Category: Authors FA17

Usernames for Fall 2017 students of Comp II

Stone Money—Princess45

 

How do you answer the simple yet difficult question, what is money? Growing up I money was what you needed to do everything and anything. I always thought money was worth so much! I would ask my popop for dollars all the time and I thought I was rich! Then I realized my poppop had other kinds of dollars with larger numbers and I was confused as to why some things could be one or two dollars and something else could be five or ten and so on. As a little kid I would run around with the dollar showing everyone what I had received and then someone told me to save it so I could start a college fund. Confused, I said okay and put the dollar somewhere safe, not know that that dollar would decrease in value every day.

Now if you were to ask me that same question now, I would answer. Well the definition of money is a current medium of exchange in the form of coins and banknotes collectively. But how can that be true if we have things such as credit cards and electronic banking? In the stonemoneyessay.pdf it states “A noteworthy feature of this stone currency … is that it is not necessary for it’s owner to reduce it for possession. After completing a bargain which involves the price of a fei to large to be conveniently moved, it’s new owner is quite content to accept the bare acknowledgment without so much as a mark to indicate the exchange, the coin remains undisturbed on the former owner’s premises.”  But how can that money have a new owner if the old owner still technically owns it?

For example, again as it states in stoneymoneyessay.pdf  “When the German received ownership of the Caroline Islands, after the purchase of them from Spain in 1898 many of the paths and highways were in bad condition and the chiefs of the many districts were told that they have them repaired and put in good order. Coral was good for the natives and many were the repetitions of the command, which still remained unheated. At last it was decided to impose a fine of disobedience on the chiefs of the districts… The fine was extracted by sending a man to every failu and pabai throughout the disobedient districts, where he simply marked a number on the most valuable fei with a cross in black paint to show that the stones were owned by the government. This worked like a charm and the people thus dolefully impoverished… Then the government dispatched its agents and erased the cross and the fine is paid.

Stone money and numbers in your bank account are the exact same thing. Just because you do not have that money in your sight or touch doesn’t mean that that money is not yours. As long as everyone knows that you are now the rightful owner of the stone it is yours.

 

Works Cited

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

The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 30 Jan. 2015. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil?gt=

Stone Money – theintern

Listening to the Stone Money story in class, I said to myself, my professor sounded silly for telling us a story about an Island called the Yap Island. He said on the Yap island the payment or the object that held each persons’ wealth was through many big limestones. I wondered how in the world is a huge stone used as payment. As I kept on hearing what my professor said I was beginning to think this class is gonna be strange however I looked at the assignments he assigned and began to read article The Island of Stone Money I was surprised about what he said was true. I never thought this sort of trade or payment would have ever existed. Even though the stone could not be moved and would have to stay in one spot for all eternity it was still used to pay people and when the stone was not yours anymore it would still remain where it was placed. Which I found was pretty weird. Now I wonder how the limestone and the electronic bank balance are both considered money but people do not see it that way because these payments are in both different eras which has advanced because of technology and has evolved around money.

I opened up the story The Island of Stone Money by Milton Friedman an article explaining how stone money became to be and how physically impossible it must have been to move all those stones from 400 miles away with a raft. In Friedman’s article he explains how impossible it is to moved stones from one small island to another. Especially for the people living on the island to move those big rocks without any advanced technology. Other than the transportation, Friedman explains that the stones were the first form of payment on the island, he also tells us that the German government bought the Caroline Islands from Spain. However they wanted to improve the roads because the island was run down but they realized that the natives saw money as stones. So the Germans told the people that they were taking the stones by marking an X with paint and that they could have it back if they would be their workers. The people agreed and worked until it was finished, in return the Germans rubbed off the paint and gave it back to the natives. My thoughts of reading the German’s experience was funny because stones are stones not money. However if you think about money, before money was credit/debit cards or paper slips they were stones. During the decades and centuries the appearance of currency has changed and keeps changing. We use to use cows and land as payments. It is odd to think of how different our “money” was back then but we will probably say that when the future is upon us too.

