Stone Money – kobebryant

Posted on February 16, 2021 by kobebryant32

Money is Imaginary

It has come to my attention after listening to the NPR broadcast that money is really in illusion. Every place in the world has some form of currency. If you really think about it anything can be used as currency if deemed acceptable. Currency can be in the form of bottle caps, gummy bears, or even rocks. All of the U.S. dollars are made from the same material, but the number on the dollar is what depicts its value. Value that we created, money/currency is really what we decide to make. Everyone has some kind of currency whether it is physical paper or coin money, or digital money. The value is created by us.

In the essay titled “The Island of Stone Money” Milton Friedman talks about the island of Yap and their currency that they use. Out in the Pacific Ocean there is an island called Yap. This island really helps you understand “What actually is money”? There is no gold or silver on this island, but hundreds of years ago, explorers from the island found lime deposits hundreds of miles off the island. They then carved these discs into large stones which are known as “Stone Money”. These large stones had holes in the middle which were there to stick long poles inside of it just in case they ever needed to be moved. The Yap people realized they needed something that everyone agrees to pay with. The Stone Money was not used for everyday purchases. It was used for important events such as a daughter’s dowry or retrieving a fallen soldier’s body. This currency obviously wasn’t used for your everyday run of the mill purchases. 

Like all things at first, the stones at a point were worth nothing. Like paper money, coins, etc. The Yap people placed value on the stones which in turn created the Yap people’s currency. Currency is made by us as people. We apply the value on things which in turn creates currency. Money isn’t really anything until we place a value on it. When buying a product on Amazon, eBay, etc. There is no physical presence of money being exchanged for the product being purchased. Just numbers going back and forth through a screen. Yet somehow, the company made money off your purchase, just not physical cash. It is a weird concept to really comprehend, but just like all things, we create the value of things. We create how special something is or can become. 

In today’s day and age there is a new digital currency taking the world by storm. The article “The bubble bursts on e-currency” gives a ton of information and really touches base about the digital currency and mainly Bitcoin as a whole. This digital currency is called Bitcoin. I never understood exactly what Bitcoin was but after reading about it, I am starting to grasp the concept a little. Back in 2013, the company experienced its first crash. Bitcoin is made by complex codes created by a raw computing power through a process called mining. Bitcoins are stored on a virtual wallet and can be sent to another person anonymously. Bitcoin users can only cash out when someone wants to buy their Bitcoin. It still leaves a question asking “What us Bitcoin”? You can’t physically see or touch it yet people have been known to score millions on it. It just goes to show that we can deem anything as valuable. It is pretty evident because if everyone decided to deem Bitcoin as useless, the value would no longer be what it currently is. Value is what you choose it to be. 

Digital currency is taking the world by storm. Direct deposit is a good example of that. Direct deposit is when money is sent straight into your account, no cash involved. Just numbers racking up into your phone. Cash App, Paypal, Zelle, etc. These are apps that are used to send and receive money. Once again, no real money involved just numbers in our phones that are deemed as valuable. My generation is fueling this whole digital transactions obsession. I am responsible as well. I rarely use cash, nor do I receive it in the form of dollar bills or even a check. Money is just sent straight into my bank account where it sits there and just goes higher and lower. I have become detached from the reality of money and I am starting to become digital only. If things keep going how they are going, money will become digital only. Currency is whatever you want it to be. NRP’s broadcast interviewed Jacob Goldstein on his book “Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing”. He talks about how the Chinese used iron coins as their standard currency. Then a man named the Kublai Khan arrived and made their currency into paper money. ONE man, just marched his way into China and changed the currency, which goes to show that currency is made by man and chosen by man. He changed the entire way currency was viewed in China. Their coins went from valuable to useless. Then paper money took over and became the new currency. Money doesn’t truly exist, it is made by man/woman and whoever is in charge. 

All these stories lead to one conclusion. Money is imaginary. It can be whatever you want it to be, as long as you place a value on it. The people of Yap deemed large stone disks as a currency worthy of paying for important events such as a daughter’s dowry or bringing a soldier’s body back. This was deemed by the people of Yap. In China their currency was iron coins until someone came in and changed their currency into paper money. And made people abide by that. This proves that money is imaginary and that you can deem anything as valuable. Us as people choose value and money is completely imaginary and is merely a source of trading. Whether it is buying a car, food, etc. Money is imaginary. 

References:

Friedman, M. (1991 February). The Island of Stone Money

stonemoneyessay.pdf (wordpress.com)

What is MONEY? Jacob Goldstein’s book (2020, September 8).

What Is Money? Jacob Goldstein’s Book Explains ‘Shared Fiction’ : NPR

Renaut, A. (2013, April 13) The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin

The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin (yahoo.com)

Renaut, A. (2013, April 13). The bubble bursts on e-currency bitcoin. Retrieved February 17, 2021, from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html

Posted in kobebryant, Stone Money | 6 Comments

Stone Money- Icedcoffeeislife

Posted on February 16, 2021 by icedcoffeeislife

What is Money’s Value?

