Stone Money–Wazoo1234

Posted on February 12, 2019 by wazoo1234

Money is not Real

Money has no value. It is a piece of paper with some ink on it, thats all. No gold or silver backing. The government has installed their own system of money in which they can endlessly print off. Yet We use it for everything. The 100 dollar bill as the same exact value as a 1 dollar bill, it is just different lettering, so we believe that it is our currency. We could have any object as currency, it all depends on how much everyone agrees to value something at, and things may go up or down over time. To prove this, In the island Yap people use different currency. They use a system based on stones, no dollar bills. These stones are big and do not move. They are actually a whopping six feet tall and can weigh as much as a ton, nothing like the little 100 dollar bill that probably costs under a cent to make. The government is manipulating the people with money and how they control it so much.

On The island of yap People can trade the stone for other goods. The odd thing about this, is that the stone doesnt move. Currency here isnt about tangibles, it is just the idea that you own it, and your net worth increases. So that is the reason people could say they have stones and if everyone believe them than they will have the value of that stone. The point is that there is no exact object for money. It can be anything people believe is worthy enough to trade their items for. The housing crash is a perfect example of this. In 2008 the US housing market dropped almost 30%, the Dow J was down 777.7 points in one day. It was a crisis. People were buying houses with loans that had no value, so on paper it looked great and things were booming but one day the market crashed and everyone lost a ton of money. The main question was where did the money go? But the truth is, the money was never there. Those crap loans the banks were giving out had no value, so people bought houses they could not afford, and when the market crashed the banks came for those people and took their houses.

This was all fixed by the government. Well this may seem like a good thing, but how did they do it? The government has so much power , they were able to trick Americans buy just printing out more money and give everyone in the country free money. This completely showed me that Money isnt real and it is just that we all think its worth something its really not. When the American monetary system fails, I think people will turn to things like bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a monetary system that people randomly value and as of recent had huge success, they reached points to being worth 20,000$ for just one bitcoin. Now after a terrible crash and multiple reports of fraud because it was a pyramid scheme. They have now stabilized at around 3,000$, but if you think about it, What are dollars? The bitcoin is a virtual coin thats now being believed to be valued at 3,000 US Currency.

In the podcast you get the understanding that the banks are just circling your money. Your money is never paid to someone as it is just used to pay someone else, and its a circle. This makes me think about how I use money and where my money goes. It also makes me think how our country is in so much debt when we can basically just print out more and everyone would still value it at what its worth now. This money thing may seem confusing the more you think about it, but just understand that there really is no such thing as money.

Bitcoin may seem like a crazy currency to have because it is so unstable, but the truth is, that money in general is unstable, people are always changing how much they value things at, but the american dollar doesnt change much because it has a strong government meant to keep it stable. The federal reserve is the central bank of our country. This is were they give money out to banks and other places based on national crisis. This bank controls the value of our dollar and is made to ensure it doesnt have crazy drops like bitcoin has, but bitcoin doesnt have this, nor is it a paper back worth nothing. Bitcoin is simply the idea of currency and people have valued the currency at 3,000 USD.

Whether its stone money, bitcoin or the US dollar they are all the same. They are all used as an item to exchange for other things like houses, food and anything you can buy. Stone money explains the concept perfectly, because to us we can see that the value of that is nothing but to those people it is very different. They cherish them and that is what currency is. It can be controlled and manipulated by governments, nut if we the people dont accept it the government would be forced to make a change to the already flawed system in which the us economy runs on. People think that because the money isnt digital or untangible that it can not crash, but if we stop exchanging with it the money would cripple and probably the whole infustructure of the government, as everything is based on our money.

After reading The stone money essay , listening to the podcast and Bit coin: the new currency I have come to realize that money isnt all what we think and that it is a trick planted on the human race. This means there is no true meaning to something being valuable without people. Everything is based on how much people value it and what they value the object they are trading with such as money. Money is not real, it is just a way for our government to have control.

