Currency Project

Creating a Currency

While one would think that designing a system of currency is an easy task it proves to be much more challenging than previously anticipated. The word currency is defined by dictionary.com as “something that is used as a medium of exchange; money”. When you think about it currency can be anything that can be traded for something else of the same value. But this begs the question, what is value? The definition of currency is an extremely broad one, which just goes to prove the point that designing a system of currency is challenging. When I began thinking about a currency that would work at Sweet Briar many different things came to mind. There were some that were obvious such as pearls, tap club hats, class mottos and class t-shirts and then some that weren’t so obvious such as pens, puffy paint and finally the one thing I decided upon, flowers. 

So, imagine a Sweet Briar that uses flowers solely for the purpose of purchasing everything. This would translate to food, books, riding blocks, class dues etc. When one thinks about flowers at Sweet Briar the obvious two that come to mind are daisy’s and roses. The currency at Sweet Briar needs to involve more than two flowers though. So in addition to the Sweet Briar rose other types of roses will be used as well. If I had to assign dollar values to the flowers they would go something like this: Mini roses would be worth any coins, the Daisy would be ten to fifteen dollars, Floribunda roses would be worth sixteen to twenty five dollars, Hybrid Tea roses would be worth twenty six to thirty five dollars, Grandiflora roses would be worth forty to fifty five dollars, Climber roses would be worth sixty to seventy five dollars and Sweet Briar roses would be worth seventy five to two hundred dollars. As you can see, there is no set pattern of value to these flowers because if they are going to be used as currency they need a loose set of values and a wide variety so people can purchase multiple things. When it comes to how much specific items are going to cost, things are going to have to change. Prices of items for sale at Sweet Briar are going to have to decline. There is not an abundance of daisy’s or roses available therefore, costs of items are going to have to decrease to support the currency. If things were ridiculously expensive the people of SBC would run out of ways to buy things before the actual item ran out. 

Creating a theory of value isn’t something that comes to a person easily. Every person has a different idea of what a certain object is valued at. This differentiation proves that when one person creates a theory of value not everyone else is going to agree. Assigning importance to commodities such as books, food and riding blocks are going to change from person to person. One person may decide that books are worth more than food while another may decided that riding blocks are more important than books. This would happen with any item that someone attempted to create a value for. Not only is the individuals ideal going to affect the theory of value but the term value itself proves to be very loose. Value is what the individual makes it, therefore objects are going to have different values. This tends to tie into the differentiation that people have for certain objects. 

If a prediction needed to be made about how the change in currency is going to effect Sweet Briar life then I would separate it into two parts. First, I believe that the items that are for sale at school would need to decrease in price. If the items were to remain as expensive as they are now people would run out of currency faster than the items themselves ran out. Second, there would need to be a way that we could keep an abundance of these different types of flowers readily available. Whether it be by growing them or having a place solely for the purpose of breeding these different types of flowers we need to create an abundance of them or the currency will never be able to take affect. I do not believe that this would change the socioeconomic patterns that are already in existence.  There would still be an upper, middle and lower class and some people would still be able to afford more than others. It would depend on who had the most access to the flowers, who had the most say in getting them and how important the person was in the society. Changing the currency doesn’t mean that things are going to flip completely upside down it just means that patterns of purchasing and gaining income are going to be altered. Overall, I do believe that things would change however, they may be able to stay relatively the same all the while.