Stone money is an interesting concept that may be confusing at first. When we were first learning about it,  I was taken aback by the concept that money now has a real value. We only give it value to make us aware of what is happening around us. After reading Milton Friedman’s piece The Island of Stone Money, it brought a new perspective on what money is and the true power it holds. With all of this new information, it is opening my eyes to see that there are different ways that a community can view money and that it may not have a large influence on the people as it does in America.

Looking at the concept of money on the Island of Yap, they had no money on this island, they just used stones as their currency, which seems so strange. There were large stones that were used to pay for things and hold the power of what money was. These stones ranged from one foot to twelve feet, and some of the stones were so large you could not move them from their places. To us in America, this seems like such a crazy way of how to deal with money. They are sign stones that have no value behind them, just the understanding that they were the currency of the town. When Germany wanted to redo the roads in Yap, they put black crosses on the stones which was to show that if the roads were not fixed then the stone would not be valued. Once the roads were fixed, the black crosses were taken off. This seems so unusual to use because why did they have to pay with money? Why did they not have to pay? They paid by having their stone marked, it is all about what the true concept of what money is. Friedman presents this idea of money in a way that makes it hard to comprehend. In America, money has so much value that it is ingrained into our heads that if you have no money you have no power. The real picture is that money does not have value until we give it some. 

I listened to The Invention of Money, a NPR Broadcast, and I looked at Act one called The Lie that Saved Brazil. It focused on the current state of Brazil’s currency. Chana-Joffe-walts talks about her experiences with the currency in Brazil. Chana uses an example of when she was at a street vender buying a pair of sunglass, and he told her to make payment every month for six months to pay off the sunglass.This method is usually used when you can not pay something in full, so you pay a little by little for a couple of months. Brazil had high inflation starting in the 1960’s causing its money to not hold any real value. The high inflation was due to the government not having enough money to pay for expenses, so they just printed more money. With them printing more money, it made it seem like they had the money they needed, but the money they printed had to be backed by gold or some item that had value. With just printing money, it really does have no value. In Act two of the broadcast, it brought your attention to online banking. This is where there is no real symbol for money, the bank is just moving money around. For example, when my dad pays the phone bill which is online, the bank is just moving money from one place to other places. With the bank moving money around on the computer, it takes away the value that paper money has in our life. 

Bitcoin was started as an alternative way to store and keep your money other than a bank. It was created in the wake of the 2009 global crash. Bitcoin is still a complete sign to you, it is not backed up by a commodity. This makes it very unreliable to put your money into. In less than a week, bitcoin shares went from being $266 on a Wednesday to $54 the following Friday, according to The Bubble Bursts On E-Currency Bitcoin, written by Anne Renuat. This is a $212 decrease in less than 48 hours. This kind of inflation is partly due to the fact that there is no real person that is working the code. Instead Bitcoin uses a method called “mining”, which is when you can earn money from bitcoin, but the one flaw with this programming is that it maxes out at 21 million. Onces the mining is complete, the money is put into a digital wallet that allows them to move it into another person’s digital wallet if they’d like. With this process, you do not have to go through your bank and sense it all online, so a person can stay anonymous. Looking at this article and the NPR broadcast about Brazil currency, they have one thing in common which is the high inflation rates that bitcoin and Brazil have. They both have no true value when it comes to the use of them. One day they will hold a lot of value, then the next they will have nothing left. 

Money itself has value in it, but if you look at it from other perspectives it may not hold the same value it once did. These articles have made the point that money holds no value, but throughout our whole lives we are told that we need to work to get money because without it you will go nowhere. In retrospect, we are giving so much power to a piece of paper that has no value, unless we give it to it. At the end of the day, money is just an object that was made to represent how much a person has, when in real life there is no value in an inanimate object. 

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

Goldstein, Jacob. (2014, February 28). The Invention of “The Economy” Retrieved February 16, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/02/28/283477546/the-invention-of-the-economy

Posted in icedcoffeeislife, Stone Money | 6 Comments

Stone Money-RowanRat

Posted on February 16, 2021 by rowanrat

Wealth means success, and has been throughout history. One achieves wealth by holding a great amount of money. Since the beginning of time, humans have used physical currency for trade. Physical currency is simply an object that holds monetary value. What type of physical money is exchanged depends on the area in which you live. Some examples include stone or paper. In modern times, however, the physical form is becoming obsolete and society is using more electronic platforms such as apps and debit cards. 

Milton Friedman’s, The Island of Stone Money, discusses their means of currency. Friedman is referring to the Micronesian’s German colony of the Caroline islands. More specifically, Friedman informs his audience of the Yap people, who reside in the island of Yap. Different from the US’s form of cash, or paper money, they used stone. On their island, they have no metal so they resort to stone. This medium of exchange goes by the name of fei. Fei, according to Friedman, “consists of large, solid, thick, stone wheels ranging in diameter from a foot to 12 feet, having in the centre a hole varying in size with the diameter of the stone, wherein a pole may be inserted sufficiently large and strong to bear the weight and facilitate transportation”(pg 3). Because of the size and weight of fei, their people rarely move the physical object and rely on acknowledgement of the transaction instead. 