Posted in Stone Money, wazoo | Leave a comment

MY Hypothesis- MysteryLimbo

Posted on February 12, 2019 by mysterylimbo


Harsh imprisonment specifically for “petty crimes” causes voter suppression and racial injustice. Harsh sentences for possession of marijuana or even small traces of crack or heroin on clothing could land someone a sentence without parole. Becoming a felon in the United States makes you a second class citizen, you lose your right to vote, and if you appeal enough in prison, one could lose their right to due process. Ironically the people that are affected by “petty crimes” are minority groups. According to the Federal Bureau Of Prisons (FBP), “ethnic” groups such as Hispanics aren’t considered a “race” so the statistic is fabricated by the government to make a larger issue much smaller.

Posted in My Hypothesis, mysterylimbo | Leave a comment

Stone Money- NYAJ32

Posted on February 12, 2019 by nyaj32

It is What it is

    “It is what it is” is a phrase used in many different scenarios every day. For example it can relate to the term “money is money.” Whether it is american money, canadian, bills, coins, etc. Money is money and that is just it. It is what it is. For the island of Yap money was made of rocks and stones. Limestones to be exact. But that does not matter right; because money is money? The people of yap used limestone as their currency. Whoever had the biggest ones had the most money. Some of them even weighed more than a car. Some may call this type of currency ridiculous, but if you think about it the first person who thought of dollar bills may have seemed crazy. Some one was like “Hey what if we write different amounts on paper and say that they are worth a lot of money.” The same philosophy must have gone into the limestone currency.

ISome people may wonder, how many of these stones could there have been, and how much the bigger ones were really worth? Also, how big would some of them be? Well according to George Martin in “The Island that Uses Limestone Discs as Money, “There are an estimated 13,000 stone discs in circulation on Yap, ranging from 30 centimetres to 3.50 meters in diameter, with the largest ones being considered the most valuable, (Martin 2018). All of these stones have big holes in the middle of them. It is believed that these were created so that they could put a pole or stick through the middle so it would be easier to roll around. But then again, most of the time they stayed in one spot without moving from one person to the next. They would be giving to someone else but nobody would touch it because they were too much of a pain to wheel around because of their bulkiness and weight. Some people even say that this type of currency can be compared to cryptocurrency. This is because it does not move from person to person, You assume it is there but do not physically touch it. The same goes for things like bitcoin. You do not physically hold it, but you do still have in it retrospect.

Overall, for it’s time the island of Yap’s currency was very advanced and smart. We are even using some of the same techniques today being that cryptocurrency uses the same concept as the limestone currency on the island of Yap. The main difference being that there was no set amount for each stone. Whatever they thought was a fair trade is what it was worth. But in the end, it is still money. It is what it is.

References:

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

Mailonline, G. M. (2018, May 10). The island of Yap uses two-ton limestone discs as money. Retrieved from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5714309/Rock-rolling-island-uses-two-ton-12ft-high-limestone-discs-MONEY.html

Bower, B. (2018, August 02). How an ancient stone money system works like cryptocurrency. Retrieved from https://www.sciencenews.org/article/yap-stone-money-bitcoin-blockchain-cryptocurrency

 

Posted in NYAJ32, Stone Money | Leave a comment

Stone Money—jets

Posted on February 12, 2019 by jets1313

Symbolizing Wealth

To understand the actuality of “money” or “currency” you must first understand the concept that it is not real. Money is no more than a piece of printed paper, it is the extent of value in which we put in to it that makes it worth anything at all. The symbolic meaning put behind terms such as money, wealth ,currency etc. Is defined by the people and its culture. The only fundamental truth I see behind the idea of money is that it is fluid, its value can very simply disappear and its physical concept is ever changing due to alteration of societal perception.

