Bartering with my neighbors literally saved my life this month

Posted by evenapoortailor@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 8 comments

This is another sign of a crumbling economy, we revert "back" to bartering to survive.

Don't get me wrong, I love to hear it, but it points in the wrong direction.

Check in with your communities folks, we are going to need each other in a very different way as this gets worse.

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NyriasNeo@reddit

This is just stupid. Bartering is inefficient and only works when you are lucky. You want a roast chicken and can offer to fix someone's plumbing for it. The guy who needs plumbing work can give out fresh tomato. Now you have to find someone who has roast chicken willing to exchange for tomato to make this work.

Sure, you can take tomato. But the principle is that, in general, there are so many combination of exchange sorting them all out in a fair and efficient manner is cost (time and information) prohibitive. There is a reason we have currencies in the first place.

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haram_halal@reddit

Egypt did well for 3000 years with a barter economy, 300 years after the greeks introduced money it was gone.... just a funny side note.

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CannyGardener@reddit

People like to hoard. You can only hoard so many goats. You can hoard an almost unlimited amount of goats in the form of gold that you could potentially use to buy goats.

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flriverlivin@reddit

This is more like communalism than barter. As to barter, it doesn't have to be chicken or tomatoes. It can be gold, silver, salt, ammunition, labor. Any exchange that doesn't involve govt issued currency.

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NyriasNeo@reddit

Gold and silver are acting as currencies. And currency does not have to be govt issued. Never heard of bitcoin?

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Arglival@reddit

I think you missed the point. Barter does not have to mean accepting something you don't want or need. If both sides are happy it's a win. If I sharpen knives and get chicken back in trade all good. If I don't want chicken it is up to the other side to offer something else.

Barter is also neighbour / friends trading to help each other.