Claims- imgoingswimming

Posted on February 20, 2021 by imgoingswimming

“Some of the most interesting research involves beta-blockers, drugs that suppress the adrenaline response. In one small study, trauma victims given beta-blockers within six hours of the incident had a 40 percent less likelihood of developing PTSD.”

This is a factual claim as it tells us that there is a 40 percent less likelihood of developing PTSD that was found in a study.

“But as of yet, “pharmacologically, there’s no magic bullet,” he says. And “we’re much less effective at treating more complex PTSD” with traditional therapy.” 

This is a comparative claim, as the treatment they have been researching they found to be more effective than when compared to traditional therapy.

‘“Treatment offered vets might be less effective than what’s offered to civilians with trauma. With veterans, there are important concomitant issues. ”Like traumatic brain injury.”

This is a comparative claim and a casual claim. This is a comparative claim as it compares civilians and veterans effectiveness of this treatment because of brain injury that may occur to veterans. The casual claim is that veterans may have some sort of brain damage because of their line of work, unlike most civilians.

“Researchers posit that TBI can make the brain more vulnerable to PTSD, or that it can exacerbate its symptoms of exhaustion, agitation, confusion, headaches. They’re not positive about that, or about whether TBI makes PTSD harder to treat.”

This is a casual and categorical claim. The reason it is a casual claim is that they are not sure but assume that traumatic brain injury can make PTSD have more exacerbated symptoms, and also whether it makes it harder to treat or not. This is a categorical claim as is lists the symptoms of PTSD.

“James Peterson’s post-injection chill-out wore off after a month, faster than it does for other patients—maybe because of his TBI. Maybe not.” 

This is a comparative and casual claim. This is a comparative claim as James Peterson’s results are being compared to other patients that may have not suffered from TBI. This also is a casual claim as it claims it may be because of his TBI although the author is not certain. 

“Either way, as for TBI, well, “there is no cure,” says David Hovda, director of UCLA’s Brain Injury Research Center and an adviser to the Department of Defense.”

This is a factual claim as it is stating that there is no cure which is backed up by the Director of UCLA’s Brain injury center.

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Claims Task- Thecommoncase

Posted on February 20, 2021 by thecommoncase

People around her think she needs a break, needs to rest, to take care of herself. “I know I’m not responsible for all these people,” Brannan says. “But at the same time, nobody else is, either.”

-This is an example of a moral/ethical claim and a proposal claim. The quote claims that the people close to Brannan have evaluated her situation and propose that she should not be dealing with this moral obligation. When Brannan states that nobody is responsible, she is making an ethical claim because she is passing her moral judgement.

With a half million disability cases stuck in a VA backlog, and an estimated 25 percent of Iraq/Afghanistan troops with PTSD not seeking treatment, her logic isn’t entirely off.

-This is a numerical evaluative claim since the writer is mentioning the amount of disability cases and the estimated percentage of troops with PTSD that are not seeking treatment.

So she takes on the case of a family from Wisconsin who paid rent today, but has literally no money left. If they make an appointment at the VA and can’t get in for several weeks, how do they eat, they want to know, in the meantime? And the vet in New Jersey who didn’t register for his VA benefits inside the five-year window. His life didn’t fall apart until six years after his service, so when he walked into a VA emergency room asking for help to not kill himself, he was turned away until he could clear the requisite mountain of paperwork. And the vet who got fired from his job for being unstable and is now homeless, like 13,000 other vets under 30, who now lives with his wife and teenager in his car.

-The first type of claim in this section is casual claim. The writer asserts what is happening to these veterans and their families, and can happen because of the lack of support they’re getting from the VA.

-The other claim type in this section is numerical claim, since the writer mentions the amount of veterans that are homeless and under 30 years old.

“In a perfect world, everyone would know and understand what my family is going through,” Brannan says. She’s convinced Caleb not to leave her, convinced him that she still wants to be married to him. Not for the first, and she doubts for the last, time. “We can reach a deeper love,” she says. “When you share this sort of thing with a person, and you make it through it, it’s a deeper love, really.”

