Purposeful summaries-doglover

Posted on February 6, 2024 by doglover7025

Do multivitamins really work?- It seems counterintuitive but, to stay healthy, you don’t need vitamins to do that. In a survey done by the National Institute of Health, nearly a third of Americans take vitamins daily, but they might not be doing any good. Author Marion Nestle makes a shocking claim, saying that there is no evidence that they(vitamins) make people healthier. Typical Vitamin users are already reaching their food quotes so, gaining more nutrients is essentially dangerous. That’s not to say that everybody shouldn’t be taking vitamins, specifics like children and seniors are in the clear.  So, if you want to keep wasting your money, keep taking vitamins. 

Belgium: Senate Approves Measure Allowing Doctors to Euthanize Children- It seems counterintuitive that such a unfortunate act would be passed.  In 2013, The Belgien Senate voted to extend euthenasia to children with disabilities. Euthenasisa has been legal since 2002, it’s been prohibited for children under 18 years old. Although euthanisia is legal in a handful of countries, the fully lifted age restriction is only happening in Belgium. The rates are increasing up to 25%. Not many people are happy with this act, some also expressing concern as well. “Instead we must make every effort to use the research provided to us to provide attentive care to relieve their physical suffering in a moral way.”

Prozac, what’s race got to do with it?- It seems counterintuitive that race has a correlation to Prozac (anti-depressant). Prozac, a popular antidepressant drug, hit the shelves in 1987. The company funnels med to 1 out of every 10 Americans, but that might decrease after a shocking claim comes out.  Data showed that from a study of 125 million patients, doctors were more likely to give antidepressants to white people and with private healthcare, and those minorities were given the opposite. Prescribing antidepressants should be based on factors other than insurance status, race, or gender. But, unfortunately that’s not the case.

Posted in DogLover, Purposeful Summaries | 1 Comment

Purposeful Summaries-Eaglesfan

Posted on February 6, 2024 by Brandon Sigall

First Article-The Hair Part Theory: It seems counterintuitive that a hair part can determine what skills a person might possess and tell them how they act. Parted to left, the hair gives a sense of logic, and activities contributing to skills relating to masculinity. Parted to the right, the hair now gives a sense of artistic, visual, music skills that contribute to the tasks that relate to femininity in our culture. The wrong hair part can play against type. The Hair Part Theory started in John Walter’s childhood. He didn’t like what his mirror was showing and thus created the “true mirror.”

Second Article-Do Multivitamins really work?: It seems counterintuitive that a person can take multivitamins and they don’t help at all. The illnesses that multivitamins claim they ward off do not actually ward off. The illnesses or diseases are still present and the vitamins do not protect against them. Even more then that, it is possible if you take too many vitamins it can lead to certain forms of cancer. After finding that out, a bill was passed to put warnings on vitamins bottles now if they can potentially cause health risks.

Third Article-Pizza Hut at the pyramids: It seems counterintuitive that a Pizza Hut would be placed near the pyramids. A Pizza Hut was placed next to the Sphinx and pyramids in Egypt. This makes no sense because it is a historical landmark. There should be nothing near the pyramids or the Sphinx at all. At other historical landmarks food places are not even present. Places like the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. Mount Everest does not have a Pizza Hut near it. It destroys the value of the landmark and seems insulting even. It shows that the people in the country might not value the amazing sight and maybe do not care about it.

Posted in EaglesFan, Purposeful Summaries | 1 Comment

Summaries–Snowman

Posted on February 6, 2024 by Snowman10

“It seems counterintuitive that real results may not always match the benefits that are thought to arise from crowdsourcing, a technique that is frequently praised for its capacity to pool knowledge and solve problems. Notwithstanding the hopeful perception of utilizing the collective intelligence of the crowd, crowdsourcing projects occasionally result in less-than-ideal outcomes or even moral conundrums. Sometimes the method meant to access collective knowledge proves to be ineffective, which raises concerns about its dependability and the moral implications of this widely accepted strategy.”

“It seems counterintuitive that in the complex world of finance, banks—organizations tasked with overseeing assets and promoting stability in the economy—are known to market dubious financial goods. The public views banks favorably because of their reputation for sound financial management. In actuality, though, some financial institutions put their clients’ financial security at risk by pushing shoddy or hazardous products. The ethical standards of the financial industry are called into serious question by this disparity between public trust and the practices of banks.”

