4 Responses to Invention of Money – Tikeena Sturdivant

1. davidbdale says:

   January 24, 2012 at 11:27 am

   You use a pleasing, chatty tone, Tikeena, appropriate for these more casual classroom comments, and easy to read. I hope you also have another gear to shift into for more formal academic assignments I’ll ask you to produce as the semester continues.

   You’re right, of course, about a currency that’s difficult to steal. but you’ve only identified one of the reasons the system worked on Yap. Stealing would have been meaningless because physical possession was irrelevant. The stone outside my house might not be my stone, so there would have been no point in rolling someone else’s stone to my house if everybody knew it belonged to someone else. Our money is different primarily because, except for the serial numbers, our dollars are identical.

   I don’t understand what you mean by “I would not be able to say I am rich and not see the money for myself.” Do you go to the bank and ask to see your drawer in the vault? I completely appreciate the oddness of the wealth conveyed by that stone on the floor of the ocean, but what is it you see that convinces us we have money? That little slip of paper at the ATM that tells me my current balance is pretty flimsy evidence, don’t you think?

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2. sturdi36 says:

   January 24, 2012 at 4:29 pm

   The whole story of the monetary system of Yap, a little island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, reminds me of some type of cartoon or fiction story. I find it very interesting, but not surreal at all after reading The Island of Stone Money. Coins are made out of metal, however, Yap had access to stone instead which forced the island to use what they had. I have thought about what made the people on Yap leave the stone so big. The good thing is that this “fei” was only used for big things such as buying a house or something of that sort. When I found out that the people would leave their stone outside their house I thought the chances of someone stealing it. Besides the fact that the article let us know that “the coins remains undisturbed”, it would be entirely to much for anybody to try and steal it. Its easy to steal American money, its just a piece of paper which gives the coin that Yap used more value. The story in this article takes wealth to another level. Imagine everybody telling you that your rich but you never saw the money from the day you stepped foot on earth. It would definitely be unreal to me, I would have to see it to believe it. I have faith in things I never seen, pertaining to the future not the past.

   Our money is so easy to steal, destroy, and misplace! Any type of money, no matter the shape size or form, can be compared to a bag of chips. Once you eat a chip its gone, right? The same with money, instead you wouldn’t eat the money you would spend it over course. The chips will be gone unless you get more, moreover, money will be gone unless you earn burrow or receive more. But all in all, money is money.

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   • davidbdale says:

     January 25, 2012 at 10:50 pm

     Well, yeah, I guess money is like a bag of chips, Tikeena. Just the same, it’s a lot like a pile of poker chips, except more so, since poker chips have denominations while potato chips are all worth one chip each.

     I know I assigned you to write an illustration you didn’t find necessary on your own, and I appreciate that you did it for me, but I don’t see a lot of value in this comparison. The point it illustrates (about how money gets depleted by spending and needs to be replenished) is too obvious to need an illustration.

     If not getting it the way I wanted it is just annoying, Tikeena, you can stop, but if you want to see a good example of using a cow to illustrate a point, check out Joe Mleczko’s Reply to his own Invention of Money post.

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3. davidbdale says:

   February 14, 2012 at 12:10 pm

   Grade Recorded.

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