In the United States, citizens used gold as means of currency. Over time, people agreed that gold was inconvenient and it was replaced with paper, or cash. The process of this transformation consisted of gold backing the paper that people physically held. It is not that simple today, however. Jacob Goldstein looks further into the concept of modern day currency. Some questions arose including, “where did all that money go?” and “was there a big fire somewhere which burned up a lot of dollar bills?” when speaking of the stock market. While having a conversation with his aunt, she answers his questions by stating, “money is fiction.” To put it into simple terms, money can lose or gain value through inflation. With that being said, money is just an idea. Currently, we use electronic platforms to pay our bills, purchase objects online, etc… There’s no actual money being handed to one person to the next, they’re just numbers that go up and down in a system. Money is a concept created by people, changed by people, and traded by people. There is no concrete value of money, making it a confusing concept to comprehend. 

Bitcoin is another example of how modern day money is just a concept. In Jeff Reeves, “Bitcoin has no place in your-or any-portfolio”, he argues that bitcoin is unreliable and nobody should participate in this digital currency. The reason behind this thinking is that bitcoin holds no true value and the only worth is based on how much someone is willing to pay. Reeves is correct in saying that it holds no value, but to say that nobody should get involved with bitcoin for that reason can be said the same about cash money. It is understood that money is just a concept, so there is little that differentiates the reliability and validity of cash money and bitcoin.

Friedman tells the interesting story of a wealthy Yap family. The family’s stone lay under the sea. An ancestor went to retrieve the stone but a storm arose. The team made it out of the storm, but the raft and the stone were left stranded. Even though the stone was not in the family’s possession, it was still accepted as if it were on land next to the family’s house. As Friedman states, “Unless you are very unusual, your immediate reaction, like my own, will be: ‘How silly. How can people be so illogical?’”(pg 5). Modern day currency can be looked at as just as illogical as the story of the Yap family. Their wealth was agreed upon the same way that wealth today is agreed upon. If cash money in the US isn’t backed by gold, and can lose or gain value, currency is just information…a concept that continues to shift with time.

It is mind boggling that money is such an essential aspect of our society yet it is all but reliable and understandable. From our society today in the US to the Yap people, currency is made up and holds no true value. As technology becomes more advanced, the future will not hold anymore physical currency and will all be digital. Monetary value will continue to diminish, further proving the idea that money is fictional.

References

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

Reeves, Jeff. “Opinion: Bitcoin Has No Place in Your – or Any – Portfolio.” MarketWatch, MarketWatch, 31 Jan. 2015, http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-has-no-place-in-any-portfolio-2015-01-28. 

The Invention of Money. 19 Feb. 2018, http://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money. 

Posted in rowanrat, Stone Money | 5 Comments

Stone Money- person345

Posted on February 16, 2021 by person345

What is Money?

Money by definition is a medium of exchange that is in the form of cash and or coins. When we think of money, we think of it as the piece of paper that is used to pay for things such as food. But, in most cases, it is not. Money today is mostly just numbers on a screen in one’s bank account. The value of money in a bank account has a number value that is determined by the bank and by how much one has received through direct deposit. Since cash is becoming more and more obsolete, there have been new cryptocurrencies developed and are considered to be money. Digital currency such as Bitcoin (BTC) have taken off in the economy. This intrigues me. Interestingly, we use money daily to pay for products and it might not even exist? What even is money? I asked myself. Does it even exist? It seems counterintuitive. With further research, each country or region seems to have different interpretations of what money is implying that money overall does not exist. Money is what is it because we are told that it has value.  

In his essay titled The Island of Stone Money, economist Milton Friedman writes about the island of Yap’s (an island in Micronesia) currency. Yap’s medium of exchange called fei are huge limestone wheels that weigh many tons. Fei stones were created over 400 miles away from Yap. Since fei are too large to conveniently carry around, the people of Yap were not required to have the stones in their very possession. According to Friedman, the stones still had purchasing power no matter where they were located, and people still had ownership of them. Then, Friedman talks about when the Germans purchased Yap from Spain, they painted black crosses on the fei stones as a fine and became the property of the German government. This made the inhabitants of the island help rebuild the highways that were in poor condition. After the highways were rebuilt, the Germans erased the crosses and in an instant, they had value again. In this situation, the German government had the power to decide whether something was money or not by declaring that it was not so. Even though the people of Yap declared that Fei was money, the German government still had the power to revoke the stones as currency simply because they claimed ownership over Yap. Therefore, Money is ultimately what people believe it to be. The Germans did not see the stones as currency while the people of Yap did. The stones were fictional forms of money to the Germans.