It seems that people are unaware of how powerful their perception can truly be. For example the question of where did the money go when the housing market collapsed? According to Ira Glass a speaker in the NPR broadcast the money never actually 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. We as people but worth behind items. Something as seemingly plain as stone was worth more than gold to the people of Yap.

The island of Yap and its inhabitants are an extraordinarily example of how we as people determine value. Our society today would put little to no value in an object as ordinary as stone but yet for some reason this society used these impractical giant stone shaped coins as their currency. And to make it even more bizarre these stones were not actually moved or given away, in essence you didn’t actually have to have this stone to own it. It was the symbolic meaning of just knowing that you owned it is what satisfied them. You might sit here and ask yourself how can that possibly make any sense? But as a matter of fact it’s not so different than what we have done and continue to do today. Friedman’s essay elaborated on the similarity between the french and the U.S. and how the money in our national reserve served really no purpose to the french considering it was just sitting there. But it satisfied the French because it symbolized the wealth of the French government.  

After Analyzing these articles and NPRs it is abundantly clear that we can only symbolize our wealth, we can never physically have it. When someone asks you how much money do you have you would most likely tell them the amount that is currently in your checking account. But yet again that is nothing more than a symbol. You do not physically have that money and even if you did, cash itself is nothing more than another symbolic reference of wealth. Discussing the idea of symbolic currency, makes me think of the more and more our payments are being made online. But a question comes to mind when evaluating the idea of paying bills online. How is it considered a payment if actual money isn’t being sent. It is yet again another way we symbolize wealth that we don’t actually have. As Ira Glass claimed in the NPR broadcast at no point does the bank go and deliver $100 to the phone company on my behalf. It really is just numbers going back and forth in the computer. In essence the majority of the money that exists is just the idea. It is simply the bank telling you this is how much money you have. Yet, symbols and perception have the ability to cripple or save a country

The country of Brazil was on the brink of complete economic failure. High inflation plagued the country and it seemed no one had a solution. Until a new approach was brought about by 4 men considered the heros of brazil. They saw the people as the problem. The people of brazil had a false perception that their money actually had value, but the truth is brazilian money lost its symbolic meaning and the only logically way to counteract this dilemma was to create a new symbolic meaning for money in which the people could trust. They would call it virtual currency, and the funny thing is that it was completely fake. The only worth it had was the worth the people put into it. It is this concept that I feel is true for all types of currency. Basically, what we put into it was what we get out of it. A prime example of this would be the digital currency of bitcoin. Bitcoin is all a computer generated value, it does not involve real money. What it does is represent the idea of online cash, but in actuality when you “pay” for something you are sending a fake currency that would have no value if people didn’t believe and invest in it.

After reading the article that dealt with the internet era currency Bitcoin, I came to the realization that not only is this another way people can symbolize currency and wealth but how unpredictable the value of money could be. In matter of fact all these articles showed how unstable the value of the dollar really is. Bitcoin worth dropped from $288 to $54! And Brazil’s dollar value was constantly changing due to mass inflation, so bad to the point where people’s money was near worthless just after being paid. It seems that it is impossible to predict what the value of the dollar will be, because it is also impossible to determine exactly how much money is in the world because money is constantly circulating from business to business or person to person.

After reading and analyzing all these articles related to topic of currency and money, I am able to formulate my own perspective on what money really is. And it is clear to me now that money and currency are nothing more than symbols and it worth is what we as people put into it.