-When Brannan predicts that this will not be the last time she has to convince her husband that she loves him, she is making a causal claim. She speculates that they can make their love deeper by sharing this struggle together.

“They will hang in there until the last dog is dead,” Danna told me of military spouses. She saw her husband through peripheral neuropathy, PTSD, prison, Agent Orange-linked disease, saw her son suffer living with a ball of anxiety and succumbing to drugs, and she doesn’t regret one day.

-This section has both evaluative claim and categorical claim. Danna evaluates that military spouses will not give up their mangled marriages no matter what. The writer lists all of the struggles Danna has to faced during her time with her husband.

“If you love somebody, you stick with them,” she says, and there it is, naïve, and beautiful, and impractically pure.

-This is a moral claim since Danna is making a judgment on how a person should act if they love someone. There is also an evaluative claim since the writer is passing his judgement on Danna’s idea of love.

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A Note about Feedback

Posted on February 20, 2021 by davidbdale

The premise of the course is that you write drafts, receive feedback, improve your writing, and are graded accordingly.

Experience has taught me that many students decline to revise their work no matter how much feedback they receive, so I have created the Feedback Please category to assist students committed to improving their writing without wasting time on students who will ignore advice.

Either way works for me. I will gladly lavish attention on students who respond to it, and I will permit students who want to rest on their first drafts to be graded by those.

What does not work for me is being asked for Feedback Please ONLY AFTER grades are posted. Students who suddenly desire help only when their first efforts did not earn them the grades they wanted are shirking the process.

Only two students requested Feedback Please on their Stone Money assignments. I take that to mean that the rest of you will be willing to be graded on the basis of your first drafts. I hope I’m reading that right. But if, in the light of this new perspective, you’d like some feedback BEFORE your Stone Money essay is graded, you know what to do.

Posted in davidbdale, Housekeeping, Professor Posts | Leave a comment

Claims – iwantpopsicle

Posted on February 19, 2021 by iwantpopsicle

“Meanwhile people like James Peterson, husband of Kateri of the Olive Garden breakdown, are signing up for experiments.”

  • This is a quantitative claim because it shows that James Patterson, and people like him, are signing up for these experiments. It is also comparative because it says “people like James Paterson”, comparing him to other veterans with similar situations or characteristics.

“With three kids, eight, five, and two, and Kateri’s full-time job—as a VA nurse, actually—she could no longer manage his emotional plus physical problems”

  • This is a quantitative and causal claim. This is because it not only states that Kateri has 3 children, but that it is one of the direct causes that she can no longer support Paterson’s emotional and physical problems.

“rheumatism consults, neuro consults for TBI, plus a burning rash on both feet he got in Fallujah in 2004.”

  • This is a factual claim. This is because it describes the injuries he received during his time in Fallujah. It is also a causal claim, as it claims that he had to get a neurological consultation for a traumatic brain injury.

“Chemical exposure, stress reaction, no one knows, but the skin cracks and opens up raw with lesions sometimes.”

  • This is a causal claim because it is describing the possible reasons as to why Paterson’s skin cracks and opens up with lesions. Even if they don’t know for sure, they are still attributing the cause to one of these possible things. This is also a categorical claim because it lists possible reasons.

“Kateri writes me that just moments after the injection, he “went from balls-to-the-wall PTSD to BOOM chill.”

  • This is a causal claim and a comparative claim. It is causal because Kateri is describing how the injection caused his emotional state to change. It is comparative because she compares his state before the injection to shortly after.

“…a server dropped a tray out of her periphery, setting her circulatory system off at a million miles a minute.”

  • This is a causal claim, as it describes what caused Kateri to start having a breakdown while she was working at her restaurant.

“He just ate his steak like nothing,” she says.”

  • This is a comparative claim because she uses “He just ate his steak like nothing” to describe how this man ignored her response to the tray falling and her having a breakdown because of it.

“When you’ve become hypervigilant, the place you are most functional is on the battlefield,”

  • This is a qualitative and causal claim. It is qualitative because it describes the characteristic of being hyper vigilant. It is causal because it explains that hyper vigilance is directly causal to being most functional on the battlefield, as opposed to anywhere else.