“It seems counterintuitive that Within the delicate field of child euthanasia—a subject fraught with moral and ethical implications—there is a conversation that questions accepted viewpoints. Although conversations about children’s end-of-life decisions are frequently handled extremely cautiously, there are arguments in favor of a more nuanced strategy. This paradoxical position questions ethical standards and societal norms, which makes people reevaluate the bounds and possibilities of the intensely emotional discussion surrounding child euthanasia.”

Name of the articles: crowdsourcing, banks peddle crap and Euthanasia NYTimes.

“It seems counterintuitive that amidst discussions on euthanasia, there is a tendency to overlook the complexities of end-of-life care and the importance of palliative measures. While euthanasia is often presented as a compassionate choice for those suffering from terminal illnesses, it’s essential to recognize that palliative care offers an alternative approach focused on alleviating pain and providing support to patients and their families. By prioritizing euthanasia, we risk neglecting the holistic care and dignity that every individual deserves at the end of life.”

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Stone Money – SleepyCat

Posted on February 5, 2024 by SleepyCat

The Conception of Money

My conceptualization of money has not changed significantly, yet I found myself questioning what is money? Would it be the cash sitting in my wallet or is it the numbers listed in my checking account? The idea of money has been around for centuries in basically every society. It may not be a dollar bill, but giving away something of value in exchange for goods and services is the core essence of money. 

I most enjoyed the island of Yap, the people used a monetary system called fei; which were large limestone coins. This grandeur display of wealth was frankly impractical as the limestone quarry was 400 miles away, but the people of Yap still went through the process of gathering it. If the stones were lost to the ocean or ownership was transferred, “its new owner is quite content to accept the bare acknowledgment” (Friedman, 1991). This is very much true of how the economy functions in modern society. I could send almost anyone 100 dollars over Venmo and the only acknowledgment that it was transferred is the numbers going down on my account. I never have to physically see the money nor do I have to even be near them to do this. I’m trusting that they received the money; it is still as real as the stones at the bottom of the ocean.

In 1932, France requested that the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank store their gold for them, labeling what was theirs. This action was the same idea that the Germans did to the people of Yap; the federal bank marked France’s gold with “black paint” to signify that it belonged to them. While this concept may seem unusual because while the gold sat in the U.S. bank, it actually belonged to the French.  

Sometimes money will lose its value because people stop believing it is worth anything. In the podcast, The Invention of Money by Planet Money, Brazil began experiencing an economic crisis in the early 1950s and prices were on the rise constantly. Inflation was getting out of control and the government’s solution of printing more money wasn’t working. When the government put a price freeze on goods, people stopped selling things. It wasn’t until a virtual currency was introduced that the economy boomed and rose to the eighth-largest economy in the world. The value of URVs in accordance with the physical money people in Brazil held changed, but the price of goods in URVs did not. No one can see or hold URVs, nevertheless, Brazillians believe that it holds value; it is an idea and everyone agrees upon it. 

While the situation in Brazil lasted for multiple decades, the U.S. financial market crash in 2008 is another prime example of how trust is what gives money its value. Starting in 2007, banks and firms on Wall Street had loads of assets that were losing value and needed someone to lend them money in order to offset their losses. Jim Cramer stated that the Federal Bank needed to create money in a way that no one had talked about yet, so they did exactly that. Over one trillion dollars was created and loaned to various financial institutions. With high interest rates, collateral in the form of home mortgages was being accepted as payback. The Federal Reserve has the power to just change the amount of money flowing through the economy at any given time with a few clicks of a button, yet they must play a game of balancing as they will never really know the exact effects of increasing or decreasing values will do. 

Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and game currencies hold that same augmentation of money that doesn’t really exist. In mobile games, currencies can be gained through playing it or purchasing it. Knezovic notes in, Udonis, that in-app purchases for game currencies are the pillar point for monetization. It is a widespread  abstract concept that is universally regarded as holding value. Bitcoin is only as valuable as the people make it. One day it could be worth hundreds of dollars and the next it could be worth nothing. Renaut states in Yahoo!News, “Bitcoin is made of strings of dazzlingly complex code created by raw computing power” this form of “e-money” is fickle, and many wonder if the risks of purchasing it will have a greater payoff. It has no corporeal value, it is whatever some guy says it is. Reeves uses this argument in MarketWatch and quotes this as being “the greater fool theory” as you would have to find someone more foolish than yourself to purchase Bitcoin at a higher rate than you purchased it. Similar to the concept of Bitcoin, the monetary value of money isn’t solid and its value could disappear at any time.

So, our money is extremely similar to that of the island of Yap in the sense of us giving monetary value to something we will never lay our eyes upon. Our virtual currency is essentially stones at the bottom of the ocean and all we can do is trust that it exists and when the time comes to use it, that it will be accepted. 

