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What if we brought back the barter system?

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DarthMetaKnight
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29 May 2018, 7:48 pm

Hi all. This will be a pretty silly thread ... but it might be funny.

What would the world be like if we discarded modern currency and instead brought back the barter system?

Here's what I can imagine.

- Vending machines would have very huge slots for accepting beaver pelts.
- People would have very big wallets for carrying chickens and cows in.
- Strippers would have bruises because people would throw cattle and seashells to them.
- Instead of flipping a coin, people would launch a cow into the air using a catapult and then see which way the cow would land.
- "A million bucks" would literally mean a million male dear.
- Farmers and hunters would be the wealthiest people on the planet.
- "Clams" and "bones" would literally mean clams and bones.
- People would use the pelts of mountain beavers (Aplodontia rufa) as counterfeit currency.
- Time travel movies would usually involve the protagonist going back to prehistoric North America to obtain a Castoroides pelt.

Can anyone think of anything else? :lol:


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Sianann
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30 May 2018, 3:47 pm

Barterers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your supermarket chains!


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funeralxempire
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30 May 2018, 5:52 pm

Has a 'barter system' ever actually been witnessed to exist without being limited, and running parallel to a primary economic system? Gift economies seem to be the way primitive economies function in the real world, barter systems as described by Adam Smith and others only appear to exist as hypotheticals.

Quote:
Economists since Adam Smith, looking at non-specific archaic societies as examples, have used the inefficiency of barter to explain the emergence of money, the economy, and hence the discipline of economics itself. However, ethnographic studies have shown no present or past society has used barter without any other medium of exchange or measurement, nor have anthropologists found evidence that money emerged from barter, instead finding that gift-giving (credit extended on a personal basis with an inter-personal balance maintained over the long term) was the most usual means of exchange of goods and services.


Caroline Humphrey discusses this in Barter and Economic Disintegration (the source the Wiki article quote cites):
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2802221


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Fnord
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30 May 2018, 7:05 pm

The barter system still exists, albeit in a semi-underground form.

If someone fixes my leaky sink, I will fix their flickering light.

If someone caters my party, I will flip burgers at their cook-out.

If someone drives me to the airport, I will bring back some duty-free gift for them.

It all depends on what you can do for others to pay for what they can do for you.

The trouble is that someone might equate the value of a feng-shui treatment with the value of a new roof. One is practical, while the other is frivolous.