“…at this point is like a drug addict, needing stimulation to maintain it.”

  • This is a comparative statement because it compares Kateri’s heightened state and the maintenance it requires to being a drug addict craving a fix.

“or the first time since Iraq, her husband felt at peace, and was able to enjoy a steak dinner with his wife.”

  • This is a comparative statement because it compares Paterson’s ability to now enjoy a simply dinner with his wife, to the time period in which he couldn’t. It’s also quantitative because it labels this scenario with being the very first time.

“He just sat there,” Kateri says. His normalcy “was so distressing to me that I wanted to stab him.”

  • This is a causal claim because Kateri claims that she felt like she wanted to stab him because of how strange it was that he was just sitting there for once. This is a qualitative claim as well because she describes his behavior as “distressing”.
Posted in Claims, iwantpopsicle | 1 Comment

Stone Money – mrmba1

Posted on February 18, 2021 by mrmba1

Money and Reality through Unanimity

   Money controls all aspects of life, food, shelter, transportation, entertainment, you name it. And yet even though all mechanisms of society point to and rely on money, it is something that we never question- we simply accept it. It runs our entire life, but does it actually exist, or is it merely a unanimously agreed upon idea? If thought about and pondered on, the fiction of money and currency unfolds. For instance, if everyone agreed that someone is rich, wouldn’t that technically make them rich in our society, even if there was no physical proof of this wealth? The idea of currency and trading things such as paper and coins seems like a normal concept, after all if we can’t trade one item for another then we wouldn’t be able to receive anything. Having a universally agreed upon means of trading is what creates stability and runs our lives, even if this means of trading is technically nonexistent and made up.

   To find out just how powerful the idea of fictional money is, it is possible to look no further than the Federal Reserve in the United States. Everyone knows that anything monetary in America at some point makes its way from or to the Federal Reserve, however the real question is where the Fed gets its money from. In This American Life’s report, The Invention of Money, Alex Blumberg states that the Reserve is “creating money out of nothing.” For instance, in late 2008 the Federal Reserve at one point purchased $1.25 TRILLION of home mortgage back securities.  That’s a lot of money and, logically, it would seem that to purchase these security bonds, the Reserve would give cash to the banks. But instead, they created the money, as Blumberg said, out of nothing. When asked where this money comes from, a reserve worker simply replies, “It’s created. That’s the nature of central banking.” They simply added a few zeros to the banks’ accounts in hopes of “injecting a lot of new money into the economy and to prop up the housing market.” The means that they took to reach this goal, by CREATING money, just goes to show how malleable the idea of money actually is. If it can just be created, out of nowhere, from nothing, how can it actually exist?

  Seeing that even today this fictional idea of currency remains as just an idea, we can look even further back to the 1980s in Brazil. The malleability of currency couldn’t have a better real life example than this, as an entirely new currency was created from nothing but thin air and the minds of two drinking buddies to save an entire economy. Brazil was facing an extreme economic crisis where inflation was destroying the country, and it wasn’t until a group of economists invented a completely new currency that the economy could begin to heal. People had to trick themselves into thinking that the new money had value, and economist Edmar Basha- being interviewed in the same This American Life’s report- stated that once enough people accepted this fake currency, they simply had to declare that “from this day, the virtual currency becomes a real currency,” and then it became a reality. The economists continued by saying, “Everyone in the country tricked themselves into believing that this fake currency was real. And that MADE it real.” The only thing holding the economy of Brazil together was the unanimous agreement of monetary value and the trust in the “fake” currency that was invented.

