Hello my name is Daniel Hanrahan and I created a barter facilitator application and do you think it is the future of commerce: https://github.com/Daniel-Hanrahan-Tools-and-Games/Barter_Facilitator Sincerely, Daniel Hanrahan
Wow, it’s disheartening to see some people here think everything will always be based on trades/transactions and seem to not be able to imagine a sharing future. Sad.
The 1st thing is not exactly that sad and it opens up opportunities that everyone can enter and I can imagine a sharing future.
I think that can work well on the scale of a small village or something, where everyone knows each other. But I think it falls apart once you get above a certain number of people, maybe around 300.
After that I feel like inevitably enough people just stop caring if they are taking more than they should, or not contributing more than they should. And there are too many people for everyone to keep track of. Plus, it’s easier for leadership to be corrupted at this stage.
And it’s even more complicated if say like… you can go work in the capitalist village and make a ton of money and get treated lavishly, then retire to your home sharing commune where you can benefit from the system without having had to contribute to it. (for example, working in the US and then retiring in any country with public healthcare). I think part of the justification for the Berlin Wall was to prevent “brain drain”. So it seems plausible that “sharing societies” also kind of tend to be “you are not allowed to leave” societies, and that is often not good.
That being said, if we ever get unlimited cheap power (fusion? fission seems like it is “close” but falls short for other reasons), and some sort of Star Trek food replicator technology, or at least fully automated farms that only need the nearly free power, then maybe we’ll have such abundance that we will be able to give away essential supplies like food for free. Water is already somewhat free (public drinking fountains). If we can ever get some cheap and effective mass transit, then maybe we’ll have abundant housing too?
I think it isn’t necessary to grow beyond that size though. We can live in smaller communities without growing past a certain size. We don’t all have to live together, that’s what I think a lot of people miss.
Eh, why would there need to be capitalist villages if everybody had what they needed? I don’t buy that there couldn’t be luxury either, we have the ability and technology for that now in any scenario or economic system, I’m not a marxist or believe the idea that each according to their need etc but someone who sees the potential for maximum luxury , comfort, connection etc in the scenarios I envision. I would happily do the work if it meant living in a world without hierarchy, money, enforced trade or barter etc and I think many others would too.
No, it really doesn’t require some dream technology, just a mental shift, besides renewables are all that’s needed. We shouldn’t be relying on fission nor fusion, both are costly to build in myriad ways and one seems a huge pipe dream which we don’t need.
Edit: There already is abundant housing, it’s just in the hands of a few who have been convinced by the system that holding on to it and keeping others out of it is the best thing to do.
Completely agree about mass transit between cities, but honestly I just think we need walkable cities that are also accessible to wheelchairs etc. Something like the ideas the venus project came up with, or arcologies.
I think smaller communities would be great for many reasons. But I think scale is a key to our current level of productivity. And I think it’s required for building certain complicated technologies, like industrial farm equipment or computer chips. And without industrial farm equipment, farmers are less productive, so your village of 300 people might need to be mostly farmers. I think this is what was required in the past, but with the industrial revolution it opened up so people could specialize in other things.
There wouldn’t need to be capitalist villages, I think that some would inevitably form. Maybe many people are okay to just do a job and get rewarded the same as everyone else, but others might prefer something closer to the current system. And assuming no one is preventing them from existing, how do you prevent someone from deciding that they would be better off in a capitalist village where they might get paid more than in the sharing village?
Maybe you’re right that nuclear power is a red herring. Say we rely on solar panels or windmills. I think these are also complicated to build and require some rare materials. Who would volunteer to go to a remote copper mine if they could instead stay at home and work on something else for the same reward?
And maybe people are passionate about that sort of thing, so it’d be okay. But surely there are some jobs that are important but not as appealing. Who would clean the sewers or do something a bit dangerous like fix power lines or maybe washing windows? And I’d bet that many people might still go to 8+ years of medical school to become a doctor, but would people still do that for some less appealing careers?
So I feel like you need to offer some extra reward to incentivize people to do jobs that they wouldn’t want to do. Part of why I say this is because I’m counting down the days until I can have a vacation, and eventually retire. My job is “okay” but I’d rather work on fun hobby projects, but I don’t think anyone would ever pay me for them. One viable option is for me to work my normal job to make money to buy food, but then take time off to work on fun stuff that I enjoy, but no one wants to pay me for (or trade me for food).
