The concept of money and what it’s worth to society is something that most people probably don’t think about often. We make money, we spend money, we lend money, we borrow money, but what does that money really represent? What is it worth, and how do we determine that? It’s mind boggling for us to think about the value of money on the island of Yap, where they just use huge stones as a means of currency. What’s even more abstract than that is the fact that the stones don’t even have to physically change hands in order for payment to be made, but instead they just simply have the known ownership of them transfer to whoever payment must be made to. In a more civilized and technological society, like that in which we live here in the United States, that system would never be plausible. No one would simply accept knowing that a dollar is theirs without actually holding it in their hands and having the ability to spend it freely whenever they wish. Which raises the question: is the value of money — in whatever type of currency it may exist in — directly related to the type of society in which it is used?

On the island of Yap, communities appear to be smaller and more tight-knit. They also lead a very simplistic lifestyle compared to ours here in the United States. And maybe that’s why their system with these giant “fei” works for them — they have more trust in each other, less corruption to deal with, and less materialistic needs or desires, so they don’t need so much official paperwork and record keeping when it comes to the transfer of money. A large part of it also is that there is probably a lot less apparent greed in their society, which is the driving force behind making and spending money here in the United States. If their community had as much greed as that which exists here, there is no way that the inhabitants would allow the one famously rich family there to have infinite wealth just because of this mysterious fei that they apparently own that is lost on the bottom of the ocean. Had they as much greed as we do, they wouldn’t accept this fei without physical proof.

The entire idea of money in general is hard to grasp. Although generally speaking, every dollar in this country is backed by gold worth the same amount, what really stops us from printing money that is not backed by gold if no one demands to see the gold that is backing it? In a way, it’s a very similar concept to that of the stone money on Yap — none of us demand to see the gold that represents all the money we possess, yet we acknowledge that it exists, and as those dollars we spend become someone else’s property, so does the supposed gold that is backing them. Essentially, the dollar bill to us is the same value as the known ownership of each fei on the island of Yap; we just live in a society where proof of ownership means everything, and so we print money to represent our ownership of shares of gold that exist somewhere in our country. And when it is looked at in that respect, it seems that money, in all reality, is really nothing more than a security blanket, giving us something physical to hold in our hands to prove to us that we earned something and now own it.