My contribution to a discussion on (modern business) bartering, in which the term unwanted items was used to describe what people barter... :) It was estimated that up to half the business transactions in Germany after WW II (a desperate time for that place and people) were in the form of trading (barter) -- when Hitlers price controls and rationing were left in place, and the (physical) money supply was way out of scale with reality. Bartering is inefficient, though, so some brave and brilliant person eliminated the controls and reduced the money supply 93%, and then those desperate folks had a form of currency that could stand for the actual value of the goods and services as the people actually, well, valued them... and a German economic miracle proceeded to occur. Currency that has a direct and transparent relationship to what we are willing to pay (trade) to receive the essential value we hold for goods and services seems to be a bit of a marker for barter... and inherently efficient, fair and real. But inevitably, I suppose, bankers, financiers and politicians find ways and reasons to earn or create lots of money that reflects very little, if any, essential value. Wouldnt it be interesting to try to build an argument that as people get more intellectual and sophisticated, in their own perceptions, they want less to do with the process of asking and answering the potentially confrontational question, What is this worth to you? ... and so they turn that responsibility over to others, who determine and identify what things are worth, and are only too happy to shield the majority of people from the worry and responsibility of managing assets and wealth? ;) econlib.org/library/Enc/GermanEconomicMiracle.html
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 23:16:35 +0000
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