Like the people of Yap, the people of Brazil, strongly believe that their currency exists. In the first act of the National Public Radio broadcast, The Invention of Money, the hosts of the broadcast, Jacob Goldstein and Ira Glass talk about and introduce how Brazil’s economy changed drastically once the people there started to believe in a made-up currency. The problem in Brazil started in the 1950s when the Brazilian government was trying to build a new city called Brasilia in the Amazon rain forest. The government did not have enough funds to cover the costs, so they printed more money than they had. This resulted in inflation and caused prices to rise for decades. The purchasing power of the Cruzeiro started to decrease every hour. Then in the 1990s, four economists proposed a solution to stop the hyperinflation that was occurring. To stabilize the economy in Brazil, the four economists made people believe in a fake currency called the Unit of Real Value (URV). As people had faith in this fake currency, they no longer accepted the Cruzeiro as their currency. This as a result, caused the money supply of the Cruzeiro to decrease and in turn, it stabilized the rate of inflation. The made-up currency that was used to stabilize the Brazilian economy was determined as currency only because the people believed it to be so. Before the four economists developed URV, it was not believed to be a form of currency. Even Jacob Goldstein says in the radio broadcast that “The money doesn’t really exist. Not only is there no gold. There aren’t even bills for most of the money that exists. Most of the money that exists is just the idea. It’s just the bank saying, yes, there is this much money in your account.” In this case, the Brazilian government is saying yes, URV is money. And just like that, it had some value to be thought of as money.

In an interview with Jacob Goldstein the co-host of the National Public Radio broadcast, Planet Money, NRP’s Noel King discusses Goldstein’s book Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. First talks about the invention of Paper Money created by Mongol Emperor, Kublai Khan in China. Before Kublai Khan arrives in China, the Chinese used iron coins as their currency. Then once Kublai Khan arrived, he made the new currency into a paper form. Because Kublai Khan came into China and demanded that paper money was the currency, the iron coins that were used prior became obsolete and no longer declared as currency in China. It is appealing that one man can come into a country and automatically change what counts as money. In Kublai Khan’s eyes, the iron coins were not considered to be money, but to the Chinese they were money. This further proves the point that the true value of money does not exist. It is just made up by whoever oversees a government or country. Kublai Khan in China made up a currency and made people believe that it was money.

From all these examples throughout history, it is evident that money is a figment of people’s imagination and does not actually have any physical existence. The people of the island of Yap believed their currency to be large sone disks while Brazilians believed money to be Brazilian Cruzeiros and the Unit of Real Value (URV). Money is a fictional entity. Money exists only because we are told it does to make goods and services payable.

References

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

Glass, I. (2018, February 19). The invention of money. Retrieved February 17, 2021, from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money

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

Posted in person345, Stone Money | 7 Comments

Stone Money- honeysucklelilac

Posted on February 16, 2021 by honeysucklelilac

The Intangible Currency

The idea of success is most commonly measured in how wealthy you are, which means how much money you have. Money is the biggest motivator in the lifelong chase of being successful and we idolize those who seem to have copious amounts of it. In this race to the top, people don’t realize that money isn’t something that you can even obtain, it is only a concept. Most of the money that is exchanged isn’t even real, due to today’s digitized banking system. How much money you have is represented by a set of numbers that appear in your bank account. There are different currencies all around the world and each one has its own set of values which demonstrates that the concept of money isn’t concrete. People’s ideas of success continue to push along the desire to make fictitious money to grow the economy.

Taking a look into the fictional concept of money, the island of Yap is the perfect place to start. Milton Friedman describes in his article The Island of Stone Money that the currency on the island is large, rounded pieces of stone that represent value. These stone wheels could weigh hundreds of pounds and those were used for important transactions. The inhabitants of Yap had no need to bring the large stones with them when making a purchase, it was enough to know who the stone belonged to. Friedman says, “[A] noteworthy feature of this stone currency… is that it is not necessary for its owner to reduce it to possession.” The ownership of the stone had shifted and therefore it didn’t matter that the person who owned the stone didn’t move the stone. It’s difficult for me to understand how the people on the island of Yap were able to just trust in each other to know who the stone belonged to. It was made more clear to me when in the 1930’s the U.S took a similar approach to currency when there was a shift in how banking would be done. Americans no longer would go to the bank to exchange dollar bills for gold, instead the bills were going to epitomize money.

In the NPR broadcast “The Invention of Money”, Jacob Goldstein, producer of Plantel Money and Ira Glass, host This American Life talk through their ideas on the 2008 stock market crash. They dive into the question, where did all the money that was lost go? The answer was that the money didn’t even exist at the start so, there was no money that was physically lost. There had never been a time before this where people were faced with the fact that, as Glass says, “Money is not solid. It’s value could disappear.” What interests me is that on a large scale, there was no knowledge of the fact that money isn’t real and no one had put regulations into place to deal with the phenomenon. No one had even thought to question what money actually is and if it’s even real.

