2 Responses to Stone Money – KevinJames

1. davidbdale says:

   September 23, 2023 at 3:25 pm

   Hey, Kev1nJames! Thanks for posting ahead of the deadline. I hope you and your classmates who might read my Feedback here will benefit from it as they work on their posts. Let’s just talk about argument on this first pass.

   P1. Throughout every culture we have ever known, there has been a financial trade system set in place. Whether it is the Yap people, ancient Egyptians, or modern man, “money” has always been a concept. The ability to show off one’s wealth and profit in materialistic goods has been and will continue to be a concept humans live by. Why is money so important to us, that no matter where you look, our lives are driven by it?

   You spend about 80 words out of your 1000-word budget to set up the main idea that money is a persistent human universal, which might be worth the words except that the rest of your essay doesn’t support that main idea at all.

   P2. In “The Island of Stone Money”, Milton Friedman states that the Yap people had currency in the form of large limestone disks that varied in size, the larger the more valuable. Though seemingly a primitive form of currency, the wealth was known throughout their people. The stones the islanders use can be compared to a modern day money vault.

   I don’t quite get this comparison. The vault can be empty or full of diamonds and nobody knows which with the door closed. But the big disk gets its value from how visible it is, never locked away.

   They were immovable objects that contained vast wealth to the owner. As stated in “The History of Stone Money”, “When Rai shifts hands as the result of a land transaction, a wedding, or otherwise, the news spreads fast and it is soon common knowledge that a particular piece has a new owner.” In doing so, the ownership of the stone would be transferred to the seller, very similar to a modern bank transaction.

   There is a comparison for sure, but also another big difference. No physical transfer of cash takes place when the Rai shifts or your bank wires me money, but modern bank transactions don’t require ANY awareness of our transaction, whereas for the Yap EVERYBODY had to know our business.

   This concept of money was only viable due to the Yap peoples integrity and upholding their values, as ownership of these stones was more or less just a word of mouth type of ordeal, as there was no feasible way of transporting them.

   I mostly understand, but, if everybody knows whose Rai are whose, why is individual integrity needed? Nobody could get away with deceit.

   P3. In modern times, now more than ever, it feels as if money is an absolute necessity, yet in a way, it feels as if it is absent from our daily lives. More and more things are purchased every day without a single physical dollar ever being spent. The use of credit systems and cryptocurrency is bigger than ever and it allowed the finite amount of money that was in circulation to fluctuate. The prices of items in a store may change depending on the value of the dollar on any given day.

   The notion that money is “absent” is clever and a nice way to introduce the idea that “money” is more abstract than physical. But after that, the next two sentences sound as if they’ve been spliced in from a different essay altogether.

   With the boom of crypto such as BitCoin and Etherium, the price of the dollar now follows a slightly different trend. Crypto is a very new addition to the stock world, in which very little is known about it. To purchase cryptocurrency for the average person seems too odd. Why purchase an alternative currency that has no intrinsic value.

   I get that you’re talking “about” crypto, but I can’t tell “what” you’re saying about crypto.

   Well what is the value of money anyway. It is precisely what people say it is. If enough people believe a sack of potatoes is worth 10 dollars, who is to say it is not worth that. The same goes for any stock, including cryptocurrency.

   This is filler.

   In “Decoding Crypto: What It Is, How It Works, and How to Get Started”, the author states that with traditional stock, there is a correlation between the business done by a specific company and the faith that shareholders place in the stock price. In cryptocurrency, the value of a stock is tied only to investor appetite. If the ones who are purchasing and holding the crypto believe it to be worth as much, then the price will stay the course or continue to rise. It is when individuals begin to short the stock and sell or someone known as a ‘whale’ who owns a large proportion of said stock sells. In doing so, the price of the stock drops substantially.

   I like the distinction between shareholder value and “investor appetite.” The next 50 words or so don’t seem to have much to do with your overall examination of money.

   P4. In the 90s, Brazil had a financial crisis. As the government was lacking the means to keep the economy stable, in doing so the inflation skyrocketed over the months. People still needed an income to survive, causing the effect of people deciding the prices of items on their own. If a farmer who was selling corn decided the price was to be set at 200 percent the recent market value, there was no way to argue it. The individuals who were selling products kept raising prices and further threw fire onto the flames of inflation. Only when four foreigners stepped in to help the Brazilian government create a system that backs the money transactions within the country was the inflation able to stabilize and seize later on.

   I wouldn’t be able to explain to someone else what caused inflation or what cured it based on your explanation.

   P5. So why is money so important? What makes it so intrinsically valuable to each and every person. Well it really boils down to the way an individual wishes to live their life. Money can be used to purchase material things. Though our money today is hardly backed by the federal reserve as it used to be, its value is apparent in everyday transactions.

   This is the first of three conclusions, Kev1nJames. Any of them would be fine. I don’t think you need three.

   The amount of money you have may fluctuate depending on the market, but it is still worth whatever it is being traded for. And that is the importance of money. It is not so much as the number displayed on the screen as much as it is a means to trade for material goods.

   This is the second conclusion you could develop.

   The way we are to acquire food is no different from the past cultures. The only change is that instead of possibly trading an item such as clothing that you have made or herbs you have grown, not you trade money. And that money was paid to you for your time doing a task for someone else that has paid for that service. It all comes full circle in terms of the value of money. You are paid for your time, in which you further go on to pay for someone else’s time. This will stay true no matter where in the world you look.

   And there’s the third.

   There are good observations throughout your work, KJ. It would benefit from an overall theme more specific than “things about money.”

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2. davidbdale says:

   October 6, 2023 at 4:10 pm

   PROVISIONALLY GRADED. Grade is on Canvas or will appear soon.
   Revisions (and the regrading that follows) are encouraged but not required.
   RESPONDING to feedback is STRENUOUSLY encouraged.

   Reply