   To display this idea of reality through unanimity in concerns to money even further, we can take a look at Milton Friedman’s paper on “The Island of Stone Money.” A german colony island named Yap had a unique and abstract means of conceptualizing their currency. That is, they used giant rocks, several feet in diameter, and didn’t even move them most of the time after transactions were made. Their economy relied solely on the belief and trust in the value of these rocks by the majority, and the unanimous agreement on each individual’s wealth. Most of the time, Friedman states that the rock’s new owners were “quite content to accept the bare acknowledgement of ownership and without so much as a mark to indicate the exchange.” The fact that they had so much faith in this loose system of currency, and that it was carried out by rocks sometimes even without direct possession is a strange thought. But considering what took place with the Federal Reserve creating money from nothing, and in Brazil where a whole new currency was invented, it doesn’t seem that crazy. Friedman puts it best, stating “how important ‘myth,’ unquestioned belief, is in monetary matters.” There’s nothing in today’s society telling us how rich someone is except for our acceptance and agreement of what rich is, and it was the same for the Yaps.

   It seems like everything revolves around money, and a common phrase that everyone has heard is that money is the root of all evil. But when we step back, look, and really think about what money is, it’s simple to see that we created money and we continue to accept this abstract idea into our lives. We’ve invented this “evil,” no matter how vital it is to our functioning society, and view it as concrete even though we were the ones who chose and actively choose to make it into a reality. Currency and money has been created throughout history, from the beginning of currency, the Yaps in the Caroline Islands, the revival of Brazil’s economy, all the way to the present day with the Federal Reserve in one of the world’s largest economies. Money itself is an idea as abstract as they come, and it only exists because of the faith and trust of the majority population.

References

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

Glass, Ira. (2018, February 19). The Invention of Money. Retrieved February 14, 2021, from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money

Weeks, Linton. “The Trouble With Trillions.” NPR, 2011. https://www.npr.org/2011/08/22/139846133/the-trouble-with-trillions

Posted in mrmba1, Stone Money | 6 Comments

Having Trouble with Claims?

Posted on February 18, 2021 by davidbdale

The Claims assignment is complex. I’ve been helping your classmates with it since I assigned it, so I won’t be surprised if you’re not quite sure how to go about it.

Here’s how I explained the project to one of your classmates

These are the first sentences of your section:

Meanwhile people like James Peterson, husband of Kateri of the Olive Garden breakdown, are signing up for experiments. James was so anxious and so suicidal that he couldn’t even muster the self-preservation to get into inpatient treatment.

As you will remember from class, claims can hide in very small bits of text, one word even, the word “Let’s” for example. So you should be able to find 100 claims in three paragraphs. But I want you to analyze only as many as you can in one hour.

Let’s find claims in the first sentence:

Meanwhile people like James Peterson, husband of Kateri of the Olive Garden breakdown, are signing up for experiments. 

  • “people like James Peterson” is a Quantitative and Comparative Claim.
  • It declares that not just James Peterson, but others also, were signing up for experiments. It implies that a significant number of veterans were desperate enough to volunteer for experiments.
  • The word “like” is the comparative part of the claim, indicating that lots of veterans shared similarities with Peterson.

Now the second sentence:

James was so anxious and so suicidal that he couldn’t even muster the self-preservation to get into inpatient treatment.

  • “so anxious” and “so suicidal” are Qualitative Claims.
  • They mean that James would have tolerated some degree of anxiety or even suicidality and gotten himself into inpatient treatment, but his condition was “so severe” that he couldn’t even motivate himself to protect his own life.

 

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Stone Money- CompIIStudent

Posted on February 17, 2021 by compiistudent

The Concept Of Money

The concept of money is not one that is usually a topic of debate. Currency is somethng that the world has had in common for centuries, as you need something to exchange for goods and basically everything. Money is at the forefront of society, and it can be argued that it is mainly present in the economy. The economy- such as vast idea for people to grasp at, some understand it much better than others, but we all know it affects our society greatly. When we look back through history and currencies of old, we think of silver and gold and other metals. But what if there wasn’t any metal for you to use? The people on the island of Yap faced that very problem.

Milton Friedman, a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Instituition wrote about the people of Yap and their solution to their lack of metal. The island, located in the south pacific ocean, was colonized by the Germans from 1899 to 1919. During that time, American anthropoligist named William Henry Furness III researched and wrote about the native people’s way of life. He was particularly fascinated by their currency, which were thick stone discs that could be as tall as 12 feet. Furness wrote, “As their island yields no metal, they have to recourse to stone on which labour is fetching and fashion has been expanded, is as truly a representation of labour as the mined and minted coins of civilazation.” These stones did not have to be directly exchanged when “buying” something, as the owner of the disc just acknowledged the new ownership. The disc was obiously too inconvenient to move around, so it just stayed were it was. It seems wild that people could sustain a monetary system such as this one.