In today’s society, it seems as though we have almost gone backwards when we look at how money is handled. We have gone back to no longer needed to see physical dollar bills to be ensured that the money is actually real. The digital age has progressed the need for the convenience of not needed dollar bills to complete transactions or to even get paid. I started my current job receiving paper checks because that’s what I had always gotten at my first job. I started to have my checks be directly deposited to my bank account when I learned that I could take the step of waiting for a physical piece of paper out all together. I immediately just trusted that the money would be in my account and it would represent the amount I was supposed to be paid for. The idea of money will continue to change as time goes on, just like the GDP.

The economy wasn’t created until the 20th century, before that time there was no way to track how countries were doing financially. During the Great Depression it was clear that something bad was going on in the United States. It was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world due to the high number of unemployed and failed banks. The government decided that it was going to start calculating the national income. This number was the blueprints for today’s Gross Domestic Product also known as GDP. This number represented a country’s value of all the goods and services they produced in a year. The purpose of the GDP was never to measure the standard of living for people living in different countries. Dianne Coyle, an economist and author of GPD. A Brief But Affectionate History, brings up a valid point when she mentions that GDP is not something that can be measured as if it is a natural object.

It is difficult to think about and fully grasp the concept of money as an intangible currency. When I was younger, I believed that the money in a persons’ bank account was physical bills sitting in a box, in the bank with the owners’ name on it. As I grew older my concept of money changed and I was able to recognize that wasn’t the case. My thoughts on money now is that it is a concept that is universally known but not seen. As the ideas of money, the economy and GDP continue to grow and change their definitions will become more abstract as they will change from being physical to purely digital.

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

Goldstein, Jacob. (2014, February 28). The Invention of “The Economy” Retrieved February 16, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/02/28/283477546/the-invention-of-the-economy

Posted in honeysucklelilac, Stone Money | 7 Comments

Stone Money – carsonwentz1186

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Chris McGee

What is Currency?

The idea of money and the forms it undertakes are constantly evolving with us as a society. No human in this world can truly say they understand the idea of currency as there is no specific form in which currency needs to undertake. As history has shown, currency can come in the form of something as simple as stone or paper, just as long as society has an understanding of what that stone or piece of paper is worth and how it can be used to act as a form of currency amongst civilization. Due to the advancements of today’s society, currency is becoming incrementally more digitized rather than a physical presence amongst society. At the current rate of evolution society is undergoing, soon there will be no real physical form of currency within the next century of life.

Milton Friedman’s novel “The Island of Stone Money” references a story about the population of the Caroline Islands in Micronesia and their use of stone as the currency being used amongst the population. The book Friedman discusses is that of Anthropologist William Henry Furness who visited the Islands in the year 1903. Furness writes “After concluding a bargain which involves the price of fei (stone coin) too large to be conveniently moved, its new owner is quite content to accept the bare acknowledgement of ownership and without so much as a mark to indicate the exchange, the coin remains undisturbed on the former owner’s premises.” The idea presented in that statement, in today’s world seems absolutely ludicrous as we as a people today consider it a necessity to be in possession of the currency being given in order to acknowledge an exchange has taken place. Friedman’s response shares the same view as today’s society, however he recalls an instance of the same method being used in a transaction of gold between France and the US in the early 1930s of having gold being simply marked as invaluable to the US labeling the gold to be the property of the French out of simple acknowledgement. To me that seems like a simple concept in theory, however in today’s world with the many forms currency now exists in, this would not be a feasible option to regulate the many transactions which take place among society.

In NPR’s podcast “The Invention of Money”, the true value of money is called into question in regards to the financial crisis of 2008. The guest of the podcast and producer of Planet Money, Jacob Goldstein, reveals a result that many of us today are not able to fully wrap our heads around, “Money is Fiction.”  What he means by this is through his investigation of the 2008 financial crisis, there was no physical money lost during the crash, only the value of objects was lost simply because, as Goldstein states, “that’s what everyone now agreed.” I believe this is an accurate representation of what currency has become as well as how the concept has changed throughout history as the belief that if the people of a society agree on how a currency works, it is a viable method of the evolution of currency in the world.

Goldstein later in the podcast states about the value of currency “You don’t have to see it. It’s just information.” This statement refers to the idea of currency in the 21st century as now rather than being physically handed something, we can simply have it electronically deposited in our bank accounts or have it transferred through various phone applications such as Venmo and take it at face value rather than having physical proof of what you have received. Personally, I had never thought of currency in this way as I prefer to use cash for my transactions, but I am just as guilty as every other person in today’s society when it comes to believing digital currency is the same as physical currency. When I receive my paycheck from work, I usually receive it through direct deposit and think I have received something of value when really what I have received is nothing at all, much less something of value. As society evolves more and more into the digital age of monetary transactions, humans continue to further lose touch and cloud their judgement on what it truly means to receive money due to the introduction of digital currency. 

