Week One Post – Theresa
I’m Theresa Wang, and I am starting my sophomore year. I am a biochemistry and public health double major.
Money is something that represents value. It is an idea that we created to support better trading. We all agree that we can use money in exchange for objects, or for effort. It is an intermediate for exchanging goods that we use so values can be equalized and the worth of objects and skills can be compared. We have used money to represent value for so long that money itself became valuable. We no longer judge things to be valuable, then equate that to a higher price—the monetary label an object has oftentimes determines whether we think it is valuable or not.
The economy is a giant network of value. It is both where value is, and how value flows. If value is represented by money, then we look at the economy by measuring the exchange and presence of money. By looking at the economy, we can see where objects are being produced, and where effort is being rewarded.
The economy is useful because we can use it to measure the health of a group of people. When effort can be exchanged for objects, people can work for food, housing, leisure…etc. The population is happy because their effort is rewarded. But when reasonable effort is not enough to support an exchange for objects, and value begins to accumulate in places and stop being exchanged, there is less flow of value and people suffer (ie. starve) because there is less accessible value to go around.
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