Money is powerful and fragile. It can control social status, what we own, what we do, where we live. It can influence our actions, our thinking, and our way of life. But when one thing goes wrong with our money, the economy begins to crash, and money becomes the downfall of us. Money has come in many forms, and one form in particular stands out. The essay by Milton Friedman “The Island of Stone Money,” tells us of an island called Yap that used large stones, called fei, as money. A summary of Friedman’s essay can be found in an NPR broadcast by Jacob Goldstein and David Kestenbaum. It is an interesting piece of work that makes us think deeply about what money truly is and how it works. When I read the essay, I was thoroughly intrigued. It is truly fascinating how the people of Yap built their currency. Their system was based strongly on trust, and isn’t that much different than what we have today.
At first one may laugh at the Yaps for having such an outrageous form of currency, but their system is actually not much different than ours. Money and banking today is based off numbers in cyberspace. Most everyone’s money is stored in a bank. Someone’s whole life savings isn’t in his or her back pocket all the time, which is just like the Yaps. They didn’t necessarily need the rock in their physical possession to claim they had money. It was understood that this rock was worth this much, and that rock was worth that much. There was a trust in the system that made people believe each other. Since America’s money is no longer backed by gold, its value comes from the people who use it. The government says the dollar bill is worth one dollar; we accept that and live by it. Today, the dollar is basically our stone.
Unfortunately, having money that revolves around numbers and computers creates problems. The value of a dollar or any form of currency can fluctuate very easily. Bitcoin is a relatively new form of currency that is completely online based. It is a good example of how easily money can fluctuate. “The Bubble Bursts on E-Currency Bitcoin,” by Anne Renaut, tells of the sudden drop in value of the Bitcoin after it had a three day high of trading and worth. Many thought it would be the end of the Bitcoin, but Bitcoin Foundation chief scientists Gavin Andresen believed otherwise. He predicted it will take awhile for the foundation to grow and for the currency to be relative to other currencies. Since its crash the Bitcoin has slowly began to rise, and has began to build a user base which will help its growth in value and stability.
Another good example of just how delicate money is can be found in the New York Times article, “Back in Power, Abe Aims to Spend Japan Back to Economic Vitality,” by Hiroko Tabuchi. Japan is planning to pump money back into the economy by printing it. This can cause problems of inflation, which would bring the yen down in value, prices to rise, and overall more problems than Japan already has with its economy. Despite all these dangers, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s new prime minister, is certain it will boost the economy and bring Japan out of the spiral it’s at risk of falling in.
Money is something we take for granted in everyday life, and we don’t always realize how fragile it can be. It is shocking how much trust we have in something that we sometimes never see, and which can fluctuate so easily. We believe in what money is worth because we are told to. While we may think our modern currency is sophisticated and miles ahead of what people used back before modern times, we are actually not that far ahead. We just call it a dollar bill instead of a rock.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
I’m not too sure I met the objective on this essay. It stumped me a bit on what angle to take to respond. Hopefully I didn’t butcher it too much, but feel free to tell me if I did.
Feedback provided, —DSH
Need some feedback for the re-write due Tuesday.
Feedback provided, —DSH
Hey, Benjamin. Let’s get started.
P1. Your opening is brilliant, so my notes will be of only the slightest help, but may help you in future to think even more carefully about nuances.
—I think you mean money can “confer” social status.
—I don’t think you mean “one thing goes wrong with our money.” The first three sentences are about our individual relationships with money, so “goes wrong with our money” indicates a personal financial crisis, which you contradict with “the economy begins to crash.”
—I don’t think you mean “money becomes the downfall.” In a crashing economy it’s the lack of money that is problematic.
I grant you those are niggling concerns, but you set a high standard for yourself and the small lapses undermine your success.
Please let me know if you accept this sort of critique or would rather I shut up about it.
Your transition to “Money has come in many forms” is very abrupt and makes this reader wonder why you opened as you did if you intended to drop the “powerful and fragile” angle. If the one way the fei “stands out” is either its particular power or its fragility, I’ll understand better. If not, the Intro will seem wasted.
Three sentences later, I see you don’t intend to make good on that hint. Why does this one form in particular “stand out,” Benjamin?
An important difference between this draft and your Rewrite will be the elimination of the personal reactions to the reading. You won’t be telling us, “It’s an interesting piece . . . built their currency.” In fact, all the way to the end of the paragraph, the only new claim is that the fei are based on trust.
Looking back on the paragraph, you could improve its unity by following the fragility of trust theme very closely. The foundation for the theme is here, but you let yourself be distracted.
P2. Once that note is well struck, the transition to our own delicate balance will be easy to make.
—”based ON,” please, not “based OFF.”
—Your sentence claims that the Yaps are like a lack of money in someone’s back pocket.
—No one needs a rack to “claim” he has money. What’s surprising is that the claim to wealth is BELIEVED in the absence of the evidence.
—Yes, it was understood that the rocks had roughly calculable values, but this is a new claim; your first was that physical proximity was not required. You confuse us because you make us think “the rock” from the previous sentence is “this rock” in the next.
—It’s imprecise to say that trust makes people believe each other. Does the fact that we believe each other make us trust? Where’s the causation?
—Your claims seems incompatible, but one seems quite right. It’s meaningless for the government to say that a dollar is worth a dollar, but entirely meaningful for it to say that a dollar is worth 100 yen. See the difference? You’re right that the value comes “from the people who use it.” Every person who sells anything sets the value of the dollar by demanding either one or a hundred of them for an item. We trust that when someone gives us a dollar in return for chips we’ll be able to spend that dollar and many others together to buy a cow.
P3.
—”revolves around” numbers and computers? What does that mean?
—I don’t see how computers create a problem in this paragraph, Benjamin, or how bitcoin “is completely online based.” Maybe you mean nobody actually mints a Bitcoin “coin” from metal. But that doesn’t explain its fragility. Nothing in your paragraph does. My guess is it’s the lack of places to spend Bitcoins. Until they’re widely accepted, new users will be discouraged.
P4. In other words no matter how stable is the belief in the value of the yen, the mere presence of more of them in the economy today than there were yesterday devalues them. Frankly it sounds more as if the economy is delicate if it can be disturbed by distributing a few more pieces of paper.
P5. —sometimes never?
—I dispute that we are told what money is worth, except when buying other currencies. We’re told that a 20 is worth 20 ones, but the government never tells us how many chips that will buy.
This is strong overall, Benjamin, but because you’re familiar with your own ideas, you take for granted that we’ll understand them however you express them. “Miles ahead of what people used back then” doesn’t say in what way we might think our money is superior. “not that far ahead” is equally vague. And we don’t just call our dollars bills; they really aren’t rocks.