Reading the last two articles about the stones and currencies I had an understanding of what was used as a replacement. It is very odd but it worked the system was working and people had money and were able to make compromises. I began to read How Fake Money Saved Brazil the next article about the Brazil real. It said that in the 1950’s Brazil was in a deep economic crisis and inflation moving up higher than eighty percent. For example if the price of a pair of sunglasses were ten bucks this month, the next month it would double and keep doubling every month until the sixth month it would be worth around three hundred dollars. Brazil’s presidents were no help to the economy they just made matters worse. Their plan was to freeze the prices so that it would not be so expensive for customers to get their items. Though, it did not work, the store owners were not willing to sell their merchandise at a low cost because that meant they were losing so they hid everything until the prices were to unfreeze and go up again. Luckily four graduates figured out a way to bring the economy out of inflation. The four friends came up with the idea of making a virtual currency that would be called Unit of real value (URV) this would let people know that this new “fake” currency was dependable and safe to use. (Chana Joffe-Walt, 2010) The new currency helped inflation drop and everything was now affordable. After six months the inflation that was around eighty percent dropped to being even and equaling to a dollar. Once the economy was running smoothly Brazil made the real the official currency. Reading about the reals made me feel concerned about all the lies that there is “real money”.

Money in my opinion is considered as a substitute for trade of some goods and I have always questioned myself about money and what do we have it? Why can’t anything just be free? Before the system was even available everything was free until what I believe is that people started wanting some reward for the hard work they did. From that point the trade and some sort of payment was created. I understand that if everything were to be free, people would stop working because after a long day they would want some sort of payment. In today’s world people work to get paid. From payment many creations are made for example, money made the world turn to a more advanced technology era where we have touch screen cell phones, high speed computers, machines to determine if you have a certain disease and specialized fields like doctors. Now if you think about money, sure it is real and money is somewhat fake but it’s a lie that moved the world forward, it made it a goal for all students who are willing to go to college and be a profession to study because one day they will make loads of money to have fun with and at the same time keep the world moving in a better direction.

Work Cited

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

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 30 Sept. 2017. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&gt

“The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

Stone Money—Splash

P1. When I was listening to the story of about the island of Yap in class I thought to myself he was making this story up. Why would people take the time to make such large limestone coins to be their representation of money? It seemed absurd to me because you couldn’t even move them easily or use them for little things life food for the house, it had to be spent on something big like building a new house or as said in the Planet Money Prologue if one of your warriors died in war you could use that stone to buy back the warriors body. It was also crazy to me to know that only if you had one of these stones it would make you considered to be wealthy, which was weird because you could have tons of gold and other forms of money but you weren’t ever considered to be as wealthy as someone who owned one of these stones as stated in the story of stone money. Also, something else I found interesting was that there was no form of documentation on this island of Yap, they have such a strong faith in each other’s word. Someone could say they wanted a house built, a contractor would come out build a house with no upfront pay but know that the fei was his once the house was completed. Even while reading Friedman’s essay the thing that stood out the most to me was when he talked about the magnificent fei that was being delivered over sea. A big storm aroused and the fei sank to the bottom of the ocean, and the people on the island of Yap were perfectly fine with that. They said that even though it is at the bottom of the ocean it still has its value, just as if it were leaning against the owner’s house. To me this is ridiculous because if that were my fei that sank I wouldn’t be as calm about it as they are and it wouldn’t seem valuable to me anymore.

P2. Then that has me go into thinking why is money so important to people, and what is the point of money in the first place? The NPR broadcast I was listening to talks about all the stages of money and how it has changed over the years. It first started as the stone fei, then to gold, and bills, off to checks, and now it is as simple as just a number appearing in your bank account. I really enjoyed how they were talking about the differences in how payments work now a days, they said that when they pay their phone bill it’s not like someone goes and delivers a hundred dollars to their phone company. It is almost as if they are just sending numbers back and forth to one another and it is a game that doesn’t even feel real. They even said in the NPR brodcast that most of the money that exists is just the idea of money.

