A few words about "barter"...

It is impossible to barter money for goods and services. Barter involves
the exchange of goods etc. according to the personal subjective evaluations
of the participants. When money goes into circulation its symbolic
"value" is supposed to remain "objective". This does not preclude the
possibility that its "exchange-value" may vary , but its objective symbolic
value is supposed to stay the same. However, when people barter, the
symbolic value of all goods and services is in a constant state of flux.

Unfortunately,  most modern economists make the tacit assumption
that money's dynamic exchange value is qualitatively similar to the changing
symbolic value of goods and services which naturally accompanies every
barter. Their assumption leads one to suppose that a bag of money,
which happend to be coined in the shape of christian crosses, could be
bartered by a christian as much as by a non-christian.

Also credits and debts in a barter system are not transferrable outside
each trade. This is another way of saying that a true barter system does not
use a system of circulating money, except where the ONLY thing being
bartered is money itself. To barter money is to give it an exchange value.

I suppose my discussion raises the question: Why do we use a system of
*circulating* tokens (ie. money)? Clearly, circulating money was a necessary
ingredient in the "success" of the industrial revolution, but I don't accept
the traditional textbook explanations of HOW circulating money contributed to
that "success". This is (another) problem which I am attempting to solve...

Harry Veeder



On Mon, 12 May 1997, Carl Macki wrote:

> Harry Veeder,
>   Aren't you talking rather about a barter system with a private currency?
> The currency would be the standard for easily transferring the credits and
> debits.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Carl Macki
>