Barter

[cjsmith]

With no cash income, I am musing more strongly lately on the idea of trading goods and services for other goods and services directly, with no actual dollars involved.

If I have A and want B, while you want A and have C, we need to find a third party. Is that really sufficiently daunting that few trades are done? Or do people have enough varied wants that a bargain can usually be struck?

When does the government get a cut? If I trade my red pencil for your blue one, the IRS probably doesn't give a hoot, even if we're both happier that the deal was made. But if I'm trading a month's labor for, oh, I don't know, a motorcycle, they might care. Where's the line?

What do I have that I'm willing to trade AND that is in demand? I am great at plunging into big hairy organization-and-cleanup tasks, like sorting old photos, and breaking the problem down into manageable chunks. It takes time, but it gets done and done well. What else? I will catch a spelling error in just about anything, but computers can do that too. What else? Must ponder.

Comments

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

What you want is a barter club (http://www.mndaily.com/daily/1998/04/29/news/barter/). Someone at my church tried to form one there a couple of years ago, but she made some mistakes so it never took off. But there are successful community barter exchanges all over the country, such as this one in British Columbia (http://www.sfu.ca/cedc/gateway/sharing/chap8.htm) or this one in Reston, Va (http://use.restonweb.com/). The Twin Cities have five (http://www.thegreenguide.org/goods/barter_print.php), and there are websites like Time Dollars (http://www.timedollar.org/) with complete information on how to set a barter club up.

What happened with the one at church is that the woman who wanted to start it got lots of people to sign up and made a handsome directory -- and that's all. She had no way to keep track of exchanges. She thought once she'd published the directory she could step back and it would fly on its own. But she didn't want any help or advice from anyone, either -- she wanted it to be her project, so when she gave up, it just died. I really wish it had worked, I think it's a great idea, and I hope you can either find a club or start one in your community!

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Here are some:
http://members.aol.com/ALinNOLA/otherprograms.html
http://www.progress.org/archive/currency.htm