P3. Which then brings me to the Lie That Saved Brazil, and what they had to go through. When I was listening to the story it made me feel so bad for the people of Brazil. I couldn’t understand why people had to be living the way they did when there was so much money in the world to be shared. I say this because there was apparently no money for the people in Brazil and they were really struggling to get by. Chana Joffe-Walt talked about what the stores were like and how the prices of things would go up or change every single day. How there would be a sticker guy that would go up and down the aisles changing the prices each day, people would even try to get in front of the sticker guy so they could pay the old price. It was sad when she told us that even when people would get paid, they’d have to spend it before their money wasn’t worth anything anymore. She said you could put your money in a drawer and each day that went by the clock would be ticking on the value of your money. There was even a point when the government just threatened to take everyone’s money, people went into panic and some she said even committed suicide. But then one day four men came along to help Brazil’s situation so they wouldn’t have to live like this anymore. Hero’s was what she described them as, they proposed a way to make people think their money had value again. Not long after things started to change because this new idea seemed to make such a difference in the way people just “lied to themselves” so to speak. Even though there was no physical money all they needed was for people to believe there was and that made all the difference.

P4. This story just easily helps me flow right into Weekend at Bernanke’s, listening to this story just gets me thinking about all the different ways the Federal Reserve could have helped let’s say Brazil for example, because in the brodcast they said the Fed can create money at and given time. Why they wouldn’t think to give some to Brazil during that crisis, I don’t exactly know. They were saying that the fed can just make money out of nothing and just lend it out and if they should do this. The process is so easy as they explained, all you do is add a few numbers, click a mouse and alas money is created. Also on top of that they even exclaimed that banks don’t just like to sit on load of money they like to lend it out, so why not use all of this money to help countries in dire need of it? It is interesting to think if the Fed screws up then the people stop believing in the dollar and the dollar loses value as they explained.

P5. Thinking about all these different ways money is transferred and the money people have and how much they have can put them in the category of being wealthy, but why?  Some things these days don’t really have a good representaion of money, the an ATM recipt for example. What is the point or meaning of money? Money is just something that holds value, but there are so many different things that hold value to different people and if you really think about the dollar and how it is just a piece of paper with a guys face on it, it doesn’t make sense why people go so crazy over it. For example with me I have a ring I got from my grandparents and I wear it every day and it holds so much value to me, but to someone else it would just be some old ring. Money is just another materialistic thing that people think they need to be successful in life when there are far greater things, like knowledge for example. Now a days with how high tech money as gotten it’s just a game of sending numbers and not physical money, so it’s as if the money isn’t even real to begin with.

Works Cited

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

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 30 Jan. 2015. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&gt;.

“The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

Stone Money—Yoshi

P1. In the little island of Yap there were the wealthy that would travel 400 miles to get these big limestone discs, also known as fei, to exchange as currency. In order to move these big stones there is a hole carved in the middle of it, so a tree can fit through it and roll the fei around. Despite the hole in the stones, the stones for the most part didn’t move around from one person to another. Instead they stay put, and the people of Yap just know who it belongs too. They will usually trade the fei for big purchases according to NPR’s Broadcast of “The Story of the Stone Money”. I thought the concept of the Yap’s money was dumb. I didn’t understand how they believed that a big unevenly shaped stone made them rich even if it wasn’t even in their possession. That to me was the most illogical thing ever. As I started listening to NPR’s Broadcast of “The Story of the Stone Money” and reading Milton Friedman’s “Island of Stone Money” I began to realize our economy and our visual of money is not too far off from those that live in Yap. Both, the Yap and us Americans, believe we can be wealthy and gain wealth by not actually physically moving anything.  