As previously stated, there are many different types of electronic currency being used in today’s world. One of those currencies is a program called Bitcoin. However, in 2013 the usage of this electronic currency presented more problems than benefits. The app allows currency, in this case, bitcoins, to bypass banks and go straight to another person offering the transactions to be able to take place in a “high degree of anonymity” as stated in the Yahoo News article “The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin” by Anne Renault. I personally do not believe that e-currencies such as Bitcoin are the best way to make transactions with other people due to the cyber risks presented in Renault’s article, however, as Renault states “…that risk has failed to sway many.” The existence of platforms such as Bitcoin has, as Renault quotes from the European Central Bank that these platforms can be a “monetary alternative for drug dealing and money laundering.” The introduction of these platforms into today’s society has further proved the claim of Jonothan Goldstein that money is just simply fiction and it is becoming more like “information” rather than currency. I find it fascinating that we are at the point where currency is a gateway for crime which to me confirms the hypothesis of Jonathan Goldstein of money simply being “fiction.”

The abstract idea or illusion of money throughout history has been a difficult concept for people today to fully understand. The way the world has evolved currency from simple pieces of stone to electronic lines of code has further confirmed the concept of money to be exactly that, a concept and nothing more.

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 carsonwentz1186, Stone Money | 2 Comments

Stone Money- Justheretopass

Posted on February 16, 2021 by justheretopass

The Difficult Understanding of Money 

Most people’s goal in life is to be financially stable to the point where they don’t have to stress about certain things. How does one become financially stable though; Money is always the answer. Money dictates a lot of things in our life. For example how we are educated, how healthy we are, and the overall quality of living. We all strive to obtain an abundance of this paper or virtual paper we call money. The value of money can go up or down depending on the country you’re in and the period you’re in. If you think about it, money is just paper or random numbers to let us know how good or bad we are doing in life. Society has established a certain amount of money on each paper to differentiate them. The idea of money keeps people waking up every morning and chasing their dreams and to one day be financially stable. 

In The Island of Stone Money by Milton Friedman, he talked about how people on the island of Yap use stone money as a form of currency. The author talked about how when they make trades they will usually keep the stone untouched at the former owner’s land even though he doesn’t own it anymore. Having money is an idea and mindset as shown by the people of Yap because even though they don’t physically have the stone with them they have the stone in their name and head. This process is similar to the United States process when they started to move from gold to paper. Over time, people got tired of holding the heavy pieces of gold so the banks took the gold and exchanged it for paper money which we use today. 

In NPR’s podcast, The Invention of Money by Ira Glass discussed the 2008 financial crisis with Jacob Goldstein who is the author of Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. Jacob asked his aunt who is a very successful businesswoman what happened to all the money that just vanished. His aunt stated that “money is fiction.” The money never really existed in the market like they said it did. All the houses used to be worth a certain amount but plummeted which is the reason why all the money was lost. All the houses just lost their original value. Essentially no money was lost during this financial crisis the money was just devalued. 

To look deeper into the idea of money being an idea and fictional we can look at The Lie That Saved Brazil by Chana Joffe-Walt. The Brazilian government tricked 150,000,000 into believing their money had value, when in reality it didn’t. Brazil had a problem with inflation due to the president wanting to build a massive city in the middle of the jungle. The government didn’t have the money to build that city so they just printed more and created more money from nothing. As each year passed with them building the city, the money in Brazil became more worthless by the day. A beer manufacturer stopped making beer during this saying, “making beer just takes too long. You buy all the wheat and the hops and by the time it was brewed everything was worth so much less.” The money in Brazil was losing its value as soon as they got it like a car right when you drive it off the lot. This shows you money is fictional because even if you get a $100 bill that bill might not be worth $100 in an hour. The value might decrease to $98 but it’s still the same bill. 

As I was reading the article regarding the Bitcoin, E currency it was interesting to see how fast something could drop so fast. On Wednesday the price of bitcoin was at a high $266, but then on Friday, it dropped to $54. In three days the price of bitcoin dropped $212. This goes to show you how unrealistic money is, and that is just the idea of a person. No one would have been able to predict the drop of bitcoin to plummet that far down because no one knows how much the world has. On the contrary, having electronic money may be good to save space and make it lightweight but it is definitely easier to steal your money earned. In 2014, Mt.Gox hackers were able to make off with bitcoins that were worth roughly $460 million dollars. 

Money isn’t always in the form of paper or coins. It can be in the form of a virtual presence called e currency. Jacob Goldstein stated that, “the most money he has or gets paid is usually direct deposit.” He never actually physically touches the amount of money he makes every pay cycle. When you pay bills online money never changes hands. The numbers on the computer will just change on your screen. You just see numbers from the other side of the screen. For example, bitcoin is a very popular virtual currency that is made from complex computer coding. It can be accessed virtually by anyone on the computer. You never really see your bitcoin money unless the user wants to cash out. The 21st century is heavily influenced by technology and how to make our lives easier. This way of money is starting to become the new norm in society.

To think about the concept of money is very complex and difficult to get a full understanding of it. Money has changed in so many ways throughout history from when it was first invented to now. The idea of the money went from having heavy coins, to having printed paper, to replace the coins – to now having virtual money and credit cards and people rarely seeing their physical amount of money. We could see inflation starting to rise due to the fact of the growth of the economy and how fast it is moving with e-currency on the rise. The amount of money will keep going up and down as the economy continues to move, putting a whole spin on if money is real or fiction.