References

Friedman, M. (1991). The Island of Stone Money. Working Papers in Economics. https://counterintuitive.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/stonemoneyessay.pdf 

Planet Money. (2011, January 7). The Invention of Money [Video]. This American Life. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money 

Reeves, J. (2015, January 31). Bitcoin has no place in your — or any — portfolio. MarketWatch. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-has-no-place-in-any-portfolio-2015-01-28 

Renaut, A. (2013, April 13). The bubble bursts on e-currency Bitcoin. Yahoo!News. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html?guccounter=1 

Tabuchi, H. (2013, January 10). Japan Approves $116 Billion for Urgent Economic Stimulus. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/business/global/japan-approves-116-billion-in-emergency-economic-stimulus.html 

Posted in SleepyCat, Stone Money | 1 Comment

Stone Money—NatureChild

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Naturechild101

Perception of Currency

 Money as itself is economically accepted to have long lasting value and can be a source of power that secures purchasing security. Money became a vastly accepted tool that can hold value over time and used for the purpose of exchange. It can be used as an instrument to assert debt, market prices of goods, and build transaction history between buyer and seller. Having a powerful insight of the concept of money and how it’s used to operate in society can make or break someone’s personal view on money’s value. However, does the form of currency change the value it is presented as? 

 Money is just information that switches positions without being physically seen. Something that reinforces paper money not being anything more than a universally accepted concept is a line from “The invention of money” by Ira Glass and produced by Jacob Goldstein. According to Jacob and Milton Friedman, author of the article titled“The Island of Stone Money”, inhabitants from an island called Yap had a form of currency that could mostly be perceived as “very large, heavy in weight, stone wheels that looked like a big coin with a hole in the middle” to the island, this was referred to as “Fei”. At one point, the native Yapese people were convinced that their dependent form of income was no longer valuable. After successfully convincing the fifty-million individuals that their currency is now “worthless”, it was now seen again valuable without proper documentation to prove if it was real or not. This action alone proves how the value of currency is just an agreed upon concept that determines the usefulness of the coin or not.

 On a NPR broadcast “How Fake Money Saved Brazil ” it is stated that inflation in Brazil in 1999 was at its all time worst of 80% a month. Chana Joffe-Walt goes into detail on how this problem was solved by a plan of four individuals. The people tried everything, dealing with the inflation until it became unbearable, getting rid of older authorities in charge to fix things, but that would prove to be futile due to the lack of proper handling and care for the situations at hand. Eventually, a plan to attack the main difficulties with inflation was created and built a common ground where people would not only be living in a less stressful environment, but to also resecure trust in the currency they all know. However, the “currency” they were planning on issuing would not be considered real, it was more like standard conversion rates. Even though the money itself was not real, it was proven that the success was based on the behavioral change in the people’s understanding and acceptance of the value presented. Prices stay the same, people stay happy, but the virtual currency would not be real. 

 In some ways, the story of how fake money helped Brazil and created value in unreal currency sort of relates to the “New Currency” called bitcoin and how the value can be truly up to the beholder. This “fake currency” is “mined” and stored in a user’s virtual wallet without ever needing to be spent. Bitcoin is a way to cut out a middle man, that being large bank businesses, when trying to receive virtual money from interactions with others between networks. The use of bitcoin kind of ties into how the value of currency is determined on what is universally accepted in order to exchange goods and services. Like Yap, the value placed in a tool has to be accepted and when the value is taken out of it, things are left in chaos. Bitcoin has to be the most unreliable of all currencies, again like Yap, there can be immense value in what one uses for form of payment. However, as soon as someone comes along and decides to change the value and the power it holds, that’s when things are called into question. According to the article titled “The Bubble Bursts on E-Currency Bitcoin” by Anne Renaut, “ he price of the virtual “geek” currency had soared through the stratosphere in recent weeks, trading for a high of $266 on Wednesday — only to come hurtling back to Earth in just three days. By Friday, a single Bitcoin was worth just $54, according to the Mt. Gox platform, which manages 80 percent of the Bitcoin transactions and had to briefly shut down trading Thursday”. This further proves a point that currency will always depend on the worth to others, day after day. This is also why it makes universal understanding of what’s accepted as payment so important in exchange. 

