I really enjoyed reading your post. You really showed a good understanding of the material, and in addition to this, I feel as though I learned a lot more through your post than I did even reading the material myself. I really struggled to comprehend this reading my first time through, but reading your post really helped me to understand the main points that Bylund was trying to make.

I really liked when you were summarizing Bylund's ideas in the "what is money" section. Thinking about a typical bartering system being implemented into our modern day economy is an interesting thought. I got to thinking about if we were in fact able to negotiate within systems like grocery stores or retail spaces. This is not the system because Walmart doesn't need my money enough to negotiate. If I want to buy something, I can either pay full price or not get it. If there came a time where the economy did a 360 turn would there be a possibility for this system to be active? I don't know the answer to this.

In stores, the price of something is already set, and includes the production cost, transportation, staffing of the store, and a mark-up for the store’s profit. There is no opportunity for an individual to barter on prices, or exchange goods for what they would like to purchase.

Because gold was removed from the value of the dollar, and the dollar was removed as a baseline for other currencies, the exchange rates and values of currencies around the world can now vary wildly.

This is also a very interesting thing to dive into. The US dollar used to be backed with gold which is what gave it its value, now it is not backed in gold. So the question becomes, how do we compare our currency to that of other countries? How do we justify the value of an American dollar, when in reality, there is no actual value. This is an interesting concept to think about.

The section on the quote "money is the root of all evil" is the section that I personally was the most interested in when I was reading through the material. I think you did a good job at summarizing the main points made. Personally, I really agree with your very last comment:

As Rand says, money cannot buy values.

Your formatting was really good, and your writing over all was very easy to follow. Many of the essays that I have read up until this point had poor formatting, however your formatting was spot on. Great job on this report overall.