This is not the only time we have seen strange systems of currency. Much stranger situations have happened in countries much bigger than the island of Yap. For example, Brazil found itself in maybe the worst case of inflation of all time. The government wanted to build a city in the deep rain forest that they knew they did not have the money for. They thought that it was an easy solution to just print more money. No harm done, right? Wrong. This sent the country into a period of infation, which cause caused the population to completely lose faith in their money, rightfully so. Chana Joffe Walt researched their crisis, talking to numerous subjects who lived through it.

The situation was solved by these four ecconomists who just happened to create a bizzarre plan to save the country in college, and they were reached out to by the government to help them. Edmar Bacha was called to help. The new administration’s finance minister called Bacha and said “Well, I’ve just been named the finance minister. You know I don’t know economics, so please come meet me in Brasilia tomorrow.” The plan was to slow down the creation of money, while regaining the publics trust in said money. The catch to this plan was, this money was fake. There would be no coins or bills, it would just be numbers. They called it the Unit of Real Value, or UVR. Everything would be counted in UVR. Wages would be worth UVR. Something like milk could be listed as 1 UVR. It’s pretty crazy to think about because it didn’t actually exist. The government convinced the entire population that this was their currency now, and as time went on, they believed it. From the ashes of decades of inflation, Brazil got 20 million out of poverty and became one of the worlds largest exporters.

Today, actual money is starting to die out. More and more people have all of their money in banks and carry around less cash. They use apps like Venmo and Apple Wallet for transactions. Another very popular form of virtual currency is Bitcoin. Bitcoin was created in 2009 right after the finnancial crisis, and people invested heavily in it in different ways, buying and selling rapidly. Well in 2013, it hit its first big snag. Shares rapidly dropped from $266 to just $54. Anne Renaut wrote about the crash. She said, “The software is written in such a way that it becomes increasingly difficult to generate new bitcoins, with the number in circulation designed to top out at 21 million.” essentially this means since there is a finite number of these “coins” availible, the more valuable they are bound to become.

We came into an unexpected recession last year due to the pandemic, but before that there was the great recession of 2008. The question was posed on This American Life, a podcast hosted by Ira Glass, where did all the money go? It seemed that it all just disappeared, when actually, the money just became less valuable. The episode of the podcast was titled “The Invention of Money”, and it featured Planet Money producer, Jacob Goldstein. They tackled the question by diving back through history, and taking a look atthe people of the island Yap, the Brazilian government’s failures to prevent inflation, and the United States federal reserve’s response to the recession in 2008.

So with all of this information, the way money has evolved over the years is prety remarkable. From stone discs the size of a house, to a completely made up currency that solved a multi decade long inflation issue, to now a more virtual world of currency. What is learned from all this, is basically that money can be subjective. There is no specific rule to how money is valued. Sure everything in life is based around money in some way. But why should it be. Why can’t it be based around how many lamps you have? Or how many electrical sockets are in your walls? Or anything else for that matter. Those four economists just created a new form of currency and convinced the people it was the real thing. If we wanted to, couldn’t we uproot our system and make a new one? Maybe, maybe not. But if we can look at money as this thing with subjective value, there are a ton of options to be explored.

References

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html?guccounter=1

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?guccounter=1

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money

Glass, I., & Goldstein, J. (n.d.). This American Life- The Invention Of Money [Audio blog post]. Retrieved January 7, 2011, from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money

Friedman, M. (1991). The Island of Stone Money. In Working Papers in Economics (pp. 1-5).