So assuming you offer some reward to people for the less fun jobs, how do you prevent them leaving for capitalist villages which would presumably always reward them more? This is the key issue IMO. Unless getting rid of capitalism results in huge savings by not needing to advertise, compete, etc.
I mention dream technology because I feel like that can help with some of the scale issues. Maybe with unlimited power and 3D printers, a small village could produce everything they need, so you don’t need to worry about struggling just to produce everything you need for survival.
The technology already exists to create food or other things at scale though without much manual labour so I disagree with that assertion.
As for how to stop capitalist villages, well that’s primarily done through a mixture of education, cooperation and showing there’s no advantage to capitalism. Capitalism requires a state or some kind of force in order to enforce property rights, if I can go to that village and either take objects or ideas, capitalism loses since it cannot enforce its rights on me, nor its will once I go to a non capitalist village and thus it would have no power to keep its secrets, ideas or designs. It’s also done through education in that those who know more are less likely to be taken advantage of by others, especially if things like critical analysis etc are taught. Showing how well cooperation works instead of competition can be another protection against it. Also, a capitalist village will still have exploited workers. Why would they stay there when they could move somewhere where they’re not exploited?
So firstly, there isn’t necessarily a need to go to a copper mine, there’s copper in lots of things and we could set up recycling programs to extract it from things that wouldn’t be necessary under such a system, mass produced stuff, for example, things that broke and thus got thrown away etc etc. If there was a need to mine copper this could be done in part with technology, some kind of drones or other machines. Lastly, I’m sure there would be some people that wouldn’t mind doing labour if it meant less in the future, people thinking only short term and only about themselves is how this current mess of a world happened, after all.
Again, non appealing jobs can be done via technology and we can redesign systems so that labour would be at a minimum, a lot of automated/semi-automated recycling plants could be used, sewers could lead into recycling facilities and places for growing plants etc. So with those things manual labour could be massively reduced, or at least the parts people would ‘need’ incentives for (though I don’t think they necessarily would if it wasn’t constant and they thought long term and collectively).
You assume capitalism always offers more, it doesn’t necessarily and even if it does at the beginning over time it would merely exploit more and more people until they got fed up enough to leave, more people would do that currently if there was any place to go where they didn’t have to be exploited and could live a happy life with all they needed but there isn’t really anywhere like that currently.
I agree that we could very much use 3D printers etc and smaller power grids to create self-sustaining cities etc, using all kinds of renewable power since solar and wind aren’t the only types.
Hope this helps!
It is not.
Using money is just a simplification of barter. I don’t have time to play barter with 12 people to get the 1 thing I need. Instead I trade dollars/coins/gold/whatever mutually agreed upon token of value.
Also, my boss doesn’t pay me in chickens that I can’t use
The argument against money is just silly.
I understand what you are trying to say but however though every single currency or mostly every single currency is going to become worthless like the Weimar mark or the Zimbabwean dollar. I am basing that on both what I see on the news and what is happening to people all around me.
And there will be another currency after that.
Again, I’m not spending my time bartering the chickens my boss gave me for some crabs, for some iron, for some gas, just to trade that with the person that has the thing I need, because thats what they wanted.
If you come up with any argument about “well my simplifies that by making the trades for you”, then you’ve just re-engineered currency.
Currency isn’t the issue, it’s money lenders (you know, the table Jesus supposedly threw over at the synagogue), because it’s the generation of debt to make profit at the expense of others, while not contributing anything tangible, that’s the problem according to the parable.
You could still have debtors in a barter system, and that would still be problematic. It would still be debtors preying on people with little to start with, like payday loan places. “We’ll loan you 2 chickens today, but you’ll owe us 3 on pay day”. See, no difference.
Now if you want to make a local barter system just because, that’s different. But acting like you’re going to replace currency is naive, at best. Currency has been with mankind for thousands of years, because it simplifies trading.
Yes but what about the software determining the value of the products, can you answer that.
This would still be true in a barter system.
You give your bank 2 chickens. Your account now has 2 chickens. To save people the effort of transporting chickens, you give someone an IOU (bank note) equivalent to 2 chickens, and they do the same for your gas or whatever. Now you have a system of currency and a method of exchanging each currency (chickens, gas, cows, etc) for each other.
Software is created on this system of currency, and defines conversion rates between each currency. Software defines the value of products relative to each other now.