References  

Friedman, M. (1991, February). The Island of Stone Money. https://counterintuitive2015.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/stonemoneyessay.pdf.

Glass , I., & Joffe-Walt , C. (2018, February 19). The Invention of Money. This American Life. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money.

Park, H. Money’s Role in Society. Money’s Role in Our Society. http://scripts.cac.psu.edu/users/h/w/hwp5131/Assignment%205.html.

Reeves, J. (2015, January 31). Opinion: Bitcoin has no place in your – or any – portfolio. MarketWatch. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-has-no-place-in-any-portfolio-2015-01-28.

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

What is MONEY? Jacob GOLDSTEIN’S book Explains ‘SHARED FICTION’. (2020, September 8). https://www.npr.org/2020/09/08/910586930/what-is-money-jacob-goldsteins-book-explains-shared-fiction. 

Posted in justheretopass, Stone Money | 10 Comments

Stone Money – iwantpopsicle

Posted on February 16, 2021 by iwantpopsicle

Money Just isn’t Real

There truly is no such thing as “money”. All around the world, there are different iterations of currency that all possess a monetary value of their own. However, this value isn’t simply just innate. Afterall, every single variation of a US dollar bill, be it a ten, twenty, or fifty, is made of the exact same materials. This is because the value of “money” is subject to change at any given moment, and this is decided by everyone alive who is spending money at all times of the day. Money is not a solidified concept, and in and of itself, is abstract. While we have different values and physical or digital forms of money all around the world, we all still utilize currency in one way or another. 

In the Western Pacific Ocean, there is an island known to the rest of the world as Yap. In the article The Island of Stone Money, written by Milton Friedman, he describes how the people of Yap based all of their transactions on giant stone disks called fei, with holes fitted in the middle of them to insert long poles, if they needed to be moved. “After concluding a bargain which involves the price of a fei too large to be conveniently moved, its new owner is quite content to accept the bare acknowledgement of ownership and without so much as a mark to indicate the exchange.” The people of Yap simply mark the stone, and are content with leaving it right where it is. This is strikingly similar to our banking system, in which a cheque holds the value of money you do not possess on your person, but is held within the bank. The people of Yap simply mark the stone, and are content with leaving it right where it is.

These stones truly do not possess any inherent value. Afterall, they are just big stones. The people placed value upon them. By doing this, they created their own system of currency that they can control amongst themselves. Knowing this, you can conclude that money is just totally fake. There is nothing innate about money, as the labelling is done by humans. We decide when we want to calculate the worth of something. That “something” in question can be quite literally anything. Once that has been decided, a currency can be born. This is exactly what the Yap people did, and what every civilization has done before them.

When dealing with physical money, you must deal with the influence of inflation on the value of your money. Every single day, the value of a US dollar changes, even if by just a little bit. Perhaps the most abstract thought when it comes to money is digital currency. This is because it seemingly has no physical value, and nothing actually moves when you make digital transactions. Meet Bitcoin: the anonymous, inflation proof, and fully unadministered cyber currency of the future. In the Yahoo! News article The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin, author Anne Renaut states “Once mined, Bitcoins are stored on a person’s hard drive in a virtual wallet, and can be directly sent to another person, bypassing banks and remaining largely anonymous.” This makes Bitcoins obtainable by anyone who owns a computer, and prevents the value from being influenced by “politics or human error”. It’s unbelievable how far we have come from simply placing value on a static object and physically handing it to someone else as payment.

Being that Bitcoin isn’t regulated by the government in any way, where does it come from? When someone refers to the process of “mining” Bitcoin, they are speaking in Layman’s terms. There is a software tied to Bitcoin that allows you to earn the currency. Using your computer’s processing and GPU power, it facilitates transactions for Bitcoin between users, thus causing the program to generate 1 bitcoin. Your computer has to solve puzzles, and whether or not you can beat another person’s computer to the chase is directly related to the amount of mining power your computer is providing to the system. “The software is written in such a way that it becomes increasingly difficult to generate new bitcoins, with the number in circulation designed to eventually top out at 21 million” Renaut explains. This is absolutely insane to think about. Literally anyone with a computer can participate in this process(despite the hardware requirements that you will need to generate bitcoin in the modern day, due to the increasingly difficult blockchain and demand for raw processing power). A new currency is being generated by the day, without any interference from the government. One particularly crazy part of this is that not only is Bitcoin a currency of its own, but it has a price in dollars, that is continually increasing as time goes on. Bitcoin thrives on outside currency, but can’t necessarily be controlled by the government. This makes it safe from inflation.