 The people of Yap manifested a somewhat concrete understanding that the large, stone, rollable, tools of exchange were their own means of how “wealthy” one was, without having to audibly state what belonged to who, you just knew. If our modern way of using money and its purpose of exchange and receive was put into a comparison of how Yapese natives determined use and value of their currency, it would not be so far off. If everyone involved in the determination of value regarding currency, I feel like there would not be strong barriers on how we use, trade, and share knowledge on how to properly use it. I would be inclined to believe that at first glance, our currency would visibly seem “less valuable” up against the Yap because it’s paper against a large amount of stone. However in terms of value, there would not be a doubt in one’s mind that paper was not enough to have purchase power. 

                References

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” WordPress.com, February 1999, https://counterintuitive.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/stonemoneyessay.pdf. Accessed 4 February 2024.

Glass, Ira. “The Invention of Money.” This American Life, 7 January 2011, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money. Accessed 4 February 2024.

Joffe-Walt, Chana. ““How Fake Money Saved Brazil.” NPR.” 4 october 2010.

WBEZ. “423: The Invention of Money.” This American Life, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/transcript. Accessed 4 February 2024.

Yahoo! (n.d.). The bubble bursts on e-currency bitcoin. Yahoo! News. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html?guccounter=1

Posted in NatureChild, Stone Money | 2 Comments

Stone Money Essay –Gymrat27

Posted on February 4, 2024 by Gymrat

Needs a Title

The belief that money has a real value is human-constructed. In reality, money is not real, but that’s something I already knew.  Money gains or loses its value depending on the market conditions, the economy, and overall the federal reserve. Throughout the podcast, Stone Money spoke on the value being changed depending on the people. So the question is why does money matter? Why does it bring value? The answer? Money only matters to the people because they value it to make an exchange, and it happens again. The value comes from us. It can be anything. 

For years it changed from stones, and money, to online banking, or even Bitcoin. We say whether something is worth something or not. Money has become something so easily accessible that now, it seems to have no value it is just a number. Throughout the articles and the podcast, I can say that my view on money hasn’t changed. It was things stated I already knew of. It did though give me more knowledge on the backstory of money. From depressions, to why prices go up, the first type of currency that existed, to the reality of money, and how 

When in a Great Depression everyone decreases in work but prices skyrocket. During the great depression labeling gold as the new currency with extreme value made it all go away. The concept of money is to make it something that many want but not everyone can have. The more people can have it the less it is worth. With gold, that is what occurred. 

Throughout the podcast Stone Money, they spoke about the Great Depression in Brazil. How no matter what the worth of something was one day it did not matter because the next day it had more value. This was all saved through the concept of fake money. In the article, “How Fake Money Saved Brazil” Channa Joffe-Walt spoke about the inflation in Brazil hit 80% per month and everything kept rising. This all occurred starting back in the 1950s when the government had printed money to build a new capital in Brasilia, causing everyone to believe that the Brazilian government had no help to control their inflation troubles. The cycle would go from getting a president with a new plan to the president freezing the banks, the president failing, getting voted out or impeached, and repeated. Years down the line there was a man named Bacha who wanted to create a new currency when voted into power and that is what he did. It was called a Unit of Real Value, the whole point was for it to not be real, with no coins or bills; still being able to use the currency given just now labeled under a different name. Once this occurred people did not understand it, but over time people realized it was more stable it finally became a real currency because it was something everyone could afford. The point to take out of all of this though is money is not real. A simple wordplay in this example was labeled as real money, but in reality, it had no market value. The people started placing value on it it made people believe there was a sense of purpose with it and now they can afford more things because the value was placed on them.  

Another article by Anne Renaut named, “The Bubble Bursts on e-currency Bitcoin” talks about the online currency that finally had an actual crash. The crash was something a lot of people were waiting on, but yet again still put faith in it not happening so soon. The main struggle with Cryptocurrency is the value of being online causing it to be more vulnerable to Cyber attacks. Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can remain anonymous and be passed on to other people. Now in 2024, this has changed drastically with bitcoin worth being increased. With cryptocurrency even though it is not money existing it can be taken out as real money once your cryptocurrency gains value. The other side of Cryptocurrency as well is that it does not rely on banks to verify any of these transactions. The only time the money can be used is through digital transactions unless the person sells their cryptocurrency in order to have actual money from it. Again currency with no value, but placed in our hands given value. Pluses being becoming crypto-rich to being flat-out broke come with this. The currency fluctuates on a day-to-day basis because it is not only your money being placed on the line. We, the people have placed a value on cryptocurrency to a point where people feel the need to invest in it even if it is not necessary because now it is another version of income. It is the same thing with Bitcoin. None of it had real value until we gave it some sort of value. Not many people have Bitcoin causing it to be of higher value. With fewer people having it the more precious it becomes. Therefore giving it a higher value. I would compare this to seeing an eagle. It is not seen a lot, so when it does occur a lot of people tend to give it value because it is not always seen around.   

