Sasha Chislenko wrote:
>
> What if I want to get rid of my truck, and need toothpicks,
> an iron, an old copy of Dos 3.0 and a credit to do something
> later with (actually, I need to pay my debts and buy groceries).
> The owner of Dos wants flowers; the owner of iron wants
> a movie ticket, toothpicks are not there, my lender wants
> cash, and my grocer is offline.
>
> It may be quite complicated in many cases.
Yes, that's why primitive societies - which are not known for their
high-speed computing equipment - develop currencies. A modern society
should be able to handle the bookkeeping necessary to ditch the currency
and just track value exchanges.
> But barter definitely has some benefits.
> There are people who don't like money, and people who don't
> like IRS, and just curious people...
Taxation, or the lack of it, has absolutely nothing to do with barter
except insofar as current tax law may make complex barter impossible.
The real value of barter is about insulating the price of hay from the
price of gold, protecting virtuous production cycles, making
opportunities visible, and, when combined with ubiquitous minifutures,
about smoothing shocks generated by shifts in the supply/demand curve.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html
Member, Extropy Institute
Senior Associate, Foresight Institute
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