References

423: The Invention of Money. (2017, December 14). Retrieved from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/transcript

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 30 Jan. 2015. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil/

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

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

Posted in jets, Stone Money | 2 Comments

Stone Money- doorknob9

Posted on February 12, 2019 by doorknob9

Money Is What You Make It

In the NPR broadcast “The Invention Of Money” reported by the Planet Money team and in Milton Friedman’s essay “The Island Of Stone Money”, they go on to explain the story of the island of Yap and their currency. On this island in the south pacific, people used literal stone ‘coins’ as their currency called fei. The large chunks of limestone were cut into wheel shapes on an island however many miles away and brought to Yap on small wooden boats. They used stone because there was no metal on the island that they could use as a form of currency. These stones weighed thousands of pounds and were hard to move, so if you did a job for me, I would tell you that the stone is yours without actually handing it to you. The bigger the stone was, the more it was worth. Owning a large amount of these stones was also seen as having wealth. While shipping one of the large stone wheels to the island of Yap during a storm, an islander dropped it into the ocean. Since it wasn’t the owner of the wheels fault, the people of the island decided to let him keep the value of the stone without having to actually obtain it due to the fact that it was at the bottom of the ocean. This is very similar to the French exchanging their dollar assets in the U.S. for gold and telling them to keep it but store it on the Bank of France’s account. Even though they did’t physically possess the currency, they still were granted the value of it. This raises the question, what exactly IS money? My initial view of money while growing up was that it’s something that someone possesses and ultimately represents their worth, in an economical sense anyways. But as I grow older and learn more about how currency works, money isn’t really worth anything. It’s the value behind it that we provide that gives it it’s worth. Essentially, the value of a dollar is how much we believe it’s worth. The system all works the same in that if people give a bar of gold value, they can give a wheel of stone value as well.

This same principle applies to Brazil and the stunt that the government pulled on their own 150 million people. Chana Joffe-Walt tells us in “The Lie That Saved Brazil” that the Brazilian government tricked their country into thinking their currency had some sort of value when there wasn’t really anything to back it up. In the 90’s Brazil had been facing high inflation rates and didn’t know what to do about this problem. Prices for just about everything had been increasing by the day. This problem roots back to the 1950’s, when the president at the time wanted to build a brand new capital of the country in the middle of the jungle. Obviously building an entire new city in what seemed to be practically unsettled land would be very expensive, so the government decided to print the money in order to afford the costs. This drove inflation through the roof for the following 5 decades, causing a plethora of problems. Joffe-Walt describes a story about a man she met that had a stack of money on top of his dresser and that money would lose value just sitting there because of inflation rates. A number of presidents tried to find a solution to the inflation situation but many of them failed. Then came four economists called upon the Brazilian government to help with this crisis. Their idea was not to print more physical money, but to get people to BELIEVE that the money had value. A new currency that didn’t exist was created called “URV” (Unit of Real Value) and it was made to gain peoples trust. Everything from prices of products to taxes to salaries were written out in URV. People still paid in the old physical currency, but it would all be converted to the URV. Every week a URV conversion table was released to compare, let’s say 1 URV to however much the old currency was in that specific week. This idea actually worked due to the fact that people only paid attention to URV and not the old currency they used to use. Inflation eventually dropped and Brazil got rid of their old currency all together. They decided to turn URV into a physical currency called “reals” that matched the value of the URV and ultimately solved the inflation crisis simply by tricking the country. This whole situation fits perfectly into the conversation of “do we need money?”. An entire economy was fixed thanks to something that doesn’t even exist, and the thing that did exist ruined it in the first place! Now it’s not like this ‘fake’ currency came out of no where and saved the day, it was the perception that it gave to people that helped pull the economy out of the gutter. The people are the part of the process that led to Brazil getting out of the inflation deficit because they gave the URV a value. The people are a part of the process that led to Brazil getting into the inflation deficit because they printed money and drove down their currency’s value.

Another situation that ties into the currency conversation is the ordeal taking place in Japan, more specifically the Japanese government. Hiroko Tabuchi explains in his article “Japan Approves $116 Billion for Urgent Economic Stimulus” that the Japanese government approved spending over $100 billion dollars to kick start the slow growth of their economy. This stunt is headed by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who told the countries central bank to start putting money into the economy in order to stop deflation. By doing this consumers will begin to spend and businesses will invest. The problem with all of this spending is that it can lead to an increase in Japan’s already large debt. Spending all this money has also already driven down the value of their currency, the yen. This ties into the currency conversation because it has to do with peoples perception of the amount of money their country is spending.