With the articles and the Stone Money podcast, I have gained the knowledge that money is anything that people place value on. It can be something as simple as a stone, to something like Bitcoin. Everything depends on us. Even then not so much because it all comes down to the government’s needs. If the government sees struggle it will make ends meet by making the prices increase. Some struggles, others done, and some make ends meet just enough. Seeing all this brings me to the question of what is next for the economy. Not just the United States but for the world overall? Unfortunately, every year money is needed more than ever to survive in society today.

References

Joffe-Walt, C. (2010, October 4). How fake money saved Brazil. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil&nbsp 

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

life, the american. (2017, December 14). 423: The invention of money. This American Life. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/transcript

Posted in GymRat, Stone Money | 7 Comments

Stone Money Essay- Calm&Patient

Posted on February 4, 2024 by Calm&Patient

Needs a Title

For ages, the idea of money has been fundamental to human culture. It serves as a unit of account, a store of value, and a medium of exchange. We utilize it for bill payment, purchases of products and services, and savings for the future. But what is money’s inherent worth? Is it just a piece of paper or an electronic number displayed on a screen, or does it have a deeper meaning that extends beyond its physical form? Money’s value is determined by the faith and trust people put into it.

In his essay “The Island of Stone Money,” economist Milton Friedman describes how the Yap people used enormous stone discs as currency. These stone discs, known as Rai stones, were too heavy to travel, so the Yap people would simply transfer ownership through word of mouth. The stones would stay in their current location, but everyone in the community would identify the new owner. This method succeeded because the Yap people believed in the value of the stones, despite their inability to physically acquire or use them.

Similarly, in the article about Brazil’s fake money crisis, Chana Joffe-Walt recounts how the government restored trust in the currency by issuing a new currency, the Real. The Real was backed by the government’s guarantee to accept it as payment for taxes, which instilled confidence in the currency’s value. Despite the fact that the Real was initially only a piece of paper, it gained widespread acceptance and replaced the counterfeit money that had caused hyperinflation.

These instances show that the inherent value of money stems not from its physical form, but rather from people’s trust and faith in it. Money is a social construct whose worth is defined by the collective belief of a society. As long as people believe in the worth of money, it can be a useful means of commerce and store of wealth.

The Bitcoin example emphasizes the significance of trust and confidence in preserving the value of money. Money loses its value when people lose faith in its ability to be traded for goods and services. This is why governments and central banks play such an important role in keeping their currencies stable. They use monetary policies like limiting interest rates and regulating the money supply to ensure that people continue to believe in the worth of their currency.

Money, on the other hand, is subject to changes in faith and trust due to its abstract nature. This is clear from the case of Bitcoin, a digital currency that witnessed a crash in 2013. Bitcoin was developed as decentralized money that is free of government control and manipulation. It quickly acquired popularity among IT enthusiasts and investors, who named it as a revolutionary alternative to traditional currency. However, as Anne recounts in her piece, the bubble eventually burst, and the price of Bitcoin fell. People lost faith in the currency and began selling their Bitcoin holdings, leading its value to plummet dramatically.

Finally, our faith and trust in money determines its true value. Money is a social construct that functions as a way of transaction. Its physical form, whether paper or digital, is immaterial to its worth. What matters is a society’s shared belief in the worth of money. As long as people believe in money, it can serve its purpose of enabling economic transactions and safeguarding wealth. However, faith isnt definitive. As a result, governments and central banks must ensure that their currencies remain stable and that people continue to believe in the worth of money. 

References

Can’t Pass without a References Section

Posted in Calm&Patient, Stone Money | 2 Comments

Stone Money Essay- ravensfan

Posted on February 4, 2024 by ravensfan8

Needs a Title

Money has so many effects on how people act dailey. Money also has a different value for everyone. In America most people work everyday for it. It is what they need to survive that pays for all their bills. Money is fiction though. It is made up and the value depends on the people and government. For example in the NPR podcast, “Money is not solid. Its value could disappear.” This states that money can be lost even if you are saving it in a bank. I find myself trying to find a strong purpose for money after listening and reading about how it is not real. Also it is used to kind of control us. People use money as a way to show that they are better than the other person. I think money should not be taken that seriously and only be used in positive ways.

