What’s It Worth?
P1. What is the purpose of money? We, as a nation, have grown up thinking that money was a tool for the trading of goods and other services. For some, it is a matter of survival. How we feed each other or how we purchase clothes to keep us warm. However, if you really think about it what does a piece of paper have to do with our worth?
P2. Out in the Pacific Ocean, there is a tiny island named Yap. Hundreds of years ago, their society agreed that they would use the limestone deposits as money. This limestone was usually only used big things and not everyday purchases. The only problem for them was that it was very hard to transport these big stones. During the first transportations, one ended up at the bottom of the ocean. Although you could not physically touch it, everyone decided that it was still good.
P3. The limestone that was used is very similar to Bitcoin, which became popular two years ago. Bitcoin is a digital payment system which allows transactions to occur directly between users without the use of a middle man. As you can see, neither of them can be physically touched but are still extremely valuable. Bitcoin on the other hand, has some people that doubt its value. These people talk about how it has no sense of authority or a central bank. They also bring up that a bitcoin is worth whatever a random person is willing to pay, meaning that the seller will look for the person that is willing to pay the most.
P4. In my 20 years of living, I don’t think I was ever given a straight forward answer on what money was or what the value of money truly is. One thing we know for sure is that money makes the world go round.
Work Cited
Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.
Renaut, Anne . “The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin.” Yahoo.com. 13 Apr. 2013. 30 Jan. 2015. <https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html>.
Planet Money, By. “The Invention of Money.” This American Life. N.p., 7 Jan. 11.
Reeves, Jeff. “Bitcoin Has No Place in Your – or Any – Portfolio.” MarketWatch. MarketWatch, 31 Jan. 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 2016.
Rowan Counterintuitive 
You requested feedback on your Stone Money post, CollegeKid, but you have a Rewrite post already, so I’ll do my feedback here.
Your post has a title and a credible Works Cited, but not a single compliant informal citations. You can’t pass the Mechanics and Scholarship sections without citing your sources, so I’ll address that when we get there.
As you know, you’ll receive initial grades in four grading criteria: Argument, Rhetoric, Mechanics, Scholarship (ARMS). Grades can always be improved by revision. To understand your grades, you need to know your Grade Code, which I shared with you in class MON SEP 19. I’ve numbered your paragraphs for easy identification. The Writing Center offers free peer-to-peer writing instruction appointments to suit your schedule. And additional feedback is always available from me upon request.
Argument (Grade Y)
You waste your first paragraph, P1, on vague speculation, CollegeKid. There isn’t a declarative claim to be found. By now, the lessons of Open Strong should help you see that you haven’t begun to make a case for your thesis, whatever it may be. You ask two rhetorical questions, which are always dangerous. And you make three declarations. But they’re not arguments any more than the questions are. Just musings on our general impressions. Money is a way to trade, a tool for survival, a way to feed and clothe ourselves. But you close with a question about money’s “worth.” Compare that to any of the model Open Strong paragraphs then revise your introduction to make substantive claims leading to an argument.
P2. To argue well, CollegeKid, you need to provide your readers with the background knowledge they need to follow your argument. You’ve asked the question “what is money worth?,” but there’s no indication in this paragraph that you are pursuing an answer to that question. You don’t tell us that limestone was rare or give any indication why it had value. You don’t address the notion that the stones didn’t have to be moved to transfer ownership. If we hadn’t read the story of the Yap for ourselves, we’d have no idea what you’re talking about. Your audience is the world, not your classmates. Your readers need information.
P3. Nothing you say about Bitcoin is entirely untrue, CollegeKid, but it’s hard to understand why you’re making the claims you make. Did the Yap have a central bank? A government that gave their money authority? You haven’t established or even mentioned that either might be necessary for a monetary system to function. If you’re looking for an analogy to Bitcoin, the world of collectibles might be the better place to look than the bottom of the ocean. Nobody sets a value on a rookie Ty Cobb baseball card except the collectors who value it. If they’re “worth” a million dollars because of their scarcity, but somebody finds ten of them in an attic, suddenly everybody’s card is devalued. Why? You’re in the neighborhood of some good ideas, but all you’ve done in your P3 is raise the notions.
P5. This is just a throwaway. You haven’t decided on a thesis, so you can’t draw any conclusions.
Rhetoric (Grade Y)
You make reconizable rhetorical moves, CollegeKid, but you don’t capitalize on them to make a point of your own. For example, when you say:
you’ve structured your material correctly. You begin with well-phrased observations of a factual nature. But your conclusions, that some doubt Bitcoin’s value, and that it has no bank behind it, don’t follow from your setup. They are unrelated to the background you’ve provided. To succeed, your argument needs to follow logically from the facts to your conclusions.
Mechanics (Z)
Citing sources is a Mechanical issue as well as a Scholarship concern. You need to demonstrate your ability to form good informal citation sentences. I’ve modeled these for you several times, in class, and in the Page: Lecture/Revision Group/Revision—Mechanics.
https://rowancounterintuitive.com/revision-mechanics/
Please incorporate at least one citation for each of the sources in your Works Cited, or remove them from your WC. Nothing belongs in the WC if you haven’t cited it.
Scholarship (Grade Z)
You aren’t giving proper credit to your sources, CollegeKid, until you identify inside your text where you have found the information you use to support your own ideas. Putting the sources in a Works Cited is insufficient.
OVERALL
Take heart, CollegeKid. Your current grade is a reflection of how this work would be graded if it were submitted as part of your Portfolio. Many of the fixes are easy. The semester is young and help is available. Every post can be endlessly revised. I will meet with you any MON or WED in personal conferences and provide continuous feedback in and out of class. You may request a grade update in the Reply field for this post, but only after you’ve made substantial changes to your entire essay (not merely corrected the grammar and mechanics).
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