“The Island of Stone Money” by Milton Friedmen, described a small island called Yap, where their currency comprised of large stones called ‘Fei’. The people had an understanding that these stones were of value and whoever possessed the largest was in fact the wealthiest. The stones never needed to physically trade hands or move location for ownership to be established; it was merely understood and trusted. To many of us the concept of trusting others when it comes to our money seems so foreign and even foolish but the irony is that this is what we do every single day of our lives.
As a society we must trust that the money in our bank account is real and that it is somewhere in this world. The truth of the matter is, most of us don’t see our money. When we exchange money for goods we simply swipe a piece of plastic and suddenly that item is ours. Most of us never see the physical exchange of currency we simply trust that the other person has ownership of it. Today, whoever has the most numbers in their bank account is considered to the wealthiest person in our society. The idea of this is almost comical because most of us would consider the Yap to be barbaric when in fact the wealthiest people in our society have the largest “fei”.
As the Brazilian economy was falling apart experts had to step in and create a new form of currency called Real. The money was literally made out of thin air. What is so important about this is the willingness of the people to believe in the supposed value of this new currency. It didn’t matter what it was or how it got there; all that mattered was that is made people’s lives stable again after three decades of rampant inflation.
As we progress into the future, Japan wants to insure its position as one of the world’s top countries. The only way to do this is for country to spend a large amount of “fei”. By spending 12 trillion Yen (134 billion US dollars) they are hoping to boost their economy. Does the country itself have this much money? The truth is we don’t actually know but we all trust that this money is real and is a large rock sitting in a vault somewhere.
The concept of money seems so obvious and simple to many of us but, in actuality it is not. As a society we all agree upon what currency should be worth and what we as people are economical valued as with or without it. The only reason our current money system works is because society has placed a value on it and we as a whole must trust that this value has a purpose for without it there would be chaos.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
Feedback please
Feedback provided. —DSH
Hey, Casmir!
We have a conference this afternoon, so I’m working on your feedback now in preparation.
P1. This is a strong paragraph that gets the basics of the oddity of fei right, Casmir. It doesn’t create any sense of wonder in the reader and doesn’t make us “feel the foolishness” of the fei or sense the wonder of their faith in their stones, so it can’t ever achieve top grades in its current state. You might be better off making us recognize how weird it would seem to trust each other today first. But this paragraph just takes everything for granted and therefore doesn’t earn its claim that anything seems “foreign and even foolish.” OK?
P2. Actually, what’s oddest about our money is that it literally “isn’t” somewhere in this world. Don’t you think, Casmir? We traded our cows for gold, our gold for paper, our paper for checks that said they could be “cashed” into paper, and finally, our checks for electronic transfers that, if you ask me, don’t take place anywhere in the physical world. You are on this trail. I know you are because you have us swiping cards in the next sentence. It’s a physical act, but nothing physical changes hands. But you’re still saying “it is somewhere in this world” and “the physical exchange of currency.”
No barbaric in this sentence. Uncivilized maybe?
P3. Do you mean that the currency is composed of nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the same ratio as air at the top of a mountain? That’s what “literally” means.
You and I can understand this paragraph, Casmir, but imagine you haven’t listened to the NPR broadcast. Will you follow it? If not, it doesn’t communicate to enough readers. You need to provide the Purposeful Summary that fills in your audience while guiding them toward the conclusions that support your argument.
P4. “top countries”? Do you mean “dominant ecomonies”? Again, this is very clever and amusing to me and your classmates (and good enough for the first Invention of Money assignment, which was to trace your own impressions of the classwork, for class), but this rewrite needs to reach a wider audience. A rock in a vault humorously combines two items from the original material, but only for those who read and heard it.
P5. The “chaos” you reference would be more obvious to us if we knew that the “falling apart” of the Brazilian economy resulted from a failure of faith in its currency, Casmir. (Once inflation starts, it feeds itself. Everybody is in a panic to spend before prices go up, so that demand keeps raising prices. It happens because nobody trusts that the money that buys a bag of chips today will be worth as much tomorrow. Trust fails; chaos results.) But we have to guess too much from what you provide us.
I’ll keep an eye out for further revisions if you make them.
—Watch