I am not an expert on the concept of money, what so ever. Thinking and understanding these stories and issues are not easy. Places like Yap, with their stone money and Brazil with their fake (now real) currency isn’t easy to understand the concept of. Being an American teenager, now a young American woman, there is very little thought about money on my mind. I know that one receives money and one spends the money. Only that seems relevant to me.
While studying where the concept of money came from, I realized there are more connections with different currency than not. We have thousands of dollars in a bank that gives us only a number on a screen of how much money we have. We do not physically see this money, we only just assume its there. We put money into our bank accounts and the bank then gives that same money for a loan to someone else. Though, the amount of money is still there in your same bank account and the amount does not change. The Invention of Money discusses how money is only fiction and doesn’t really exists. How can that same money a person owns them self go to someone else, yet each person has more than what they started with. How can that be if money was real? It can’t.
The people of Yap are doing no different than what we, Americans, are doing today. The citizens of Yap do not see the gargantuan limestone boulders, yet they knew it belonged to them or another citizen. “Is the one practice really more rational than the other?” Milton Friedman states in his Island of Stone Money essay. This got me thinking that, no, I don’t think that there is much of a difference. A person works all their life to make their number at the bank the highest they can possibly get. A person in Yap trade for their stone money and work for that. Neither of which can carry to a store or put in ones pocket.
Brazil on the other hand had a different issue, though still not too different from America. Back in the day, when we used gold as the value of our money, it eventually started not to work in our favor. There was not enough to spread around to all Americans. We then came up with another plan. Something new but not unheard of, paper money. We printed them and shared with the banks to spread to the people and a new way of money was made. Brazil achieved with their new currency, using URVs. This stood for Unit of Real Value. Which, for me, seemed pretty iconic since the money wasn’t real at all until much later.
Fortunately, this worked out for them and helped their inflation problem. As discussed in the broadcast, How Fake Money Saved Brazil, this only succeed because people’s faith in the value of the money. People had to have faith in the concept, the progress, and the money itself. Money is only valuable because of the amount of people’s faith that is put in it. This obviously took many years to master the URV money into real money, but only because the people’s faith and mind believe the fake money to be valuable.
Bitcon money, on the other hand, was also very similar to URV. This digital currency was not seen, and was only to exist online. My view point with this system is that it could easily become hacked by anyone really. Also, this money would not be seen by any kind of banks and would most likely put banks out of business. There would be no more loans, money in the banks, and there would be less money to spend. Companies borrow money from banks everyday, if that was gone, jobs would go with it. Companies will be forced to lay off and not hire. This would end up in a global depression. Whoever thought of the Bitcoin didn’t think through much of this. Though my views on these concepts may not be the most accurate and the money concept still does not have my full understanding, I now believe that money is not real. It is hard to think about that concept, and it is for anyone.
Works Cited
Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Standford University, Feb. 1991. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.
Joffe-Walt, Chana. “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.
“The Invention of Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life. WEBZ. Chicago. 7 Jan. 2011. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.
Renaut, Anne. “The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcon.” Yahoo.com. 13 Apr. 3013. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.
Rowan Counterintuitive 
Fortunately, this worked out for them and helped their inflation problem. As discussed in the broadcast, How Fake Money Saved Brazil, this only succeed because of the people’s faith in the value of the money. People had to have faith in the concept, the progress, and the money itself. This might remind the young people of this world today of the addicting beverage of alcohol. It tastes terrible, but people enjoy how it makes them feel. Alcohol is expensive because people crave it to feel accepted in society, and alcohol companies know that people will pay any kind of money for it. The alcohol is not tasty or satisfying, but people make it a necessity because how it makes them feel and act. Money can be put into similar assumptions because money is only a need because of how it makes them feel. Alcohol is not needed to have fun, but people assume that it helps. One does not need money to be rich, but it helps.
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You draw a fascinating analogy, Beyonce. I don’t agree with a word of it, but it does illustrate an argument. My more important objection is that the idea it illustrates—that money is less important than we make it—is not central to the Stone Money assignment. Nothing about money’s abstractness relates to its desirability.
Coded Grade: O
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