Exactly, now you understand the point of the software now.
Not really, no. Assuming that all currencies are going down the toilet and your software is supposed to sidestep it in some manner, then all you’re really introducing is basically an exchange for a new system of currencies. You end up in the same place in the theoretical future where barter is the main method of trading.
On the other hand, if you’re doing this just for fun, then there’s nothing wrong with that, and introducing it that way might get you a better reception. But this is not the future of trade, just a niche tool that some might find useful, which is perfectly fine.
The software allows barter to be the international main method of barter, does that explain it better for you.
I’ll check it out. Even if it doesn’t work conceptually, it’s still cool to think about alternatives to the Capitalist markets and currencies that are dominant.
Thank you
Do you have a demo video or something to watch? Or could you provide a bit more detail about the problem you’re trying to solve, what a typical use case might be? I rarely clone a github repo and try running it. Not just because it takes time and I’m often browsing on my phone, but because I don’t want to let potentially malicious code run on my computer.
I agree that money can seem like the cause of a lot of problems, but ultimately isn’t it a pretty good intermediary for trade? Maybe skipping money entirely would be great in the event of some sort of global currency collapse, but even then, maybe we would just use bottle caps or something?
And even if someone can prove that money is indeed a bad thing, even if we abolished it and resorted to barter… wouldn’t some people just hoard some other in-demand commodity and become powerful through that?
I feel like money isn’t the root of all evil, it’s just a representation of wealth and people hoarding wealth is probably the real issue.
…money isn’t the root of all evil…
That’s because it isn’t…to explain, many people misquote a verse from the biblical texts.
1 Timothy 6:10: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”
ah, interesting! I might have heard that this was misquoted before (and forgot), but I didn’t know it was from the bible.
“… of all kinds of evil” is interesting too. To me this implies that loving money isn’t necessarily always a problem, if it means say being frugal to save money/food to survive the winter or something, or saving for your children’s future.
The problem I am trying to solve is mostly all currencies or all currencies are going down the toilet and this software is the solution or part of the solution when the final blow happens with all these currencies. If you need me to explain better let me know.
Thanks, I get how barter would help in that case, but without running your software or seeing a demo of what it does, it’s not clear to me how it works, or why it’s better than alternatives. You said this elsewhere:
what about the software determining the value of the products, can you answer that.
Now that sounds interesting, how does it determine the value of products? And in the absence of money, how does it even represent value?
I’m asking this because I’m curious, but I’m also trying to give you tips on how to make a more engaging post. I’m not super interested in actually switching to bartering instead of using money right now, but I’d read about how your project works for a few minutes if you want to write about it. I suspect others might feel the same way. I looked at your github repo README and it’s all just technical instructions on how to run it.
After reading an explanation for how it works and why it’s more useful than other alternatives, then I might consider actually downloading the source and trying to use it.
Especially if you make bold claims like “is this the future of commerce” … you have to at least explain what you did if you’re going to say something like that.
If you want to understand the software in better depth I have the source code very well commented.
I’m trying to politely explain that if you want people to care more about your software, then you should go to more effort to explain it. If you just dump your source code online with minimal explanation, not as many people will care as if you explain what you’re trying to solve, how your thing works, and maybe alternatives that you considered, future features you’d like to address. Going through the source is the hardest part that many people might not want to bother doing. But most people might read a brief description and watch a short video, even if they aren’t all that interested in your idea at first. Even if they are skeptical of the need for a barter system, they can still appreciate the work you put in, and offer advice on the technical side, to help you with this and future projects.
I did skim your source and it looks like it’s mostly wrappers around a database. Some ideas, if you wanted to write about it:
- what are the different options that I user has? It looks like they can say “I want X” or “I have Y”, then what happens next? I shouldn’t need to read your source code to understand what your software does.
- I saw something about connecting to your database over TOR, I don’t quite understand that. If there’s an exchange of real good, what is the benefit of TOR? Don’t you have to break anonymity to trade real goods?
- how is your database hosted? If this is for a “currencies have collapsed” type of scenario, instead of relying on TOR, it might make sense to rely on a decentralized database that exists on everyone’s phones.
- security concerns: it looks like people can write to the database. Does that mean someone could also erase all the entries? How can you prevent abuse like that?