Posted in compiistudent, Stone Money | 8 Comments

Stone Money- imgoingswimming

Posted on February 17, 2021 by imgoingswimming

Rock, Paper, Crypto

What is money and is it actually worth anything? When we think of money we tend to think of paper bills, or coins. What if the money actually doesn’t have any value, is it still money, and what determines if something is money? The only reason something is considered as money is because if you give it to someone then that person will recognize its worth and let you buy an object that is worth the set price. If you go to a foreign country that does not recognize the US dollar bill and try to spend your money it will most likely not be accepted and therefore be worthless. Money seems to be a concrete idea, but when we actually think about the worth of money we only really look at its worth to everyone who uses it. 

What if instead of paper money we would use rocks, actually how about a one to twelve foot tall, rounded,  flat boulders in the shape of coins. You would probably say that they are completely worthless. The people of Yap would not agree with your statement. Milton Friedman wrote an article named The Island of Stone Money. In this article he talks about an American anthropologist named Willian Henry Furness III and his exploration of the island Yap and how the people who lived there used these large rocks as currency. While this currency does not make sense to us it is because of our outside perspective. Friedman says in his article “Our own money, the money we grew up with, the system under which it is controlled, these appear “real” and “rational” to us” in which he explains how to these people this is seen as money just as we see our paper bills as money. The large rocks would be extremely heavy and many of them were unmovable once they reached a location. This would lead to rocks staying where they were and when someone was paid with this money the ownership would transfer and it would be known that it was that person’s money. The idea seems so primal to us, but this money is extremely similar to our own because it is the same exact concept. When we put our money in the bank we know that we own it and it can be seen nowadays through an app. This money is just known through the bank to be ours even though it is not in our possession. This can even be seen when we buy something online or on card as we never physically hand cash over, rather numbers are just changed in accounts and it is just understood that the money is theirs. The value of money also changes depending on the time and what these people believe the money is worth.

In the NPR podcast The Invention of Money host Jacob Goldstein ties these ideas together and talks about money’s worth and its similarities to the Yaps large coins. A topic that Goldstein brings up is Brazil’s hyperinflation issues in the 90s. The problem was that too much money was being made and the value of the money changed. The value did not change because the number on each bill changed, but rather that the people as a whole believed that their currency was worth less to them. The influx in cash made this money less rare and therefore less valuable to the people who used it. Something worth ten would be worth ten thousand a year later. The currency was extremely unstable and this problem needed to be resolved. The way in which the market was stabilized was by offering a completely new set of currency called URV. This was a stable type of currency and it would be worth a different amount of dollars depending on the day. The idea is simple but odd because you are buying something with a whole new type of currency, and some people even called it fake money. Goldstein even said that the newspaper would print the value equivalence each day so people knew. This helped as something at a store was worth one UAV it would still be worth one UAV a couple of days later. The market then stabilized over time because of these changes put in place and people became confident in their currency again. This confidence is the reason why Brazil’s currency is so stable today. 

The only reason money has value is because people believe in it, but if people are unsure of this money then it becomes unstable. An alternative to cash is crypto currency. Cryptocurrency, such as the most popular Bitcoin, was first made in 2009 after our 2008 stock market crash. This currency does not use paper, metal, or stone. Crypto is made using codes on computers and are made by being mined. A computer mines them by solving very complex puzzles of code and once it is complete you have a Bitcoin. Crypto is different depending on the coin, in bitcoins code only twenty one million coins can be made, but in XRP’s coin it’s not exactly a limited number so the worth of each coin in American dollars is much lower now. Many people are unsure in this coin though because you are not able to physically hold it and it is hard to understand. When we look at the Yap people and their coins, our current online banking system, or even the UAV in Brazil we see that we don’t need to physically hold something for it to have value. Many banks also warned against crypto currency when it first came out, but only because it hurts their own business. In the article by Anne Renaut named The Bubble Burst on e-currency Bitcoin she writes about its fluctuation of the currency and how many people really have put their trust into this form of currency. In her article she cites an economics professor named Steve Hanke who says “If private money starts to become a threat for governments, they come up with many reasons why this is a bad idea,”. Crypto currencies could be the new way to pay for items. The only way for this to happen is for us to all have trust in it.

