The idea of using large cylindrical stones as money at first seems silly, but in the story of “The Island of Stone Money,” a paper written by Milton Friedman, it makes sense. The people of the Island of Yap travel far to carve away at rocks to show their wealth, or to show the wealth of the people that they work for. The size and craftsmanship of the stone determines its value back on the island, the bigger the better. This form of currency is only able to be used in an “honest” society, and is based on the honor system when trading for things, therefor it would never work in the United States. The idea of an object that is worth more based upon the amount of effort the owner puts into making it or having it made seems like it is almost a lost art. In our world of corruption and greed, the same system would fail miserably, due to the lack of honesty in trading and the stock market.

In the article ” The Pros and Cons of ditching cash for Electronic Currency,” by Michelle Singaletary, the options of using actual physical money or digital dollars are weighed. With our growing technology, the thought of an actual personal exchange of money to buy things is disappearing. Money moves back and forth on Wall Street as stocks, but until the stocks are sold, the money doesn’t actually physically exist. With this, the thought of monetary security seems to increase, but without the actual use of money, what would our world look like? A world where everything is online and accessible to everyone with a little bit of hacking experience and enough “balls” to go through with stealing someone’s identity. According to Kate Rogers of FOXBusiness in her article “One New Identity Theft Victim every 3 Seconds in 2012,” there were a total of 12.6 million identity thefts equaling over 21 billion dollars stolen in 2012. If our country had grown in a positive and honest way, like the island of Yap, then we might not have grown so fast, but we sure would be economically stable within our own country. The only downside to that is we would lack international allies and the resources to be an international super power. Moral of the story is without greed, nothing will grow. The persistence of wanting something will push things forward, no matter how unorthodox it may be.