In Brazil people stopped believing in their currency because they had crazy high inflation that the government would just increase monthly up to eighty percent. The people of Brazil stopped believing that there was any value in their money. This made the money no longer have any value because the citizens did not believe in it. People believing in the value of money is what makes it worth something. The inflation was so high because the government wanted to start a project and were printing a ton of money. The government made over fifty million people believe that their currency meant something again when there is no actual proof to support their claim. They got four guys to make a plan on how to get value back in the currency. The four guys told Brazil to not make money as quickly. They also made a new fake currency that was virtual. It changed into URV. People were getting paid in URV and made things like milk priced off of that. URV are not actually real and made people think that prices of things were better than before. It is kind of scary to think that your mind can get changed by something just being called something else. 

The island of Yap used a stone currency to buy and exchange for items. Stone money was their way of representing money. The island did not have metal so they had to go to stone. They had people fetch the stone. Milton Friedman stated, “ As their island yields no metal, they had recourse to stone”. The value of this stone currency was up to the people and what they wanted to believe it was. The people just accepted that this stone had a value and needed it to buy items. This currency is so big that people do not believe that you need to have it in physical possession when exchanging with another person. They make an agreement with one another and it does not have to leave the other possession. It is a weird concept because in America you usually use physical currency to buy something. If you do not have the cash or credit card you would not be able to leave the store. The people were once transferring a stone but had to leave it behind because there was a storm that made it difficult for them to continue with it. So they left it behind and told the islanders. The islanders did not really care and they put it in circulation.

The invention of cryptocurrency completely changes the global monetary landscape. It changes it because it is not reliant on a central authority or government. Cryptocurrency does not rely on banks to verify transactions. It is basically run by the people that can receive and send payments to each other. The digital money is held in digital wallets. The digital money is usually spent to get into things online and can be used for online transactions. There is a blockchain that records every transaction. This changes a lot though because it is a whole new way of using money. Just like money, the digital currency like Bitcoin works in the same way. A Bitcoin’s value is up to the people that make its value. In the article from Yahoo,”We believe that as the value of Bitcoin grows, and the infrastructure around it grows and matures, the price relative to other currencies will get more stable.” Bitcoin is not as good as actual money or dollars because it is harder to attain. It is also very expensive because not a lot of people have it and those people value it very highly. Also it is difficult to actually use Bitcoin because not a lot of places take it. You rarely see stores or online sites say you can use Bitcoin. I would not say that in-game currency is more abstract than Bitcoin. That is because I feel like in-game currency is a lot easier to understand. In-game currency is the currency in game that you buy with real money. You can not spend in-game currency in real life. You can only spend it in the game. There are multiple things you can buy with the in-game currency in game. Bitcoin would be more abstract because people make the value of it not a big company. I also feel like it is difficult to understand Bitcoin.

What I have learned from reading the Stone Money article and listening to the podcast is that the value of money is basically up to the people believing in it. My opinion from doing this assignment has definitely changed. I feel like taking money less seriously because it is fiction. But money unfortunately runs the world and need it to survive.

References

“The Bubble Bursts on E-Currency Bitcoin.” Yahoo! News, Yahoo!, sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html. Accessed 4 Feb. 2024. 

Kaspersky. “What Is Cryptocurrency and How Does It Work?” Usa.Kaspersky.Com, 9 June 2023, usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/what-is-cryptocurrency. WordPress.Com, counterintuitive2015.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/stonemoneyessay.pdf. Accessed 5 Feb. 2024.

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Stone Money—HockeyFan

Posted on February 4, 2024 by hockeyfan

What is the Value of Money

What is the value of money, is it a chocolate bar, is it a gold coin, or it is the money sitting in an institution with your name on it? The real value of money is unknown, as everyone has a different perspective on it. A child can take a piece of candy to school to trade with a friend for a different piece of candy, technically that could be a form of currency. When gold was in high demand, you could use the gold that you found and use it to buy cattle or even a house, which is technically a form of currency. The form of currency society in the US today is most familiar with is either cash or the money just sitting in your bank account, both of which are a form of currency. Money is a status symbol to people all over the world, it I an opportunity to show off how successful you are in life. What is the true value of money, and what does it really mean to have money?

In the Pacific Ocean there is an island called Yap, on this island they use a form or currency we are not exactly familiar with. They use stones as currency in their daily life. A researcher Milton Friedman described the way the currency first took form “Consists of large solid, thick, stone wheels, ranging in diameter from a foot to twelve feet, having in the centre a hole varying in size with the diameter of the stone” (Friedman, page 1). The size varies in the stone because the larger the stone the larger the value. When stones such as these are traded, at times they were so large they could not be moved, in this case, everyone would know that the stone was transferred to another person. Imagine having a rock that you have never seen before that has an unbeknownst value somewhere on your island, it sounds crazy because it is. However, this is how most of us live today. We have a card that holds all of our virtual money, but we have never physically seen the money only the number that the government determines it is valued at. In a way, we have a very similar form of money. 

