By reading the The Island of Stone Money by Milton Friedman, I find that the concept of having something with any type of value will give us power. Yaps probably knew that a fie was just a rock, without any prolific end. However, the fact that a fie was made from limestone, a rock that not everyone had access to, gave value to the rock in the island of Yap. Whoever discovered the limestone first from the Yaps might not even have had the biggest fie or the most valuable one. At some point a fie might not even have had a hole in the center. Nevertheless, as more Yaps had the ability to go 400 miles overseas and come back with a fie, the value of the fie might’ve decreased. Therefore, the difficulty of getting the best limestone was increased. For example, coming with the biggest fie or making the hole in the center as proof of the quality of the limestone gave the rock more value, and as a result, more power to the owner.
The uselessness of a fie made acceptable the idea of not needing to have the possession of the fie. The acknowledgement of being the owner of a fie was enough to have more power than other Yap islanders. Therefore, when “a violent storm arose, and the party, to save their lives, were obligated to cut the raft adrift, and the stone sank out of sight,” there was any problem accepting the owner’s power of the unseen fie because “it was all chipped out in proper form”(Friedman). As a result of having a fie and acquiring power over other Yap islanders, better position in the island were guarantee, for instance to becoming a chief.
I believe that the German government had the idea of how power differs people in a population. Therefore, taking over of what made the Yaps differs among themselves was the easy way for the Germans to get what they wanted because even though the Yaps might had know that a fie was just a rock, being acknowledge with the possession of the limestone kept Yaps from having to work or gave the them the authority of making decisions on the island. Therefore, I think that knowing that the fie were being claim as the German’s possession by having an X, made the Yap islanders to come with a solution to get back the recognitions of what was considered a source of power.
How Fake Money Saved Brazil by Channa Joffe-Walt shows how the idea of having the power of things made Brazil overcome an inflation of 80%. As we all know, Brazil is one of the countries with the best economy in the world. But how a fake concept of money can safe the economy of a country? Even though, Brazilians felt with power when they felt in control of the economy when the URV were introduced, they were still expending more Cruzeiros at a rate of inflation of 80%for a time (Joffe-Walts). However, some of my knowledge about some internationals economies give me a little concept of how people react when they feel empowered. For instance, in some countries people might not pay the same price calculated in dollars for an item, nonetheless, having the same value in dollars would make people buy such items because the dollar has more value than their money; therefore, these international buyers feel more in power when their monetary system has more value as the Brazilians did in order to fix the economy.
Unlike Brazil did, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying to inflate the economy approving to spend more than $116 billions in order to make “businesses to invest and consumers to spend” (Hiroko Tabuchi). Now, knowing that money with low value is bad for the economy, why would Japan minister think that increasing the value of the products and releasing money to the population will make the people spend and business invest? Even if the money is given to local companies to invest, there is no guarantee that it will make jobs because of the low demand on products. Therefore, for Japan to overcome the low demand and job loses, the value of money have to be increased and prove to the investors are not going to end in more debt has to be given. At the end of everything money its our way to get power, but when everyone has too much power, everyone loses because the concept of power is lost.
Work Cited
Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University , 1991.
Joffe-Walt, Channa. “How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR. NPR, 4 Oct. 2010. Web. 01 Feb. 2015. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake- money-saved-brazil>.
Tabuchi, Hiroko. “Japan Approves $116 Billion for Urgent Economic Stimulus.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 10 Jan. 2013. Web. 01 Feb. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/business/global/japan-approves-116-billion-in- emergency-economic-stimulus.html>.
“The Invention of Money | This American Life.” This American Life. N.p., 07 Jan. 2011. Web. 01 Feb. 2015. <http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/423/the- invention-of-money>.
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
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Hey, albert!
I’m going to break with my own tradition and begin with global comments (overall essay) first, then offer some local (paragraph and sentence level) feedback. My hope is that while revising to respond to the global critique you’ll make enough changes so that the smaller local blemishes will disappear. Once the post shapes up, we can concentrate on minor copy-editing matters of grammar and punctuation.
