I created an open source barter facilitator application and I am wondering if it is the future of commerce
I created an open source barter facilitator application and I am wondering if it is the future of commerce
Hello my name is Daniel Hanrahan and I created a barter facilitator application and do you think it is the future of commerce: https://github.com/Daniel-Hanrahan-Tools-and-Games/Barter_Facilitator Sincerely, Daniel Hanrahan
You might be interested to learn some history of societies without state-issued currency. The book "Debt: The First 5000 years" by David Graeber has lots to say about pre-modern systems of account. I'm aware there are some criticisms of the book so I don't want present it as absolute truth - but it is an interesting on read, and it cites lots of anthropological studies.
One of the points of the book - and I see there are also other anthropologists who take this view - is there is no evidence that there has ever been a barter economy. Economics curriculum typically talks about prehistoric barter as an introduction; but it looks like the barter story may have been made up by Adam Smith. Smith's "Wealth of Nations" is highly insightful, and even predicts problems with capitalism that we currently face. But he probably didn't have the anthropological background to write authoritatively about economies of prehistoric societies.
Graeber does claim that there have been times when barter has been a stop-gap when there is a problem with money supply. So that's a case where something like your app might come in,
When barter has appeared, it wasn’t as part of a purely barter economy, and money didn’t emerge from it—rather, it emerged from money. After Rome fell, for instance, Europeans used barter as a substitute for the Roman currency people had gotten used to. “In most of the cases we know about, [barter] takes place between people who are familiar with the use of money, but for one reason or another, don’t have a lot of it around.
These were temporary situations. The fall of Rome probably seemed like the end of the world to some people at the time. But new societal structures and currencies filled the gaps.
Yes but however though from 476 to 1476 approximately in europe around 95% of people used barter because they did not have any currency at all and pre-1543 Japan had a barter system to some extent.
sure is a lot of weird negging going on in this thread
cool app idea, i am going to try and compile
Thank you
It is not.
Using money is just a simplification of barter. I don't have time to play barter with 12 people to get the 1 thing I need. Instead I trade dollars/coins/gold/whatever mutually agreed upon token of value.
Also, my boss doesn't pay me in chickens that I can't use
The argument against money is just silly.
I understand what you are trying to say but however though every single currency or mostly every single currency is going to become worthless like the Weimar mark or the Zimbabwean dollar. I am basing that on both what I see on the news and what is happening to people all around me.
And there will be another currency after that.
Again, I'm not spending my time bartering the chickens my boss gave me for some crabs, for some iron, for some gas, just to trade that with the person that has the thing I need, because thats what they wanted.
If you come up with any argument about "well my simplifies that by making the trades for you", then you've just re-engineered currency.
Currency isn't the issue, it's money lenders (you know, the table Jesus supposedly threw over at the synagogue), because it's the generation of debt to make profit at the expense of others, while not contributing anything tangible, that's the problem according to the parable.
You could still have debtors in a barter system, and that would still be problematic. It would still be debtors preying on people with little to start with, like payday loan places. "We'll loan you 2 chickens today, but you'll owe us 3 on pay day". See, no difference.
Now if you want to make a local barter system just because, that's different. But acting like you're going to replace currency is naive, at best. Currency has been with mankind for thousands of years, because it simplifies trading.
I am basing that on both what I see on the news and what is happening to people all around me.
what news sources are you consuming?
because if you're getting the message from the news that economic collapse is imminent and all currencies are going to be worthless and we will need to fall back to a barter-based economy...that is a function of choices you've made in your news diet, much more than it has anything to do with anything actually happening in the real world.
and what specifically is happening to people around you that you're referring to? do you have a pen-pal in Weimar-era Germany who you're communicating with through a time portal? or are you talking with other people who have the same news diet as you do and forming a self-reinforcing worldview?
Do you have a demo video or something to watch? Or could you provide a bit more detail about the problem you're trying to solve, what a typical use case might be? I rarely clone a github repo and try running it. Not just because it takes time and I'm often browsing on my phone, but because I don't want to let potentially malicious code run on my computer.
I agree that money can seem like the cause of a lot of problems, but ultimately isn't it a pretty good intermediary for trade? Maybe skipping money entirely would be great in the event of some sort of global currency collapse, but even then, maybe we would just use bottle caps or something?
And even if someone can prove that money is indeed a bad thing, even if we abolished it and resorted to barter... wouldn't some people just hoard some other in-demand commodity and become powerful through that?
I feel like money isn't the root of all evil, it's just a representation of wealth and people hoarding wealth is probably the real issue.
...money isn’t the root of all evil...
That's because it isn't...to explain, many people misquote a verse from the biblical texts.
1 Timothy 6:10: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains."
ah, interesting! I might have heard that this was misquoted before (and forgot), but I didn't know it was from the bible.
"... of all kinds of evil" is interesting too. To me this implies that loving money isn't necessarily always a problem, if it means say being frugal to save money/food to survive the winter or something, or saving for your children's future.
The problem I am trying to solve is mostly all currencies or all currencies are going down the toilet and this software is the solution or part of the solution when the final blow happens with all these currencies. If you need me to explain better let me know.
Thanks, I get how barter would help in that case, but without running your software or seeing a demo of what it does, it's not clear to me how it works, or why it's better than alternatives. You said this elsewhere:
what about the software determining the value of the products, can you answer that.
Now that sounds interesting, how does it determine the value of products? And in the absence of money, how does it even represent value?
