Stone Money Rewrite– dragon570

The Counterfeit Value of Money

When I think of coins I imagine pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters that can fit into my pant pocket. That’s a different story for the people of Yap who have coins that are taller, bigger, and stronger then themselves. They call it fei another name for it could be stone money, their stone money is a type of rock called limestone. Yap is a tiny island that is in the Pacific Ocean. When I first heard this story I thought it was really silly because they can’t move the coin when they claim it. Later, when I read the article “The Island of Stone Money” it allowed me to understand the concept of why Yap people use stone money. David Kestenbaum and a couple of other people broad casted about stone money. They were a little astounded about the size of the money that they use to purchased certain things. They also understood the value of their stone money. Money is worth whatever we an get for it. It doesn’t really have a real value of it.

Planet Money team did a broadcast of Brazil’s fight against money. In the broadcast, called “How Fake Money Saved Brazil” it talks about how inflation in Brazil reached 80% per month just because the government decided to use printed money to build a new capital. Luckily, 4 former graduate students helped save their country’s economy with “fake money”. Everyday grocery store prices went from cheap to expensive. For example, a bag of chips may cost $1, however, after a month it may cost $10 for one bag. Some customers at a grocery would see the price gun person walking down the isles changing the prices so people would cut in front of the price gun person and get to whatever they were buying before the person changed the price to a higher amount. People were tricked into thinking that money had value when that wasn’t true. They used something called “virtual currency.” It tricked them into thinking that their new currency was in URV’s (unit of real value), but in actuality it wasn’t. It was a good way to help the economy from heading towards bankruptcy.

My concept for money has changed because all my life I always heard people say that money is valuable. However, after reading the essay, listening to the broadcast,and discussing it in class. I have more of an understanding of money. That money could be fiction because it is what we can get from it. When I heard the story about the United States and how we put gold in a drawer and labeling it “France” it reminded me of the stone money in Yap because they don’t have physical possession of it but they still label it theirs, we still left it in the drawer for nobody to touch and just put a label on it. Later, we could have used it towards the Great Depression it would have tremendously helped our economy get out of the hard time this nation went through. If the people of Yap came to the United States and saw our currency and how we spend it I believe they would be shocked because we pay for everything with a swipe of a card.

Throughout the year our world is been changing at a rapid paced. Back then, Their weren’t bank accounts and plastic debit or credit that they just had to swipe to buy something. Instead, they used paper money that has been out dated because of debit/credit cards and checks. In class, I learned about the cows and chips metaphor which was basically about what the value of money really is. For example, in our the society money is worth the same amount we are spending for that dollar and so on. We can say that we are basically trading items, in this case, the chips for the dollar. The cow comes into the metaphor because it’s like trading the dollars for the cows. Cow are worth the amount you trade them for and depending on who you’re trading them with determines the value of the cow.

In the essay, “The Island of Stone Money” by Milton Friedman. He talks about how an ancestor and a group of people went out to found stone money. They were on there way back to the island but their was a strong storm and the group of people had to let go of stone money to save their saves. It sunk to the bottom of the ocean and they came back telling story about their journey. The people of the island decided that the coin at the bottom of the ocean was the ancestors. Even though it’s not physically in their possession it’s still labeled as theirs. In Caroline Lafargue article,” Yap’s Stone Money” she stated that  “And it could be easy to assume that the biggest stones would be considered the most valuable. But in reality the value can depend on each stone’s individual story.” Each person has a story to tell bout how they adventure to get this big piece of stone.

In the broadcast by NPR, they learned about the stone money at Yap and they figured out that the value of money isn’t real. For example, when people get paid they don’t get money handed to them nowadays, instead it’s sent to their bank accounts the only thing that changes it the number they see when they go into their bank account. In my class discussion I found out that the more money I have the less the dollar is worth. For example, If I get paid $288 one week and go to the store to buy something that’s a dollar it doesn’t seems expensive to me because I have $287 left. However, it might cost a dollar but that can add up to the point where I may have $5 left in my account.

Work Cited

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

Goldstein, Jacob. “The Island Of Stone Money.” NPR. Planet Money, 10 Dec. 2010. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.

Joffe-Walt, Chana. “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR. NPR, 4 Oct. 210. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.

Lafargue, Caroline. “Yap’s Stone Money: The Largest and Heaviest Currency in the World.” ABC Radio Australia. ABC Radio Australia, 11 May 2016. Web. 13 Sept. 2016.