P2. In Milton Friedman’s story, “Island of Stone Money” Friedman explains how the French didn’t think the USA would stick to their gold standard of $20.67 an ounce. Therefore, according to Friedman, they asked the NY Federal Reserve to convert their dollar assets into gold, and set it aside for them instead of shipping it overseas. The Federal Reserve then put aside gold for the french. They separated the gold, and put it in drawers so it wasn’t touched. This way everyone knew that belonged to them.  After reading that I realized money is just knowing what you have, it is nothing physical. For example, you do not need the physical cash in your hand to determine your wealth. In Yap they determined their wealth by others knowing how many fei they owned, and not much different us in the USA determine how wealthy we are by digital numbers raising in our accounts.

P3. After reading, “Island of Stone Money” I began to questions why do so many people have the faith in others to determine their own wealth. For example, how is it that I deposit money into my bank account, and a digital number, a machine gives me, determines my wealth. How does money from my account get taken out, and put into the car companies account. But nothing physically is exchanged? That flimsy green piece of linen is barely used anymore, it is all about the plastic card with a chip in it. How is it that France has the faith in us to put aside gold for them that they bought, but they never physically saw? How is it that there is a fei at the bottom of the ocean near Yap that no one has seen for years, but yet it is still being used as if it was physically there.

P4. I continued my research on how people put their faith into other with their money, and I came across an article by NPR’s Broadcast called “How Fake Money Saved Brazil”. Just twenty years ago inflation in Brazil reached 80% a month according to NPR. Brazil’s inflation began when Brazil’s government printed money in order to build Brasilia, Brazil’s capital. They created a new currency and it improved their economy rapidly! People would still have cruceros, but everything was listed in a URV, Unite of Real Value. One URV would equal 7 cruceros, and the next week one URV would equal 14 cruceros. According to NPR broadcast this idea was created so people would stop thinking prices would go up. After a few months the prices began to equal out, and that’s when they decided the URV was the new real currency. After this change 20,000 people got out of poverty!

P5. After reading these articles I came to think, what actually is money? To the people in Yap money is a big rigid limestone that doesn’t have to be in their possession. To us money is fake, it isn’t that green rectangle linen with pictures on it. It is numbers we see in our accounts, and we use plastic cards to make purchases. To Brazilians money was virtual, it didn’t exist it was just a unit of measurement to control their inflation.  Throughout the years money has developed many different values. Now a days it is hard to survive without money, even though we might not even physically see it. I believe money is what makes the world go around. Even if no one actually has a definition of what money is.  Money all around the world is physically different, but the actual use of it is all the same. What connects everyone’s money value to all others are their concept of money. The concept of money is just the trust you have in each other. Whether you live in the US and put your trust in a bank. Or whether you live in Yap, and put your trust into other people knowing what is yours, or even trusting 4 men you have never met before to create a new currency and help inflation. Money is different everywhere, it is the trust that makes it the same.

Works Cited

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

Joffe-Walt, Chana . “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.org. 4 Oct. 2010. 9 Sept. 2017. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&gt;.

“The Invention of Stone Money.” 423: The Invention of Stone Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.

Stone Money—thebeard

“Money is fiction” is one of the weirdest quotes I have heard from the NPR Broadcast and just one of the oddest quotes I have heard in general. I could have never thought of the money that I have not actually meaning something. The money that I have in my wallet or bank account is the money that I have to spend and I need that money to buy something. The little piece of paper that I receive from the ATM that tells me how much money I actually have in my account is as close to holding all my wealth in my hands. When I heard the story of Stone Money I did not think this could actually be real.