References

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 30 Jan. 2015. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil/ 

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.

Tabuchi, Hiroko. “Japan Approves $116 Billion for Urgent Economic Stimulus.” nytimes.com. 10. Jan. 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/business/global/japan-approves-116-billion-in-emergency-economic-stimulus.html

Posted in doorknob, Stone Money | 2 Comments

This is in the wrong place

Posted on February 12, 2019 by july02222

PROFESSOR NOTE:
July, I appreciate you’re working on this Task, but its rightful place is as a Reply to the Bartering Explained, Badly post. I’m afraid it will confuse your classmates to see your post here. Please paste this material as a Reply to the Barter post and delete this post when you’ve done so. Thank you very much.

Bartering is trading things you have, for goods from someone else in return. It has pro’s and con’s just as almost everything else. The positives are it involves no money, and you do not need to trade anything personal or important to you. The bad thing is that you don’t know how reliable the other person is, or if their item is as valuable as they say it is. Bartering is something that was used heavily during the Great Depression due to lack of money, but has been neglected as the years went on and money became more important.

Posted in july02222 | Leave a comment

Snow Day Attendance

Posted on February 12, 2019 by davidbdale

Good News

I was encouraged to see that eight of my students logged on to our Counterintuitivity blog during yesterday’s snow cancellation, left good Notes on the MON FEB 11 Agenda, and followed through with very thoughtful responses to the Tasks for the day.

Those exemplary students have fulfilled the requirements for class participation and are considered to have attended class on Monday.

Bad News

Of course, that means a dozen of my favorite people in the world ignored my Monday morning text, stayed off the blog, and did not attend “the home version” of our class yesterday. For those students, the appropriate attendance category is “Unexcused Absence.”

Good News Again

I’m happy to extend to my dozen delinquent students a second chance to attend yesterday’s class. Open the Agenda for MON FEB 11. Study the material. Leave Notes on the Agenda page. Complete the Tasks by 11:59PM today, TUE FEB 12.

Posted in davidbdale | Leave a comment

My Hypothesis—NJ

Posted on February 11, 2019 by nj908
  1. police brutality
  2. misconception that police get away with brutality
  3. police get dealt with accordingly to their action
  4. the belief that police get away with brutality when in fact they get dealt with the way they need 
  5. Police officers get dealt with accordingly when found guilty of brutality
  6. Police officer get prosecuted accordingly when found guilty of brutality contrary to the belief that police officers are prosecuted less strictly
Posted in My Hypothesis, nj908 | Leave a comment

Stone Money–nj908

Posted on February 11, 2019 by nj908

Stone Money and Its Relation to
American Money

Located in the Pacific Ocean and in Micronesia, is the Island of Yap. They established a different type of currency than what a person is accustomed to. With no metal on the island, the natives searched for a way to create some sort of currency to aid themselves in transactions. From this, they came up with the idea of ‘stone money’. Stone money is the currency the people of the Island Yap created because they had no previous currency. They took large chunks of limestone and created wheels out of it. The larger the wheel, the more valuable it was. It is not like United states currency being that there is no monetary number that proves you are wealthier than the next person. On the Island of Yap, people are presumed as wealthy because of wheels of limestone that are judged by their size. The more wheels that are owned and the larger they are, the more wealthy that family is. Wealth is not a numerical value on this island; instead, if one decides the size of the wheel is worth the thing being sold then the wheel pays for it. Although it is not physically the same as monetary currency, it is the same idea: trade one thing for another thing.

