Political Theory

Re: A system of barter borrowing (life without a medium of exchange)

AJ — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:06:29 GMT

Someone tell me, since you can now to some extent divert hits to other websites (through ads, etc.), can website traffic flow ever become a medium of exchange? (Or is it already? And if so, why doesn't it spread and become the new private money? I'm not big into econ, so please enlighten me.)

Re: A system of barter borrowing (life without a medium of exchange)

Bert — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 07:06:20 GMT

A mutually agreed upon medium of exchange would develop. It would be hard for people not to start trading with something that they see as being "standarized". (Just like how in various industries they have a standarized set of rules, regulations, technical specifications, measurements, etc etc that came about for efficiency and compatibility.)

I have a friend who detest money. I try to explain to her in layman's terms that money is just the medium of exchange between individuals. I'm not sure why people want to regress to something less efficient because what we've come to use now is considered "evil" or "greedy". (What's more evil and greedy than wanting everyone to stop using money?)

Re: A system of barter borrowing (life without a medium of exchange)

Justin Spahr-Summers — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 04:42:08 GMT

Some common media of exchange would still inevitably emerge, I think, because money also allows you to satisfy future wants, and very few commodities are so durable.

A system of barter borrowing (life without a medium of exchange)

Jeremiah Dyke — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 01:33:37 GMT

A system of barter borrowing

For many this will sound silly, but I like toying with various economic ideas and models as a form of thought experiment. Here is a recent concept of a 21^st century economy functioning without a medium of exchange. The system outlined below is flawed on so many levels but in spite of its inefficiencies, can a barter system be performed in a globalized economy such as what we have today. Or, in other words, even if there are inefficiencies, do capitalists naysayers have a theoretical model to stand on if money was discarded?

Let us imagine a networked list of inventory and wanted ads, much like Craig’s list. Let us imagine a consumer using a dropdown box like the one below to search the various inventories of the local communities and the world. Thus, you would upload your entire inventory (including your labor) on this server and people would browse your inventory, like they would Amazon, in search for things they would like to have. Now, the problem in barter is that you must find someone that wants what you have and has what you want before you trade. Thus, although a system of massive inventory may help locate such trading partners, it is still too cumbersome. Therefore, there would be a system of borrow coupled with the barter. For example, if I had eggs and wanted peanuts and my trading partner was 1000 miles away, I would borrow peanuts from someone close to me in exchange for my eggs. The person 1000 miles away would borrow eggs from someone close to them and we would both split the compensation while we waited for our goods to arrive. Or thus, when the eggs arrived, they would be given to those whom he borrowed from. When my peanuts arrived they would be returned to whom a borrowed them from. The compensation would be in terms of goods or labor.

Please rip apart my thought process on this