When I was reading Friedman’s essay I was just thinking about how the Yap money system is so similar to ours. The money that the Yap use are big round stones, called fei. The fei have a hole in the middle so when they are created they can easily bring them onto the island and leave them in one spot for eternity. The Yap have their money just sitting in the streets but they know who owns which stone. They don’t need to see their money to make a purchase to someone, just like I don’t need to see my money to use a debit card. That money just goes from my account into someone else’s account. The German government put red X marks on the Yap’s stones saying that they were the governments money now. The Germans did not move the money back to Germany but just simply left it in the same spots, but now with a red X on it. What the Germans did with the fei is almost similar to the the French did with the US gold. They just put a label on it saying that it was now theirs and couldn’t be used. Its odd that just labeling some gold in a basement could cause the Great Depression. The US could have just given France the gold and taken the money from them and maybe the Great Depression wouldn’t have happened.  It is crazy to think that a label could do something like that.

While listening to the NPR Broadcast it really made me think what that would be like to just have a new currency. Its weird to think that Brazil can just create a new currency but they did and it made their economy better. I feel like it would be hard for Brazilians to trust the new currency at first because it is something brand new to them. If I was a Brazilian during the whole crisis I would have defiantly loved the new currency. From what it seems I would be paying so much less for things that I need and want. I feel that it would have been easy for the Brazilians to trust the new currency, it helps them out. They would be able to save their money and not spend it right when they received it. They would not be over paying for some necessities.

While listening to the guys at the NPR Broadcast I find out that even thought the Federal Reserve includes the word “federal,” it is not actually part of the government. They are tasked with something simple but very large: Creating money from nothing. It is really cool how they make new money and suddenly it is in people pockets. Well not instant but almost. The Federal Reserve buys bonds from banks and the banks then give the money received from those bond purchases out as loans to people. See pretty easy, for the person trying to get the loan it sometimes turns out in their favor because interest will go down so the bank can get this money into circulation. It is crazy to think that my money is just transferred to someone else’s account when I buy something. Even if I use cash it will soon be in someones bank account and eventually in someone else’s after that. From listening to this podcast and and reading the articles its really made me think what my money is actually worth to me. These flimsy slips of linen covered with silly green symbols seem so worthless; do I really work hard at my job to earn a handful of these? Then just to spend them on worthless items.

I decided to read two articles about Bitcoin. It has always been something that interested me but I have never really looked into anything about it. In the article “Bitcoin has no place in any portfolio,” it says that the value of bitcoin has ranged from $13 in January of 2013 to roughly $1150 at the end of November 2013. The value of bitcoin changes almost every day just like the stock market. Most investors do not like to use bitcoin simply because they do not understand it. You can also simply go from millions of dollars worth of bitcoins to zero the next day if someone hacks into your computer and takes them. The cool thing with bitcoin is that you can exchange ownership of products very quickly. I read a story that some people buy expensive gaming graphic cards and sell them on bitcoin for more and that is one reason that makes those certain products hard to find in stores like Best Buy. There is no guarantee that bitcoin will be around for a while but for now it is a good way to make money and buy or trade products, that is if you know what you are doing.

So after reading and listening all of those articles about different types of money, it is still hard to tell what money actually is. Could it be a big round stone sitting next to my house that may or may not even be mine or is it a virtual coin that I may have received from trading a product I bought online. Maybe money is fictional and its just the trust in our government and each other that its is actually in our bank accounts or wallets and that we can use it to purchase our needs or wants. I have never really thought that my money that I use to purchase things with could really just be a number going from my account to someone else’s account. Just thinking back the Yap must think we are crazy when we want to buy something and hand the cashier a plastic card or paper. But then again we think they are crazy for trust that someone has a stone in the bottom of the ocean that gives their family wealth. It is also crazy to think that just a couple of guys can create a whole new currency for the people of Brazil and have it actually work out in the countries favor. Those guys basically saved that country when they were in a crisis. We live in one crazy world. But I am still going to go to the store tomorrow morning before work and buy a cup of coffee with my money that may or may not be fictional.

 

Works Cited

“Bitcoin has no place in your – or any – portfolio.” Marketwatch.com. 31 Jan. 2015

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

“The Invention of Money.” 423: The Invention of Money. This Is American Life, WBEZ. Chicago . 7 Jan. 2011.