“How many cows are you selling your house for?” Thousands of years ago cattle and livestock were treated as currency, and today many would scoff at the primitive nature of what money used to be. The truth remains though that despite popular belief, the basic concept of money hasn’t changed. The value of money is symbolic, and it always has been.
The natives of the island of Yap used beautiful large stones called fei as currency, instead of coins or other common forms of money. Due to the size of some fei though, a physical exchange was nearly impossible. So most likely to remedy the problem, the Yap organized a system where the fei did not have to physically be transferred in order for their worth to be. A fei owner could simply agree that the fei belonged to someone else, and then throughout the island that exchange was acknowledged. The fei wasn’t a physical form of currency, but instead it was just symbolic. The Islanders decided the fei’s worth, therefore they also decided what to do with that worth.
We however, are not too far off from the Yap’s seemingly primitive form of money. The most important transactions that happen today, like on the Island of Yap aren’t done with physical currency. For example, if someone were to buy a house for 300,000$, what would he do? Would he pay the Realtor in cash? Absolutely not! No one carries around that kind of money. Instead he gives the Realtor his bank number, where the money is withdrawn and wired to the Realtor’s account. But does he ever see the money? How does he know that he has it, or even that the bank has it, or that amount of money even exists? He doesn’t, and in fact none of us do. A lor of the money we supposedly own is imaginary, and it’s worth is only determined by the cooperation of the people around us, much like the fei.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
I hope this alright, I made a lot of significant changes
Requesting feedback on the money rewrite.
Feedback provided. —DSH
OK, Josue. Let’s talk.
P1. Remember to substitute “we” for “most people,” “those people,” and “idiots not as enlightened as me” because they all sound like the same insult to your reader.
We scoff at primitive barters like cattle-trading, but we’re wrong to do so. Money is still money, and we’re still trading cattle for houses, but there are steps to the transaction that money smooths. For example, we don’t have to find a homeowner who wants cattle.
As important to your first paragraph: You use the barter example to illustrate your point that “money hasn’t changed,” but there’s no money in your illustration. The barter pre-dates currency.
P2. I wonder if you could humor me by eliminating the “personal reflection” aspect of this Rewrite, Josue. I’m looking for a less singular, more broadly analytical examination of money, not your reminiscences. (That was the assignment for the first “Invention of Money” assignment. I admit I probably didn’t make my requirements clear enough.)
If you do so, you’ll avoid a problem you’re having here, of assuming your reader is familiar with your sources. (Your first sentence makes no sense at all to anyone but me and your classmates. Your essays should always appeal to a wider readership than me.)
Much of your paragraph can stay. It’s well written, smart, and intelligible, once we understand the setting and the terms. One thing, though, much of the currency of fei did circulate (was actually currency); only some of the bigger stones stayed in place. To another student I’ve suggested these massive stones were more like bank accounts than coins. Neither has to be carried on our person; both represent wealth.
P3. Again, “when the French arrived in America to claim their gold” is meaningless to all but me and thee.
—its worth
More accurately, that gold for dollars or francs arrangement was dissolved long long ago. American dollars haven’t been based on a gold standard for many generations.
P4. —stimulating or stabilizing their own economy?
—Due to inflation they HAD GROWN afraid?
—The new currency was stable WHY?
—how money symbolic money?
I can’t say for sure what your paragraph proves, Josue, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t prove “how symbolic money actually is.” Can you clarify why or how it does?
P5.
—a people’s decision
—Yikes: Turn “It still relies on a peoples decision in order to determine it’s worth” into “It still relies on a people’s decision to determine its worth.”
Strong overall.
Change if you wish and ask for another round of notes by Reply at any time.
Requesting additional feedback. I eliminated the personal reflection portion and also eliminated the last two paragraphs, after realizing that they didn’t serve any particular purpose. As it stands now what would still be necessary.
Feedback provided. —DSH
P1. Think how illogical it is to say: “What we don’t know,” Josue.
Nothing is gained by the two levels of we laugh vs. we would laugh, and what we know vs. what we don’t know.
Today we laugh at the absurdity of this primitive system of commerce, but the central concept of money hasn’t changed since barter.
P2. Your comparison suggests that the Yap made a choice between two available currencies. Did they know coins?
More accurately, two Yap would simply agree that the fei had “changed hands,” and then . . . .
Your Intro promises that the central concept of money hasn’t changed. Then you tell us the story of big immovable fei. What central concept of money does P2 illustrate? If we can’t tell, we will feel cheated and adrift. The fei were symbolic? Money is symbolic? If so, tell us that early, so that the illustration demonstrates something we know you’re arguing.
The central concept of money hasn’t changed. It’s symbolic of value. The first money was physical, but even very early money quickly became mostly symbolic. A stone that stays across town whose ownership is only psychological. A stone at the bottom of the sea that nobody has seen.
P3. If you establish that simple concept clearly and early, then the transition to P3 is natural, seamless, and very persuasive.
(Except that you’re not permitted to assume that your readers know the story of the French and their gold. You MUST provide the necessary background—just as you did with the big fei—for readers to recognize the illustration.)
We don’t really “determine the worth” of gold the same way we establish exchanges rates for dollars into pesos. Gold has intrinsic value, like corn. We don’t determine “the worth” of corn exactly; we determine its price, which, if anything, determines “the worth” of a dollar: two ears of corn.
P4. What you should be doing in the later paragraphs, to substitute for whatever you cut, is tracing that increasingly symbolic nature of “currency” into the present. Your introduction promised that you would, but P3 leaves us in the early 20th century.
Josue, I moved your Argument and Rebuttal from my Portfolio into yours. I also removed your Money Rewrite from my Portfolio but didn’t move it into yours. The Money Rewrite doesn’t belong in the portfolio, only the Definition, Causal, or Rebuttal essays (2 of 3), the Argument, the Visual Rhetoric, the Reflective Statement, and the Annotated Bibliography.
Okay, thank you. I definitely made a mistake there.I will replace the Money re write with the visual rhetoric.
The mistake was mine for not providing you your own Portfolio category in time for you to use it. 🙂