The Not-So-Absurd Idea of Stone Money

 

A couple of days ago, if anyone were to ask me what was the concept of money, I would have told them that it is a way to buy or sell items. I would also add that here in the United States, our money comes in the form of individual dollar bills and little metallic coins. The more a person possesses of these forms of money, the richer they are. This country’s current society believes in this concept, accepting it as pretty straightforward. However, the reality is that money is a concept so abstract, that it can either be represented by green paper bills or unmovable stone circles, and still work in the same way.

So what is the true concept of money? Well, as A. Freeman says, “Money is primarily a medium of exchange or means of exchange. It is a way for a person to trade what he has for what he wants.” This is similar to what I previously thought, and is in a sense true. However, it does not explain the whole truth. As Ira Glass reveals in the podcast The Invention of Money, “Money is fiction… money never existed… No money changed hands, no money vanished… Money is not solid. Its value could disappear.” There is the answer- money is not real. It is an abstract concept used as a medium of exchange or means of exchange and whose value may change. And the money is worth a certain amount because everyone accepts said amount or value. To illustrate this point, let’s travel to a little island called Yap, on which massive unmovable stone currency was used.

In his article titled The Island Of Stone Money, author Milton Friedman features a quote  by American anthropologist William Henry Furness III about the inhabitants of Yap and their currency, which states, “Their medium of exchange is called the fei, and it consists of large, solid, thick, stone wheels…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 acknowledgment of ownership and without so much as a mark to indicate the exchange, the coin remains undisturbed on the former owner’s premises.” Money on Yap is represented by these stone wheels, and the transfer of money for purchase is accepted through word of mouth, without these wheels actually moving. Everyone on this island trusts an individual when they say that they have earned the neighbor’s stone in exchange for a service. The word of mouth process is accepted, and the idea of lying about the ownership of a stone is generally out of the picture. A popular example of this is a story about a group of individuals who were transporting a huge stone wheel on their ship from one point of the island to another. En route, a storm broke out, causing the stone to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Once the group were able to safely return back to land, they told the people they encountered that they were carrying a massive stone wheel and that it is at the bottom of the ocean. The listeners accepted this account as fact, without seeing any proof, and offered items to the individuals based off how much they believed the stone was worth.  The actual money is never really there, but through representation of stones and accepted word of mouth, the inhabitants of Yap had a working currency system. In fact, the way we use money today is not too different from those of the islanders.

Instead of giant stone wheels, we use green pieces of paper, metallic circles, plastic rectangles, and numbers on electronic boxes in order to represent and transfer our money. Instead of accepting word of mouth (most of the time), we use quantity and numbers to show the amount of wealth in our possession. Even with that minor difference, the idea stays the same- and the “actual” money never appears. In our society, as an anonymous author points out in their article titled Money and the Illusion of Wealth, “Over 90% of money is literally created out of thin air via loans and the expectation of debt repayment.” We say that something is so amount, and expect someone else to be able to pay us back with something else of similar value. We are literally picking a monetary price that others generally accept as fact. This is what Ira Glass meant when he said that, “Money is fiction.” Money doesn’t exist, but we believe that it does based off what we use to represent it and how much an individual has of those representations. Think about how most working class individuals are being paid nowadays. People are not given a check or cash for a certain number of hours worked anymore. They instead find out that they have been paid based off what they read as the available balanced in their bank account. How do they know that money has actually been transferred to their account, however? All that is apparent to them is that a couple of numbers related to their bank account have risen in value on the computer screen in front of them. People accept these little digital numbers as proof that they have more money in their possession, even though they have never physically had any contact with said money. The dollars never existed, but have been represented by the numbers. Hence, money is fiction, even in our society.

In the initial paragraph, I made it clear that if someone were to question me on the concept of money and how it works, I would have given a straightforward answer about how it is the way we as a society purchase and sell items, mainly through the form of dollar bills and coins. Now I realize how narrow minded I was at the time. As I have now shown, and as I have personally learned in the past couple of days, money is a concept much more abstract. Yes, it is used as a means of buying and selling. But money also doesn’t exist. We made it up out of nowhere, decided to use different things in order to represent it, chose how much any given item was worth, and finally accepted everything as fact. Based off this truth, instead of pieces of paper, plastic, metal, and digital information, we should be able to theoretically accept anything as money. Why not use live animals?  Why not use other human beings ? (as history has sadly and unfortunately shown). Why not use our own body hair to represent currency? (though I guess my hairless father wouldn’t be too happy). Perhaps we could follow the footsteps of another successful and trustworthy civilization and use Stone Money.

 

Works Cited

Anonymous, Author. “Money and the Illusion of Wealth.” Money and the Illusion of                                 Wealth. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.

Freeman, A. “What Is Money?” Economics and Liberty. N.p., 11 Dec. 2015. Web. 13                                   Sept. 2016.

Friedman, Milton. “The Island Of Stone Money.” (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.

Glass, Ira, and Planet Money. “The Invention of Money.” This American Life. N.p.,                                   n.d. Web. 13 Sept. 2016