Bitcoin is a form of currency in which is new, yet no one really knows the value of it. An article from Market Watch seems to have a good idea of whether Bitcoin is really something worth giving a shot. “Proponents like to talk about how bitcoin has no central bank or authority behind it as a net positive, but the fact also means a lack of true value” (Market Value).  Why should we buy into something that we really don’t know the value of?  If money has no value what is the true use of it? If there is no authority behind the banking aspect of it, how it is controlled, and how are we supposed to know that our money is protected?  

When it comes to in-game currencies I don’t view them as actual transactional money.  For the most part, when you are using in-game currencies you are using something that has been rewarded to you, something you earn for doing a task. However, this money cannot be taken out of the game it can only be used in the game you earn it in When you are choosing to purchase in-game currencies you are using your money you have in the real world for something generally of lesser value in a virtual gaming world.  I don’t think this is a big enough problem today to be concerned that it is going to take over the currency aspect of life. I think when you compare it to Bitcoin money, Bitcoin is more of an investment such as stocks, whereas in-game money is like putting yourself into an alternate reality and using the money you bring with you from the real world or what you earn in the virtual world. 

The transactions in which money is passed from one another are so similar yet so different than those on the island of Yap. An article published by Yahoo News explains some of the risks associated with Bitcoin/virtual money. “Once mined, Bitcoins are stored on a user’s hard drive in a virtual wallet, and can be sent directly to another person, bypassing banks and remaining largely anonymous” (Yahoo News).  You can see how this is so similar to the stone money from Yap, as some people don’t even see their money on the island. Once they are given the money from someone, and due to the large size, it can’t be moved they just know it is their money to use. This is similar to the money produced by Bitcoin; people may never see their money which allows a problem to arise of how legitimate their money is. If you are to never see a penny of the money you are receiving from Bitcoin in person, how do you know it is real? This is why we will never know the real value of money today. 

After reading through the sources and listening to the podcast I do think my opinion of money has slightly changed.  When you really sit down and think about it anything can be used as currency, we could have adapted the value of stone money, or we could use a chocolate bar as a form of currency. The value of money is simply unknown. From a young age when you are given cash, you are told it is worth a lot and that it has value. As you get older your cash diminishes and you are introduced into virtual money such as what you have in your bank account. My question is what is the value of something that you cannot see? How can something have value when you don’t even know what it is, the money you have in your bank account is just a combination of numbers. I don’t think we will ever find out the true value of money, every day we are evolving as a society, and new methods of living are rising. The only thing we can do is try to understand the right and wrong ways to spend our money.

References

Reeves, J. (2015, January 31). Opinion: Bitcoin has no place in your – or any – portfolio. MarketWatch. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-has-no-place-in-any-portfolio-2015-01-28 

Yahoo! (n.d.). The bubble bursts on e-currency bitcoin. Yahoo! News. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/bubble-bursts-e-currency-bitcoin-064913387–finance.html 

Friedman, Milton. (1991, February).  Island of Stone Moneyhttps://counterintuitive.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/stonemoneyessay.pdf 

Posted in HockeyFan, Stone Money | 1 Comment

Stone Money – Toetio

Posted on February 4, 2024 by toetio

Money: Worthless without Consent

Before reading and listening to these articles and stories I was already aware of the fact that the value of money is not static. I am not an expert on money, but I do have some knowledge of some basic information, such as the fact that printing more money devalues currencies and causes inflation. I was also already aware of the fact that the value of money is arbitrary and based on confidence in its value rather than possessing that value inherently, in part because I have already heard stories such as the Stone Money story before this assignment. After reading through the articles provided for us, my view of money has not really changed, if anything the articles provide viewpoints that should reinforce my own. Of the stories presented to us, I found the story about how Brazil repaired its economy to be the most interesting because it presented solutions to the problem of inflation which I never would have thought of. I also found the story about the US central bank interesting because they are an entity that I am aware of but don’t know much about.