References

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

Glass, I. (2018, February 19). The Invention of Money. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money

Renaut, A. (2013, April 13). The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html

Posted in imgoingswimming, Stone Money | 4 Comments

Stone Money-Christianity19

Posted on February 17, 2021 by christianity19

Money Essay

The idea of the invention of money is cool but it talks about how money was created and why sometimes there is some fiction about it. They talk about the 2008 and the great recession and how the money and how they use it in Brazil. But the American Dream is to have as much money in your pockets and have a good paying job which is the whole part people come to the USA for a better life. The money around the world is much different from the USA because they have a different currency than we do and the money that makes up a dollar is much different than other counties. Also, the inflation could vary depending on the country in which you live in because some can be much higher than the others. In the 21st century the world is more on media and they don’t use cash, but they use credit cards and debit cards nowadays.

As for in the NPR’s Broadcast episode “The Invention of Money” The host his name is Jacob Goldstein and how he talks and discusses the thought about the 2008 crisis and what happened during that time. Also, the stock market crashed as well in 2008 that caused a lot of people to lose a lot of money and the banks to not have enough money to give to the customers. All the properties lost their value because of the crash of 2008 and it was catastrophic for the real-estate agents. Even the rent was cheaper because of the stock market crash of 2008. Plus the banks didn’t have enough money to provide who needed loans for rent and stuff like that. On the other hand it was a rough year for families and business because people lost their jobs and couldn’t put food on the table. Even something interesting that was in the broadcast that stood out to me is that the inflation during the 2008 crisis was pretty high.

The Island of Stone Money by Milton Freedman who compared Yap’s monetary system to the gold standard. Also, how the money system works and how it has flaws and how it’s not always precise. Even the bank transferred gold to the Bank of France by embarking gold in its vaults. On the other hand the money on the Island is crucial because they need it to pay the workers and employees. The money on the Island helps people who work hard when they work every single day. The harder the people work the more opportunities s they can get in terms of getting money. “The result of was headlines in the financial newspapers about “the loss of gold,” the threat to the American financial system, and like. U.S. gold reserves were down, French reserves were up. The markets regarded the U.S dollar as weaker, the French franc is much stronger. The so-called “drain” of gold by France from the United States was one of the factors that ultimately led to the banking panic of 1933″ (Friedman, 1981, 6). This is what happened resulting of the 2008 financial crisis. Also, the banks suffered a great deal because of the the crash of 2008.

The Bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin is about “Many saw it coming, but that didn’t stop the Bitcoin bubble from bursting: after rising to dizzying heights, the digital currency suffered its first true crash this week. The price of the virtual “geek” currency had soared through the stratosphere in recent weeks, trading for a high of $266 on Wednesday — only to come hurtling back to Earth in just three days” (Renaut, 2013,Yahoo News). The Bitcoin dropped also due to the financial crisis of 2008, but it was built back better and made more money after it was over. Bitcoin saw a massive drop in people who use their app and had a hard time making money because of the Great Recession. Even Bitcoin couldn’t pay all of their employees because of the Great Recession. After, the entire rescission was over everyone got payed and the app was doing really well and improved after the great recession. On the other hand Bitcoin wasn’t used by a lot of the customers because of the great recession.

In conclusion, I learned so much how the 2008 stock market crash and how we overcame it as a nation and how it made us stronger. Even from the Broadcast, Bitcoin, and the invention of money taught us that no matter much the nation may struggle though tough times we get though them together. The more we learn about the value of the money maybe we wouldn’t have a great recession like the one in 2008 when Barack Obama was president. The 2008 great recession showed this country that all of us aren’t making good choices with money. If we use our money wisely on a daily bases then there shouldn’t be a recession in the future of our great nation.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-mone

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

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html?guccounter=1

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Stone Money- Johnwick66

Posted on February 17, 2021 by johnwick66

Money, Society’s tool

Money is very much a essential part of the society’s functioning. Through its value people are capable of buying/selling just about anything they wish. It seems simplistic enough, however very few people actually take the time and ask themselves the question ” How is my money even worth anything?” The answer to that is even more interesting. Why is money worth anything? Because society wants it to.

