Chapter one entitled "The Value of Money" uses the example form Daniel Defole novel "Robinson Crusoe" to explain the value of the items left on the ship before it sank. Crusoe imputed value to each of the tools he had. He then found out the future value of each tool and what he expected the future output of each tool to be.
             In the Robinson Crusoe example he does not look on the past in order to evaluate the value. He cannot look on the past because it is gone. Economists call this doctrine, of not looking back to the cost of an item, Sunk Costs.
             The famine in Egypt is used as the second example. This tells how, by the advice of Joseph, Pharaoh collected one-fifth of the harvest for seven years and stored it in granaries. When famine came people in Canaan then needed grain. The people said "the money has failed", what does this mean? This meant that grain, the stuff that keeps them alive, made money worth nothing. People gave all of their money to Pharaoh for grain. When all of the money was gone they started giving livestock. Pharaoh now had all of the money and allot of the livestock in the land. It was more valuable to him because he had the grain. Pharaoh was not dealing with "equality of exchange" meaning your exchange goods for goods of equal value.
             There are five properties of money. They are divisibility, portability, durability, recognizability, and scarcity. Money needs to be divisibility because it needs to be able to be counted. It needs to be portability so you can deal with it. It needs to be durability so you do not have to keep replacing it. It needs to be recognizability so when you try to use your money the other person knows the value. It needs to be scarcity so it has value.
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