom of the sea. But, when I began to think about it more i thought about the way we represent wealth. In so many ways the fei for the people of Yap is the same as our currency. For some reason we decided peices of green paper represent wealth like the people of Yap decided round stones would represent it. The only difference is that we decided to choose something small enough to fit in our pockets and easily carry around. It made me think what exactly is money. After thinking about it I believe money is whatever people with power say it is. They decided it would be little pieces of paper so that is what we believe means something when there is actually no real value behind it. I think that they just had to pick something to be what we represent power and wealth with and it just so happens that the people in charge of the U.S decided it would be our dollars and the people of Yap decided it would be fei.

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2 Responses to Invention of Money – Marty Bell

  1. davidbdale's avatar davidbdale says:
    January 23, 2012 at 5:22 am

    Marty, if you elect to revise these comments, apply the advice in the Say Something handout, please. Your comments too often tell us that you plan to tell us something. A good example is “When I began to think about it more, I thought about the way we represent wealth,” which doesn’t tell us anything about wealth or your thinking.

    A strict academic tone would preclude the use of first person altogether, but for this class, when you’re tempted to use the word I, find a way to use we instead, such as, “We’re so accustomed to think of wealth in dollars, any other method of counting money sounds ridiculous.” Essays are more about how we think as a culture, less about how you think as an individual.

    That said, we hardly ever need to tell readers what we think. When we make claims such as, “Money is whatever a culture decides is money,” our readers know that’s what we think, and they also know that we came to this conclusion. Telling them that we believe it or that we have decided it’s true doesn’t add information to our claim.

    Beware of empty or unclear claims too. You may say that “in many ways the fei is the same as the dollar,” but to name the ways would be to make clear claims whereas saying that there are similarities says very little. Instead you name a difference: portability.

    *somewhere, not some where
    *US or U.S., not U.S
    *pieces, not peices

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  2. davidbdale's avatar davidbdale says:
    January 23, 2012 at 5:27 am

    I’m just now reading Aime Lonsdorf’s Reply, Marty, where I find a good example of eliminating the first-person claim. Instead of saying the idea of using big stones for money seems strange to her, she generalizes the experience so her readers can share it with her: “While idea the fei, the large stone money used by the islanders of Yap, seems irrational to those accustomed to the portable paper and coined money system of Western civilizations, the two are relatively the same.” It works well. And, if she had wanted to use first person plural, she might have said “to those of us.”

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