I'm asking this because I'm curious, but I'm also trying to give you tips on how to make a more engaging post. I'm not super interested in actually switching to bartering instead of using money right now, but I'd read about how your project works for a few minutes if you want to write about it. I suspect others might feel the same way. I looked at your github repo README and it's all just technical instructions on how to run it.
After reading an explanation for how it works and why it's more useful than other alternatives, then I might consider actually downloading the source and trying to use it.
Especially if you make bold claims like "is this the future of commerce" ... you have to at least explain what you did if you're going to say something like that.
I'll check it out. Even if it doesn't work conceptually, it's still cool to think about alternatives to the Capitalist markets and currencies that are dominant.
Thank you
We lost track of what money was supposed to be for... a representation of the resources and services in circulation. In which it was supposed to facilitate trade by creating tokens to facilitate transactions without the requirement of trust in the absence of a good, like when a farmer would need a tool from a blacksmith but the goods that the farmer has are only available when harvested in which the tool that the blacksmith has is required to retrieve them. In the presence of trust, the blacksmith was going to still trade and expect the goods when time was due. In the absence of trust, like in relation to a stranger, this trade wouldn't go forward. Money as a representational token solved this sort of common issue. And this became a necessity when tribes went above the Dunbar's number.
Cut to now...
What the hell is an economy even supposed to represent anymore? It is certainly not a representation of the resources and services in circulation, that's for sure. 6 out of 9 planetary boundaries already breached all to ensure the survival of this abstraction. Some even call it Moloch as a reference to the pagan god which required human sacrifice. I thinks it's worse, as it requires the sacrifice of everything, not just humans. But it is certainly a clever nod to something that was only real because people believed it to be.
Back to your project. A FOSS Barter Facilitator. There's nothing I don't like about this. Just make sure the protocols remain open to federation of future FOSS Barter Facilitators and you have a slice of Utopia to challenge the dystopian hell we're in.
You have something here that can alleviate people's lives in times of great need. Resource collapse is imminent now. If that is not at least partially avoided, that makes the collapse of the global economic system inevitable. What happens after that is a fool's errand to even attempt to guess. We only know it's not gonna be peaceful and nice given the stupidity in human nature. Scarcity always leads to the forming of new predation systems. That is how predation was formed in Nature. The incapacity for self-regulation led to animals to reproduce and consume more than the regenerative availability of their setting allowed, leading them to predate on each other. This is how violence emerged in Nature and still does to this day. When we lose track of self regulation we return to the scavenger's rule of the wild.
But this helps in giving people access to trade without the requirement of capital tokens. Huge spikes in inflation, unemployment and mass migrations are only going to increase in volume and in rate as resources continue to collapse worldwide. We're in a feedback loop and war and A.I. will only accelerate the velocity of it.
Or, you know, we could have more ideas like yours and reduce resource intake, increase individual resiliency and in doing so, lessening the panic in the common struggles.
So...
I'm certainly saving this post and link and share it with anyone who is inclined to listen.
I'm not a coder, so I thank you for such a wonderful contribution to the world.
You are welcome and everything is open on that application and I have the database file on the're, in order to have the database decentralized.
Wow, it's disheartening to see some people here think everything will always be based on trades/transactions and seem to not be able to imagine a sharing future. Sad.
The 1st thing is not exactly that sad and it opens up opportunities that everyone can enter and I can imagine a sharing future.
I think that can work well on the scale of a small village or something, where everyone knows each other. But I think it falls apart once you get above a certain number of people, maybe around 300.
After that I feel like inevitably enough people just stop caring if they are taking more than they should, or not contributing more than they should. And there are too many people for everyone to keep track of. Plus, it's easier for leadership to be corrupted at this stage.
And it's even more complicated if say like... you can go work in the capitalist village and make a ton of money and get treated lavishly, then retire to your home sharing commune where you can benefit from the system without having had to contribute to it. (for example, working in the US and then retiring in any country with public healthcare). I think part of the justification for the Berlin Wall was to prevent "brain drain". So it seems plausible that "sharing societies" also kind of tend to be "you are not allowed to leave" societies, and that is often not good.
That being said, if we ever get unlimited cheap power (fusion? fission seems like it is "close" but falls short for other reasons), and some sort of Star Trek food replicator technology, or at least fully automated farms that only need the nearly free power, then maybe we'll have such abundance that we will be able to give away essential supplies like food for free. Water is already somewhat free (public drinking fountains). If we can ever get some cheap and effective mass transit, then maybe we'll have abundant housing too?
I think it isn't necessary to grow beyond that size though. We can live in smaller communities without growing past a certain size. We don't all have to live together, that's what I think a lot of people miss.
Eh, why would there need to be capitalist villages if everybody had what they needed? I don't buy that there couldn't be luxury either, we have the ability and technology for that now in any scenario or economic system, I'm not a marxist or believe the idea that each according to their need etc but someone who sees the potential for maximum luxury , comfort, connection etc in the scenarios I envision. I would happily do the work if it meant living in a world without hierarchy, money, enforced trade or barter etc and I think many others would too.
No, it really doesn't require some dream technology, just a mental shift, besides renewables are all that's needed. We shouldn't be relying on fission nor fusion, both are costly to build in myriad ways and one seems a huge pipe dream which we don't need.
Edit: There already is abundant housing, it's just in the hands of a few who have been convinced by the system that holding on to it and keeping others out of it is the best thing to do.
Completely agree about mass transit between cities, but honestly I just think we need walkable cities that are also accessible to wheelchairs etc. Something like the ideas the venus project came up with, or arcologies.