What is Money?

When we talking about money, we are talking about something really specific and it is the most complicated topic ever. Every country in the world have their own currency. For example, UK is Pound sterling, China is renminbi ( or yuan), Vietnam is Vietnamese Dong, etc… But all of them are money, money is a thing just to represent others stuff, how much does it value. The most common form of money is using bill. People around the world always working and trying to make money, the only reason can decribe this problem is they just need money to survive. Money allows us to meet our basic needs buy food, shelter, and pay for health care. It is essential to meet these needs, and if we do not have the funds to do so, our individual welfare and the welfare of the community at large will be greatly affected. Now the US is more expensive than ever, everything is rising. Especially is gas prices and fresh food. In the article “Why Money Is Important And The Role It Plays in Our Lives” was published on May 17, 2021 by Todd Kinsman, he explain why money is important in our life. Todd says, “Being able to make choices and have options is one of the best feelings in the world. Knowing you are stuck in a particular situation because you need the money or financial help is frustrating, so removing that from your life is a great relief.” Eventhough everyone could make money but not many of them are really called “RICH”, there is still a lot of people who lived in bad condition because they don’t have money. When we have more money, wehave more choice and our life could be better.

The value of currency changing overtime. In additional, not to mention the inflation that occurs in many countries, and the most famous drama about inflation is in Zimbabwe in 2008. As in the article “Zimbabwe Hyperinflates Again, Entering the Record Books For A Second Time In Less Than A Decade.” Steve Hanke showed  Zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate peaked in November 2008, reaching 89.7 sextillion (10^21) percent.  This mean if you have $1 and after a month this amount will increase to more than 1 billion dollars. The biggest prolem lead to inflation is the president of Zimbabwe was trying to created a new currency for their country called “New Zim Dollar” to finance and its lead to leak and not enough money to provided to all the citizen of this country. After just a few days, this new money became worthless and it led to hyperinflation. Money is really important but there is a place that people don’t use money bills, coins, or even bank account, this place called “Micronesia” and small part of it called “The Yap Island” where people use stone for money. Although the US dollar is now the official currency in Micronesia, stone coins are still used for important transactions such as marriage, land purchase or compensation in case of wrongdoing.

The stone money was and still using as a offical currency. “The Island of Stone Money,” by Milton Friedman in 1991, Yap use large, circular limestone rocks with a hole in the center to represent wealth in their community, known as fei. To get such beautiful and valuable stones, people here have to mine limestone and cast limestone to get such a shape, otherwise people here will have to find rocks in the sea. and must dive deep to find the right type of stone to make money stone. It is using for trading, these stones, like the money we use today, were common equivalents for exchanging goods and services.
If we use paper money, virtual currency or bitcoin, people here use stones to exchange items or buy and sell houses and land. Money is accepted by everyone, issued by the State and secured by other assets such as gold, precious metals, bonds, foreign currencies.
they probably don’t move it physically, but the difference here is who is own that stone. The size of the stone show how much value does this stone has. There is a fun fact that a owner of a stone family live away from that stone is not in sight. this may sound strange to us for our sake but it is part of the culture of the people here. After listening to a podcast called “Money Island”, I suddenly realized that money is not everything, money is not something we can easily own, we are not really understand money.

Money is not a big problem but the big problem is in people, most people think that money is really important because it brings economic benefits to them, helping them to have a good life. live better. If too much believe in the power of money and having a lot of money can help them live better, then look at Zimbabwe in recent decades, when money inflation, it was never enough. for us. We need to really understand the meaning of money, although it is very important, money is not all we seek in life. The people living on Yap island have shown me that, when they don’t attach too much importance to the thing called money, which can help them have a better life, they use inanimate stones, if you look at them. back those stones maybe we would say. it’s worthless, but it’s something very valuable to the people there. After all, money is not everything, but money is something that we believe is valuable to us and that is really important to us.

References 

Friedman, Milton. “The Island of Stone Money.” Diss. Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1991. https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/215061/full

The Invention of Money – This American Life. (2018, February 19). This American Life.

 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/423/the-invention-of-money 

Why Money Is Important And The Role It Plays in Our Lives May 17, 2021 by Todd Kunsman.