Counterintuitivity

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 and what is it worth? Technically, it’s a systemized means of trade. For example, we know that every ten dollar bill is worth precisely ten dollars, always. We can use that bill, worth precisely ten dollars to “trade” with someone who has an item that we want in exchange for (and that they believe is worth) that ten dollars — a T-shirt perhaps. But as the state of the economy fluctuates, so does the value of the dollar, so although that ten dollar bill will always be worth ten dollars, if the value of the dollar decreases, so does the value of that ten dollar bill. It won’t be able to get us as far as it may have once gotten us, and that T-shirt we used to want to “trade” for it will be harder to attain because it is not simply worth ten dollars anymore.

While we have grown accustomed to this routine of fluctuation in the dollar’s value, as it changes every day, it is still a very abstract concept to grasp; a dollar bill that I can hold in my hands today will  not be worth exactly the same amount by tomorrow. But another currency system that is even more mind boggling for us to think about is one that exists on the island of Yap, where they use huge pieces of limestone as a means of currency. The most intriguing thing about their system is that the stones don’t even have to physically change hands in order for a payment to be made, but instead they 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. Although we most certainly do not physically hold a large amount of the money that we receive or spend – paychecks in direct deposit, credit cards, loans – we are far too populated and untrusting to simply leave payment that we are owed with the person that owes it to us and accept that it is ours when we wish to take it and use it for something. However, 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 fewer materialistic needs or desires, so they don’t need as much official paperwork and record keeping when it comes to the transfer of money. There is also probably a lot less apparent greed in their society, which essentially is the driving force behind making and spending money here in the United States – we want money to buy impressive things to make us superior, so we work hard for it; we are not accepting of others being more well off than us without working harder than us. If the community on the island of Yap had as much greed as that which exists here, there is no way that the inhabitants would allow the one famously rich family that exists there to have infinite wealth just because of a mysterious fei that it apparently owns that its ancestors lost on the bottom of the ocean. Had the inhabitants of Yap had 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 supposed to be backed by an amount of gold equal to one dollar, this is no longer the case. We print money that we do not have gold to back, which is why it is possible for the value of the dollar (in terms of gold) to decrease to less than a dollar. 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 ultimate buying power. Plus it’s probably a lot easier than carving out huge pieces of limestone on some distant island and shipping them over.

Many would look at the concept of fei as an abstract form of wealth. Fei are large stone coins that were used by the islanders of Yap, which showed wealth and possessed full buying power. The islanders of Yap did business with the fei just as we would today with our money. However, if a particular fei was too large to be easily moved, the person who received the fei left it where it was and just reserved the knowledge that it belonged to them.

If we were to compare this to our monetary system today, we would notice a lot of similarities. Our money is just as intristically worthless, but has value for trade, as the stone fei. Because we see a certain value with a coin or piece of paper, and we associate what we could buy for it. Above all, the value of any form of money is determined by the receiver. For example, trying to buy a coffee from Wawa with a Russian ruble won’t get you very far. Even though the ruble may be able to buy a coffee in Russia, it will not be accepted in America. When someone uses their debit card, there is a process similar to that of the Yap; all participants realize the wealth has changed hands even though there has been no physical exchange.

The concept of money has been around for centuries. In ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt barter, trading one good for another, was the prominent form of currency. As the ancient world developed, gold and other precious stones became valuable and were often used in exchange for other valuable resources such as spices and silk. Cattle and other animals were also given in exchange for labor. Eventually, a currency system was established to put a value on goods and services. While this money system developed quickly in the West, underdeveloped countries in Africa, South America and Eastern Asia used a system of barter for many years to come.

