An Eye for an Eye for an Egg for a... House?

Remember silly bands? There were the normal ones, which you could trade one for one, and then there were the special rainbow or sparkly ones that you could trade four or five for. This was a very simple version of bartering.

The definition of barter is the exchange of goods or services for other goods or services without using money.

Money is the root of all evil, right? So what would happen if we eliminated it completely and went back to a system of bartering?

Some advantages of the barter system are...

1. Flexibility. You can trade any type of item for any other type of item you want. They can be closely related or completely different.
2. Less waste. In this system, only the required amount of goods and services are produced, so there is little to no waste.

Some disadvantages of the barter system are...

1. Finding people to trade with. You need to find someone that wants exactly what you have and has exactly what you want. Sometimes, you will have to wait a while to find this person.
2. No standard measure of value. There is no way to gauge the value of an item as there is no standard to measure against.

The economy would be highly affected if we reverted back to this system. One thing that would happen is that there would be a reduced dependence on the job market. The reason we desire high paying jobs and work so hard to get them is so that we can have more money and in turn the ability to buy more goods and services. With a barter system, you would not need money to do this. Instead, most people would be self-employed and produce their own goods and services to trade with others. Another impact would be a reduced susceptibility to inflation. This is because once it is established that one good or service is equal to another, that will never change and you will always be able to exchange those goods/services. A third impact it would have is creating micro-economic systems. It would be much more difficult, though not impossible, to accumulate power and assets. These types are systems are more inefficient and difficult to manage.

Of course, this situation is hypothetical, so there is no real way to know if reverting back to a barter system would be beneficial. However, it is fun to think about!

https://www.naturerated.com/should-we-go-back-to-bartering/