The article Stone Money by Milton Friedman is about the currency system used by the Yap Islanders. The Yap Islanders use a currency called fei, which are limestone circles with holes in their centers (henceforth referred to as stone coins). These stone coins are quarried from a relatively nearby island and brought back to the mainland where they are used in exchanges, similar to coins in other cultures. On the island of Yap, due to the large size of the stone coins, the islanders do not believe it is necessary to be in physical possession of one of these coins to actually “own” it, for example, an islander could make a deal with another islander and in exchange be paid in one of the stone coins, the stone coin does not actually have to leave the other man’s property for it to be considered yours and it may stay in his property indefinitely. One story given as an example of how these islanders view the possession of these coins is when a group of these islanders were transporting a coin from the limestone island back to Yap, a storm forced them to abandon their coin, which was swallowed by the sea when they reported this loss to the other islanders, they were not really bothered and they still put the coin “into circulation” so to say even though no one physically possessed it. The author compares this story to a US story where the US needed to do an exchange with France. Instead of physically transporting gold to France, they simply marked certain bars as belonging to the French. Both these stories are very fascinating views on how money works, however, I cannot really say they have changed my view of money, partly because I have already heard one of these stories and it has already informed my view on how money works. The NPR article also called Stone Money covers essentially the same story This article essentially provides a simplified overview of the Stone Money essay. The article makes the claim that the economic system established by these Islanders helps answer the question “What is money?”. In this article, and all the other articles that discuss the Island of Yap, the aspect of the Yap islander’s currency that is focused on is the arbitrary value of the stones and the fact that the stones don’t need to physically change hands in order for their ownership to change. These two aspects of the currency are compared to how our currency works. The example this article uses is how in our society when we make a payment, all that often happens is that some values change in our bank account.

The NPR podcast, The Invention of Money goes over three stories, the first one is about the currency used by the Yap Islanders, the second story is about how Brazil managed to solve its inflation issues through the creation of a new currency, and the third one is about the operation of the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, or The Fed. The story they tell about the Island of Yap provides all of the same information as the other articles and the essay so I will skip over it. The story about how Brazil managed to save its economy was very interesting. Thirty years ago (twenty when the article was written) Brazil was facing an inflation crisis, the value of their currency was dropping every day, and their politics had devolved into a vicious cycle where a president would be kicked out of office in favor of a new man who claim he could stop inflation, only for his plan to make things worse and for the cycle to then repeat. Eventually, the finance minister of Brazil brought in a group of experts to help solve the problem (why this wasn’t done, to begin with, is beyond me) The solution the experts thought up was very interesting. The first bit of advice they gave was that the government had to slow down the creation of money, the second part of their plan was about restoring people’s faith in the currency, their plan was to create a new “fake” currency called URV. People still technically used the old currency however everything was always listed as a URV, the example the article gives demonstrates this well “Say, for example, that milk costs 1 URV. On a given day, 1 URV might be worth 10 cruzeiros. A month later, milk would still cost 1 URV. But that 1 URV might be worth 20 cruzeiros.” This effectively gave the appearance that the prices were remaining stable and it eventually restored people’s faith in the currency and stopped the inflation crisis, all because they had managed to trick people. As previously mentioned I found the story about the Federal Reserve to be interesting because before this I had very little knowledge on how they operate.

This article is an opinion piece that makes the claim that bitcoin is not a worthwhile investment. It uses three main points to support its central claim. The first point is that Bitcoin does not have a government or central bank in order to back up its value. The second point is that the level of anonymity in Bitcoin is actually a negative aspect as it leaves you with few options to deal with hackers and others with criminal intent. The third point it makes is that Bitcoin is volatile and changes value very rapidly due to unpredictable variables, such as hackers. The opinion piece then goes on to claim that Bitcoin is not totally without value, saying that the idea of a digital currency could make changes to future transactions, though it is not very specific. The main point of the article is that while bitcoin may have some value as an innovation it is not a safe investment for the majority of people.

This article is about the bursting of the Bitcoin bubble. It discusses some of the potential causes of this burst. The article attributes the bursting of this bubble in large part to the volatile nature of Bitcoin which is because it is not backed by a government or central bank, and thus confidence is based on investors who are unreliable, and also the fact that Bitcoin, unlike dollars is not a necessity for survival.

References


Friedman, Milton. The Island of Stone Money (1991) https://counterintuitive.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/stonemoneyessay.pdf

Goldstein, J., & Kestenbaum, D. (2010, December 10). The island of Stone Money. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/02/15/131934618/the-island-of-stone-money

Glass, Ira. (2018, February 19). The invention of money. This American Life. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money

Joffe-Walt, C. (2010, October 4). How fake money saved Brazil. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-saved-brazil

Reeves, J. (2015, January 31). Opinion: Bitcoin has no place in your – or any – portfolio. MarketWatch. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/bitcoin-has-no-place-in-any-portfolio-2015-01-28

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

Posted in Stone Money, Toetio | 2 Comments