While the people of Yap, a small island in Eastern Asia, used the barter system for some aspects of their lives, they recognized wealth through a different system. Fei are large limestones that can range from a few inches to several feet in size and are used as currency by the islanders of Yap. While the idea of using these stones might seem irrational to those accustomed to the portable paper and coined money system of Western civilizations, the two are relatively similar but not necessarily the same. To the most Westernized people, large stones have no value of wealth, but to the people of Yap, the dollar system is useless. Both systems were established to represent wealth within communities. It was understood by the people of Yap that the fei, since they were often large and heavy, did not need to be in the possession of its owner; the Western world acknowledges this idea by though banking systems. Both cultures imposed systems of ownership without possession. When the Germans demanded that the roads of Yap become paved, they placed a large black X on some of the islander’s fei the, claiming ownership until the roads became paved. In America, this would be known as a lien, or a hold over a persons property or assets. Overall, it does not matter what monetary system is active within a community, as long as it is recognized throughout the entire society.

But, while a currency may be recognized within a community, money also has a universal value. Since all cultures have different monetary systems that are in place, gold is used as the global scale by which money is valued. For example, an American dollar would be worth X ounces of gold while a Euro would be worth Y ounces. So, a specific amount of X is comparable to a set amount of Y. This gold based system allows economists to determine the wealth of various countries by making gold the universal unit. In reality, it is not they system of currency that is in place within a community. All that matters is that it is able to be exchanged for goods and services and can be recognized as having value.

I suppose you can say that my thinking of money has changed, because I really had not thought about it until talking about Yap. At first, I was thinking how ridiculous the trading of large stones was, and how even if the stone was not in the possession of the owner, it could still be common knowledge in the population to whom the stone belonged. Then the idea of comparing the Yap’s currency to ours flipped my initial view. Today, society does the same exact thing. We put money in banks, and even if that money is not in our physical possession, we know it is ours.

However, the real question at hand is not whether the possession matters. Instead, it is what are we actually possessing?. With every action comes an equal and opposite reaction, or in this case, every credit on one side of the ledger has a debit on the other side. In society, the action is work and the reaction is payment for the work done. That is what money always did and still does represent…work (even if the money is inherited…work was still initially done to earn it). Without money to represent work, a farmer would have to represent the countless time put into raising a cow, with the cow itself. Money merely represents the work and time spent on raising the cow, where the more effort and time, the better cow, and therefore the more money it is worth. Less effort and time will result in an inferior cow, and thus, is compensated with less money than the other cow. Money just makes transactions easier.

Society requires a form of tracking on the wealth of individuals. The idea of tracking wealth is important, because it establishes socio-economic classes, which inevitably shapes society, for better or worse. In social environments people generally know where they stand with everyone else around. At the beginning of a society, there are those that establish themselves as hard workers. That is not to say everyone one else is lazy, but it means there will be that one group (future upper class) that makes more money, due to the more work they did. The lower classes will be established by those that do lesser amounts of work. This abstract thought of money is essentially what fuels society.

It is kind of funny to think that we use a dollar bill that is essentially worthless if not for what it stands for. Even if what money stands for is never seen, the fact that society accepts it, makes the representing factor important.

The idea of the fei seems irrational to most people who are told the story of the Island of Stone Money and Yap’s form of currency because it is for reasons such as convince and means of possession of the currency. The fei can be compared to currency of more developed countries in the sense that it is a concept of exchange in the Island of Yap and the concept of currency is somewhat universal, but to say the currencies are the same would undermine the currency of the more developed countries.

US currency in itself, the paper dollar we use to purchase different things, holds little physical value, but the real value is represented by what the government has assigned for it, where as the Yap’s fei money is only stones brought to the island to represent what the islanders see to be the cost of cattle. Although the stones represent the cost of cattle, it is entirely up to the people to decide what the exact value would be for each stone. If two Yap citizens were to both sell the same size cattle or work the same job for the same amount of time in exchange for the fei, there would be a very good chance that one fei would be slightly larger than the other because it is near impossible to carve two stones to the exact same size and measurements. This would mean that one of the two citizens would be getting more value for his equal work or possessions, but if it were US currency, the value of the money would be the same.

