Barter News Weekly

I’ve read a number of accounts, recently, of people who are reverting to an all barter lifestyle in an attempt to simplify or pacify their modern life. Today I read of a British man who has taken barter to the extreme, giving up on using money entirely at the expense of many modern conveniences.

Eighteen months ago he set out to spend a year living without spending any money at all - he liked it so much that he has decided to give up money for good.

Mark began his quest to see whether he could give up cash by offering his labour in exchange for a place to live.

But no money means no home comforts and an unusual approach to personal hygiene.

“For toothpaste the main ingredient is a thing called cuttlefish bone, which washes up on most shores around the UK, and with that I mix wild fennel seeds, which I just grind up,” he explains.

Some essentials Mark can make from things he can grow or scavenge - but other things, like indoor plumbing and a flushing toilet (he uses a compost toilet which is essentially just a hole in the ground) he just has to do without.

“In the first two months I found it really difficult, everything seemed to take so much longer,” he said.

“But after the first two months, once I had established routines and actually got to really build relationships with people and the local environment, it actually just became second nature.”

See this full story at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10578604

It’s stories like these that have me take issue with extremism. Here is an example of a fit, so called normal man taking an extreme view and ideology, that, if employed by the masses, would be unsustainable. His dependence on scavenging and the relationships with the locals betrays what I have long thought: going back to the stone age isn’t a good idea, no matter what anyone else says.

I believe we can create lasting and mutually beneficial relationships through barter, but we don’t have to give up the convenience of modern life to take advantage of it. Living your life 100% barter is a great idea, and you know what, most of us need some cash to get along. The means of production require a larger common currency than what direct barter can provide, and the function of government, vilified as it is recently in the media, requires some form of currency to keep vital services operating, services like law enforcement and the judicial system, which help us to preserve the freedom of commerce we all want to more fully enjoy.

As for me, I advocate the use of barter, the smart use of barter. I regularly trade for whatever I can, and attempt trades that will be of use to men or that I can leverage in to other things. AND I regularly pursue cash business. I think we can agree that by doing so, we are perhaps a little bit more balanced than our extremist counterparts.