The concept of Money

Money is very important in our world and everyone has the same concept for it. They use it to buy things or trade it for others things or to show people how rich they are. Even though we all have the same concept , we all have different forms of money like dollar bills, coins, fies, URVs or electronically and even trading . No matter what forms money takes we believe that it belong to us and the more we have of the richer we are considered. We believe that it has value and that not gonna change anytime soon.

The yap are a great example of of believing something has value no matter its form. On a very small island in the pacific ocean live the Yap also known for being the island of stone money. The are called this because of their weird form of money which is coins made of out stones. Milton Friedman states that they refer to this a fei. The acquire these from another island since they don’t grow on their island and have to travel by boat .Since the stones are to big to move the Yap just believe the stones belong to whoever brought back to the island and its worth is yours unless stated so. The bigger the stone the more money it is worth. Many years ago while bringing the biggest stone back to the island , the yap encounter a storm and lost the stone but they told the island the story and they still believe in its worth and that it belongs to the family that brought it back even though no one has seen it. They have faith in their system no matter. Another form are shown by the Brazilian.

About 20 years Brazilian inflation sky rocketed by 80% which made the prices of things to go up about every week. This inflation made the people of Brazil not believe in their government until four men came up with a plan. Their plan was to help the people believe in the value of money by using fake money called URVs. They used the URVs to stables their use of money. They would increase the prices but the people would still believe that the prices are the same. Milk would coast 1 URVs which would be considered about 10 cruzeiros and then change to 15 cuzeiros but still be 1 URV .Their plan was a success because eventually the inflammation ended. They had faith in their plan to use a different form money and succeeded

For a while we have entrusted our money to technology . Now we pay by using our phones or watches or by simply pressing our cards against the card machine instead of sliding or inserting it . Bit coins are a good example of how we use technology as a form of money nowadays. Bitcoins are currency that can be transferred from one person to another which can increase or decrease the amount of money you have. It’s easy for us to except using our money with the use of technology because we believe in that form. It’s an easier and faster way for us because we can check our money easily through anything and without the problem of counting our money every time we want to pay the exact price.

Since we have put our money in the hands of technology we are also letting other people gain access to it. Other people can monitor our money just as much as we do if they’re smart enough to know how to work a computer. Japan was close to inflation because of monetary problems . Most people don’t know that our money is being monitored , neither did I until reading that article. Japan also has their own form of money called yen which something they were trying not to manipulate while racing to fix their inflation crisis.

Money is huge deal in this world and it has many forms. despite that, we all believe in the same thing that its has value. we didn’t make a rule to believe in the value of money or something we teach at schools, we just automatically put our faith in it.We put in our faith in coins, technology and pieces of paper we consider money. The yap put theirs in stones and Brazil theirs in URVs. Even though I believe that its weird to use big stones as money its what they believe in.The truths is none of those things truly has value but because we believe that it does its valuable. Many years an new set of people can declare using coconuts as money and it would work because its their concept of money. The concept of money is truly great because its something that works based on our belief. They should start teaching us about this concept in school because its something we should learn more and try to figure out because it would greatly benefit us and great to see someone try to explain to the world why something has value just because we believe it does.

REFERENCES

Renaut, A. (2013, April 13). The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin;  https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html

Reuters. (2013, January 25). Japan Tries to Ease Fears That Its Policies Will Lead to Currency Wars: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/business/global/japan-tries-to-ease-fears-that-its-policies-will-lead-to-currency-wars.html

planet Money (2010,October 4). How fake money Saved Brazil : https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil

Planet Money (2010, December 10). The island of Stone Money : https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-island-of-stone-money

Friedman, M. (1991). The island of stone money : https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/Stanford_02_01_1991.pdf