When the Yap would purchase something from one another, they would be content with an unmarked portion of the owner’s fei that would not be in their possession, and the only way to keep track of who owns how much fei is if everybody knows and keeps track of everybody else’s transaction. Even fei that has never been seen is accepted as if it were there. This is much different than the concept of banks and bank accounts. When somebody writes a check to you, you are now in possession of the currency represented on the check, therefore, you are in control of the currency and the person who wrote the check can no longer use that money. Bank accounts are also much different than Yap people’s acceptance of money they are not in possession of because at any moment with a bank account, you can go into that bank and withdrawal your money so that you will have physical possession of it.

Currency of more developed countries is more sophisticated in the sense that people know that the money is only a representation of what it stands for, and we only use it for the sake of convenience. The Yap also understand that the stone money is a representation of something else, but I feel that they missed the point of having a currency, which is meant for convenience in means of trade.  The currencies of countries like the US act as an I.O.U. note from the government who are in charge of the real worth of the money. The value of money from our government may fluctuate due to economic problems like inflation, but paper currency makes it easier to trade with other countries, and the other countries are aware of what the currency is worth.  The fei is more of a social status showing that you own more if you have the bigger rock.

When you think about money, at first it just seems like a normal object you can hold and possess and use as tender, but in fact it’s a little more complicated than that. Money is also an idea that needs to be followed on belief and faith that the object holds value, or it just becomes a piece of worthless paper. As the people of the Yap island believed that the large stone rocks called fei held value in their society, so does the United States with dollars. When the Germans put black x’s on the Yap people’s fei they believed they had lost value and went from rich to poor, just as the U.S. believed they lost wealth when they took gold and marked the drawer it was held in with the label “French.” Both societies believed they had lost wealth even though they still possessed the objects. It was all because of the fact that the people believed and had felt value was taken.

The concept of money being valuable is based on the belief that it is worth a certain value and can obtain you materials and needs you want by giving the money to purchase another object. We could just as easily think that a chicken has value. It can lay eggs to be used as food and be cooked and be eaten for its meat, so why don’t we go to the local wawa grab a sandwich and hand them a chicken in return for the sandwich? The simple fact is that our society doesn’t see that as a normal form of payment, but we could all just as easily be paying in chickens as we do dollars though. As long as society saw a chicken as value that could be used as tender and everyone accepted it then it would be fine. It would take time to accept the chicken as valuable, but as one set of people started to accept it, then another group would, and then another and so on. It could continue until it was stopped or grew into how actual source of tender and value. People follow by example and if one person is doing something then they may try it too, until it slowly grows into something much larger and could take over dollar bills as tender. Is this likely? No, probably not, but it shows how easily if people grew to think of a chicken as value and could be used as tender that it’s just as easily to be the way we pay for things as dollar bills. It all matters on the acceptance, use, and belief of the people of the society to determine this.

It’s the same way as in faith and how we believe in god, or any other almighty being that a religion believes in. We can not see god, but we have objects we use to worship him with and praise and pray to him. It’s similar to money in the fact we can’t see the value of the object, it’s just a stupid piece of paper, but we believe in the value and that’s what’s important. People believe in an almighty being and worship to objects of him as in case of Jesus on the cross, or the statue of Buddha. Then we take a dollar bill and believe oh yes I have value of one dollar to buy something with when all it happens to be is paper. you can not see it, but you certainly believe in it as strongly as when you see a bike and think there is a bike. It just becomes natural and second nature to everyone. Money is just an object with a strong belief behind it of its value that developed over  time and became a natural and usual concept to everyone living in the United States, just as the Yap did with their fei rocks. People just need to believe, use, and accept the concept of the value of money and becomes nothing out of the ordinary, but when questioned you can see just how easily value could be put on anything else over time and used as tendered as long as the society followed those three concepts of acceptance, use, and belief in the objects value.