Global comments:
First I want to say, albert, that your theme “Money is Power,” is a very strong central concept that you follow through very consistently. Whatever else I have to say about your essay, do not lose sight of this primary strength of your work so far. Do everything you can to retain and improve the power of that theme.
I invited you to discuss how your feelings or concepts of money have changed since the lecture, mostly just to make it easy to start writing. Now that you have produced several paragraphs of specific material, you can discard anything readers might find irrelevant. They probably don’t care what you were thinking as a child. In fact, the first sentence of your second paragraph is probably the better place to begin your essay. Make the claim immediately that money is a fiction, but that since we all believe in its value, having a lot of it gives some of us power. I would read the second sentence of an essay that started with that claim!
That still wouldn’t explain why something like a limestone rock was valuable though, just because it’s rare. The Yap still had to agree to the fiction that the fei (check the spelling here, albert) were not just unusual but also worth having, right? I do LOVE your observation that as more limestone fei became available, the largest and “best made!” fei took on more value than smaller, accidental chunks.
Also VERY mature is your observation that physical possession of the fei was irrelevant BECAUSE it was not technically useful for anything . . . . except, and this is very important, as a SYMBOL of wealth. What do you mean by “I see the behavior of the Yaps as stupid”? Your claim is unclear.
This idea that what the Germans did with their Xs was to upset the social structure by removing the way the wealthy class retained their power is very smart, albert. ” . . . kept them from having to work or gave the them the authority of making decisions on the island” is very insightful. You’re right. It wasn’t the entire island that cared about the Xs on the largest fei, but only the powerful decision-makers who felt their authority being diminished.
Your attempt to make a parallel claim regarding the French gold is a terrible failure though. Nobody who wasn’t already very familiar with the story would have any idea what you’re talking about, and even readers who ARE familiar, such as myself, can’t really understand your logic. This needs a lot of work.
Your analysis of the Brazilian real is both brilliant and very confusing. You’re completely correct that people in economies where several currencies are present will always accept “below-market” amounts of a stronger currency. But how that relates to the Brazilian experiment with URVs is not clear.
You do a slightly better job of explaining that by pumping to many yen into the economy, Mr Abe has reduced the buying power of each yen, and that will certainly risk inflation as people both have more yen and feel that they’re worth less. The hard part to explain is how “everyone has too much power” in your phrase. They don’t, actually; they have less power, if their money is worth less today than it was worth yesterday. And every day they have less power.
Your biggest challenge for a rewrite will be to provide enough background material for your readers to understand your arguments WITHOUT having to read all the source materials. If you can manage that, your insights and your intelligence will make the work very impressive. But it’s a big job including just enough background at just the right time.
Try it in a single paragraph first, albert, and ask me to read your essay again before you do a complete rewrite. I’ll be happy to give it another review.
Local comments:
Many of your sentences just don’t make grammatical sense, albert. Examples:
—Why money is what define our social importance?
—As the NPR broadcast point that the reality of money is just fiction, . . . .
—Reading the The Island of Stone Money by Milton Friedman is where I find that the concept having something with any type of value will give us power.
You also specifically need help with your perfect verb tenses. In these, I will add the “haves” where they’re required:
—Whoever discovered the limestone first from the Yaps might not even [have] had the biggest fie . . . .
— . . . at some point a fie might not even [have] had a hole in the center.
— . . . the value of the fie might [have]decreased . . . .
There are others. I can help you with this if you ask.
I sense in both of these aspects of your writing that English might not be your first language. I have considerable experience teaching ESL, and will be happy to work with you before or after class on specific grammar challenges if you ask.
Grade Code 4Y5
This grade is unfortunate, since it can’t reflect the strength of your arguments well. If I could give a grade for content and another for composition skill, you’d do much better. However, your ability to communicate your ideas clearly is what earns grades in this class, and that aspect of your work needs very much improvement. I wish you luck and I will be happy to help as much as you need, if you ask.
Critique the critique: If you appreciate receiving feedback, albert, please reply to indicate whether you found the critique helpful or not, and if so, how it was helpful.
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