Now we shift focus to one of the strangest parts of currency exchange: inflation. The Brazillian government wanted to build a new capital city for Brazil in the 1960’s. They found themselves short of the money that they needed in order to do this. In order to afford the expenses, they simply decided to print more money. If only it were that simple and there were no negative outcomes to this, but that was and is not the case. Reporter for This American Life and Planet Money Chana Joffe-Walt provides a watered down explanation of this occurrence. “The problem with doing this of course, is inflation. If there are 100 dollars in the economy, you create 100 more? Now every dollar is worth half as much. That’s inflation.” Being that there was more money by a considerable margin, all money in Brazil was worth significantly less than it was before. The inflation rate reached nearly 100%. This caused economic problems from hyperinflation until the 1990’s.

The definition of money is equally mind blowing as it is difficult to pin down. Every single day, there are changes being made to the monetary value of our money, and there are even new forms of money being placed into circulation throughout the economies of the world. All in all, there will never be a day that money can be described as anything other than a completely man made and defined way to perceive value.

References

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

Renaut, A. (2013, April 13). The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin. Retrieved February 16, 2021, from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html

Glass, I. (2018, February 19). The Invention of Money. Retrieved February 16, 2021, from https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money

Posted in iwantpopsicle, Stone Money | 8 Comments

Summaries-RowanRat

Posted on February 15, 2021 by rowanrat

Belgium: Senate Approves Measure Allowing Doctors to Euthanize Children

It seems counterintuitive that people declare euthenasia unethical to children. In Belgium, the extension of euthenasia to children was voted upon, resulting in 50 supports and 17 against the bill. Pro-lifers, who are generally catholic, disagree with the extension of euthenasia to minors. However, who is one to say when and how someone dies? If someone is in severe pain and there is nothing that can be done to stop that pain, a quick and easy death would be much more ethical than to extend that suffering. All, if not a great majority, would be saddened by the death of a young one, but they would be even more saddened by a suffering and helpless child. All citizens, despite age, should have the right over their body. If medically diagnosed that a child will continue to suffer for the rest of their lives, there should be a choice to end that suffering or not. This doesn’t mean that euthenasia should be mandatory, but it should be an option. A bill extending euthenasia to children would only be fair.

On the other hand, there are risks that come with such extension. In Belgium, 47% of assisted deaths are not reported. Further, 32% of assisted deaths are done without request. While euthenaisa should be an option, it must be done with approval from both the patient and the parents. Also, the option should be given after a complete diagnosis from the doctor. The statistics are frightening, but that just means that there must be more regulation on assisted deaths rather than denying the option all together.

Men Defining Rape: A History

It seems counterintuitive that men have the right to define and handle rape upon women. Since the beginning of history, rape has been taken under control by the male gender. For centuries, it was up to the man to decide if a woman was actually raped or not. In all circumstances, if anybody performs a sexual act without the approval of another, it is declared sexual assault or rape. There is nothing to consider in the situation, if the sexual action is done, it is legally a crime. Furthermore, it should not be up to the man to decide whether or not the woman was raped or what should happen as a result. 

In 1780 B.C, rape was regarded as property damage. If a woman was raped, the woman was in the wrong and was labeled an adulteress. Her punishment would be death. In 1290, by the British, if a woman was raped and got pregnant, she wasn’t actually raped. The reason behind this is because a woman could not conceive if she was raped. In times of slavery, black women who were raped were not paid attention to. What happened to a black woman did not matter and the man would not be punished. There are countless examples in history where either the woman was punished for being raped or the woman was not at fault for being raped. This is unacceptable on all accounts and men should not be the ones to manage the aftermath.

The Cruelest Show on Earth

It seems counterintuitive that humans make the call whether or not an animal is well enough to perform in circuses. Elephants require intensive care, but elephants in circus shows are not provided with such care. If an elephant is ill, the animal must be visited by a veterinarian and given the okay before going out to perform. However, humans will force animals into performing, even if the animal should not be, causing extreme pain and even death. For instance, one elephant was sick. While the owners should have called the veterinarian immediately, they held off. Once said elephant began bleeding and it was noticeable by others, the elephant finally got a visit with the veterinarian. After being told that the elephant needs time before performing, the owners ignored it and shortly after the elephant passed away. This type of care is unacceptable and unethical. 

For years this type of behavior went unnoticed, but that time changed following that late 90s incident and more incidents began to be released. Animal rights organizations sought to put an end to these horrific acts. After years of denying such wrong acts, Kenneth Feld, owner who caused the death of multiple elephants, admitted to the abuse he partook in. This includes hitting with bullhooks, whipping, and using electric prods. Animals deserve better than this, and thanks to animal rights organizations, this behavior will be no longer.

Posted in rowanrat, Summaries | 2 Comments

My Hypothesis Metro111c

Posted on February 15, 2021 by metro111c
  1. The younger generation
  2. The younger generation of music 
  3. What influences the younger generation of music 
  4. Rap artists and how they have influenced the younger generation of music. 
  5. How a rap artist performance on a track can influence a generation of music and break barriers of a genre.
  6. Rap music artist experimenting in not only music but the culture is the key to having an influential career in music and break barriers of a genre.
Posted in My Hypothesis | Leave a comment