Goldstein and Kestenbaum’s article “The Island of Stone Money” makes a person think about what money truly is and what even makes it ‘money.’ Because some of the wheels that were created were so large and unable to be moved, their “concrete form of money quickly made the jump to being something very abstract.” In other words, the stone could be traded between people, but it would not move from its spot in the village. A person passing it would just know who it belonged to even though there was no physical name attached to it. It goes even further in the abstract sense that the stone did not even have to be on the island to be considered as money.. Just the very idea that it belonged to someone was enough, and it did not physically have to be in one’s possession to prove it. This is quite exactly the same as electronic money because even when paying a bill or purchasing something, no physical money is removed from your possession because it is just a number on the screen.

In a similar way, in Bruce Bower’s “How an Ancient Stone Money System Works like Cryptocurrency” it describes the stone wheels in an abstract way. Cryptocurrency is a digital asset that allows people to exchange funds all online. This means that no physical money was traded for a transaction. This idea could also be applied to the Island of Yap’s currency because when the wheels were too large, they were not moved. Instead; their ownership just changed like when people transfer money online. “No matter who acquired [the currency], it stayed in its original location” relates to today’s society because money can be transferred from account to account, but the physical currency resides in the bank and stays there. Therefore, the Yap’s form of currency is not so different from ours at all because both forms embody the same exact thing: even when traded from person to person, its origin stays in the same place.

The stone money was created by taking something everyone saw as pretty and turning it into currency. This is just the same in the fact that everyone saw metal to be shiny and pretty, so they figured it could be something that they could barter with. Of course everyone will want to be the person with the most pretty items, so it made sense to them. The stone money is different than monetary currency though because the worthiness of the wheel depends on who you give it to and for what. In Robert Poole’s “The Tiny Island with Human-Sized Money” he explains the origin of this money and its value to the people of Yap. He also explains that this currency does not need to be created anymore because there are already so many wheels around the island. However, to keep tradition in tact “new pieces are occasionally made … to ensure the skills of the past are not forgotten.” On top of this, there are so many stones on the island, and they are not stolen because of the fact that most of them are extremely large. Even with no name tag on them, every person in the village knows who they belong to. This is a way that this type of currency is better than the United State’s because the dollars and coins are easily accessible and can easily be stolen by anyone. With the wheels, it is nearly impossible to move them without being detected. They may even break in the process of trying to move them, so many people strayed away from this idea.

In conclusion, the currency used on the Island of Yap is not that different than the money we use in the United States to buy and trade things. Both types of currency began as physically forms in which they would be in a person’s possession. It was seen that whoever had the most of the currency was the wealthiest. In today’s society, everyone’s money stays in the bank, and transactions are performed online with no physical money in hand. The same goes for the island because the wheels got to be too big to move. With this, the ownership would be traded, but the wheel would remain in the same spot just as the money remains in the bank. Therefore, their idea of money and our idea of money is relatively the same, just with different objects.

References

Bower, Bruce. “How an Ancient Stone Money System Works Like Cryptocurrency.” Sciencenews.org. 28 July 2018. 
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/yap-stone-money-bitcoin-blockchain-cryptocurrency

Goldstein, Jacob, David, Kestenbaum. “The Island of Stone Money” npr.org. 10 December 2010. 
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-island-of-stone-money

Poole, Robert. “The Tiny Island with Human-Sized Money” bbc.com. 3 May 2018. 
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180502-the-tiny-island-with-human-sized-money

Posted in nj908, Stone Money | Leave a comment

My Hypothesis – Jets1313

Posted on February 11, 2019 by jets1313
  1. Celebrity treatment in the criminal justice system
  2. The unequal Treatment of celebrities compared to the average person in the criminal justice system
  3. celebrities receive special treatment compared to the average person In the criminal justice system
  4. Celebrities obtain special and unequal treatment compared to the average criminal while incarcerated in prison
  5. Celebrities obtain unjust special treatment unequal to the average criminal while incarcerated in state or federal prisons
  6. Celebrities obtain unjust special treatment unequal to the average criminal while incarcerated in state or federal prisons, creating an immoral and unbalanced criminal justice system
Posted in jets, My Hypothesis | Leave a comment