Security concerns: I don’t necessarily see that as abuse, anyone can record all records of something and if something gets wrongfully deleted someone can add it back in. There may be times when someone needs to delete a certain record, for example: when someone is bartering something in exchange to harm someone. Database hosting: anyone can host the database because I have the files in the repository. TOR: the benefit of TOR is to prevent some entity from tracking exchanges and it keeps people anonymous and with bartering real life goods you don’t necessarily need to break anonymity, there can be intermediaries to keep things anonymous. What happens next: when a person sees the record and they have what the other person wants, the first person can contact the person who has the record and negotiate the trade.
Algorithm for determining value of a product: the highest possible value for a product / ( the amount of people who has the product - the amount of people who want the product ) = value of the product, but however when there is one offer for a product it is only the highest possible value for a product because there is only one offer.
the highest possible value for a product
How do you calculate this?
the amount of people who has the product - the amount of people who want the product
As demand increases, the value increases, but at some point when demand exceeds supply (which is common), the opposite happens: the magnitude of the value starts to decrease (though that value is now negative).
For example, two sellers sell a product, and four people want it. Let maximum value be
v_m. Value is calculated to bev_m / (2 - 4)=-v_m / 2. If two more people want it suddenly (so 6 now), it becomesv_m / (2 - 6)=-v_m / 4, which has a lower magnitude despite the higher demand and static supply. This is contrary to how supply and demand actually work, where value generally increases as demand increases (if supply remains static).Maybe value means something differently to me than it does to you though. Ideally supply would always equal demand (which makes your denominator 0, breaking the equation entirely since that would be undefined), but that would be really difficult to control.
The highest possible value for a product, say like we were in a world where there is only one of everything, then everything would be equal value, which is one, for example: one carrot for one apple, and the people who has the product - the people who wants the product is supply - demand in simpler terms and the software gets those numbers by looking in the database and counting the supply of a product and counting the demand of a product.
We lost track of what money was supposed to be for… a representation of the resources and services in circulation. In which it was supposed to facilitate trade by creating tokens to facilitate transactions without the requirement of trust in the absence of a good, like when a farmer would need a tool from a blacksmith but the goods that the farmer has are only available when harvested in which the tool that the blacksmith has is required to retrieve them. In the presence of trust, the blacksmith was going to still trade and expect the goods when time was due. In the absence of trust, like in relation to a stranger, this trade wouldn’t go forward. Money as a representational token solved this sort of common issue. And this became a necessity when tribes went above the Dunbar’s number.
Cut to now…
What the hell is an economy even supposed to represent anymore? It is certainly not a representation of the resources and services in circulation, that’s for sure. 6 out of 9 planetary boundaries already breached all to ensure the survival of this abstraction. Some even call it Moloch as a reference to the pagan god which required human sacrifice. I thinks it’s worse, as it requires the sacrifice of everything, not just humans. But it is certainly a clever nod to something that was only real because people believed it to be.
Back to your project. A FOSS Barter Facilitator. There’s nothing I don’t like about this. Just make sure the protocols remain open to federation of future FOSS Barter Facilitators and you have a slice of Utopia to challenge the dystopian hell we’re in.
You have something here that can alleviate people’s lives in times of great need. Resource collapse is imminent now. If that is not at least partially avoided, that makes the collapse of the global economic system inevitable. What happens after that is a fool’s errand to even attempt to guess. We only know it’s not gonna be peaceful and nice given the stupidity in human nature. Scarcity always leads to the forming of new predation systems. That is how predation was formed in Nature. The incapacity for self-regulation led to animals to reproduce and consume more than the regenerative availability of their setting allowed, leading them to predate on each other. This is how violence emerged in Nature and still does to this day. When we lose track of self regulation we return to the scavenger’s rule of the wild.
But this helps in giving people access to trade without the requirement of capital tokens. Huge spikes in inflation, unemployment and mass migrations are only going to increase in volume and in rate as resources continue to collapse worldwide. We’re in a feedback loop and war and A.I. will only accelerate the velocity of it.
Or, you know, we could have more ideas like yours and reduce resource intake, increase individual resiliency and in doing so, lessening the panic in the common struggles.
So…
I’m certainly saving this post and link and share it with anyone who is inclined to listen.
I’m not a coder, so I thank you for such a wonderful contribution to the world.
You are welcome and everything is open on that application and I have the database file on the’re, in order to have the database decentralized.