Money is only worth as much as the people who use it allow it be. Its through this shared idea behind the value of it that gives it well its value. Look no further than Milton Friedman’s The Island of Stone Money to further back this notation. The people residing on the island of Yap had their currency represented by large stones that were quarried and moved from an island about 400 miles away. These stones were often enough to large to move between locations when transactions were made so, what they did was simply state that the buyer now owned that stone. It didn’t even matter if they couldn’t physically reach it, one of the more wealthy groups on the island has a large stone under their ownership that’s currently sitting underwater 100 miles off the coast after the stone, which was being brought back to the island, sank during a storm. (Friedman,1991) We don’t do this. The residents of the Island even took drawings on the stones as a change in ownership. Back when Germany was occupying the island, they repeatedly requested for the path ways to be fixed but the people refused to do it. So one day the Germans marked the Stones with a black cross and said the stones will be under the owner ship of the Germans until the roads were fixed. Low and behold with their currency in crisis the people quickly repaired the pathways on the island. With the pathways cleared the Germans cleaned the crosses off the stones signifying that they once again belonged to the people of the Island.

As I read through this article I could only think about how ridiculous it sounded. Money that is only valued through word and social agreement and not actual physical property? That idea just sounded so stupid, until I realized something. The world follows that exact principle today just a little different. Let me prove to you what I mean. Check your wallet right now, see how much money you have in their. You have how much? At most $100 in total maybe 200 depending on the person. Now we still can pay with a physical exchange on money. But how are a majority of todays transaction completed? Through the like of debit and credit cards.

Think about for a second, we use credit cards to handle money but the money that is used through those systems we never really even seen and much less likely to even touch. Similar to the people of Yap, who agree on the ownership of their stones, a large portion of the money we own we don’t physically hold onto, but rather we are in agreement with the banks in regards to the value of it in our accounts. For example when was the last time you physically handed money over when buying a plane ticket, or a car? Its a social agreement between everyone and the banks. If society wanted to it could reject the dollar turning it worthless to anyone who would still owned them.

Along with the paper, the NPR Broadcast also pointed out to me that as much as society can make money worthless it can also establish a currency’s value. During that podcast they talked about how Brazil economy was basically rebuilt on a lie. At the time Brazil was dealing with a incredible amount of inflation, so much so that the prices of most items were increasing daily. Their money was becoming worthless because of their rapid inflation. I found it remarkable that the government pulled the country out of this spiral by creating fake currency and getting everyone to believe that it held real value. It pushes the idea that money only holds the value society wants it to because of how well Brazil’s economy responded to this lie. Once the people were convinced of the “fake” moneys value, they would pull themselves out of their ricket and become the 8th biggest economy in the world. Not because the fake money actually held legitimate value, but because the people of brazil (society) decided that it held value.

This idea continued to make sense to me as I read through the transcript in regards to the interview with Jacob Goldstein. I was intrigued with his telling of the creation of paper money. How back in ancient China Kublai Khan basically enforces paper money as the countries currency rather than lugging around Iron coins that were previously used. Honestly it made sense to me because around that time Chinese citizens were starting to prefer using receipts over the iron coins, so for Kahn to just make the process quicker seemed like a reasonable step. But what I also found interesting is how quickly currency can be swapped out in order to avoid a major crash. For after originally swapping to paper money they ended up printing to much money leading to several large inflations of money. Enough for the Chinese to actually give up on paper money in order to go back to using grain.

Finally I never considered why society created money in the first place. How we as people created money as a means to help solve some sets of problems, but through its creation it also created problems. But to simply exist without it would also be near impossible. (Goldstein)

I had somewhat of an idea about society’s value to money prior to reading/ listening to the articles. But after going through these pieces of information I realized that were several factors in regard’s to that, that I didn’t even consider. It gave me something different to think about in terms of money’s value.

 

References

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

What is MONEY? Jacob GOLDSTEIN’S book Explains ‘SHARED FICTION’. (2020, September 08). Retrieved February 17, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/2020/09/08/910586930/what-is-money-jacob-goldsteins-book-explains-shared-fiction

“The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

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