Barter and the Internet
The State matters less and less
See this site for info on how to trade stuff without money, eg barter. Giving the efficiency of the internet pushing information asymmery ever lower this is of course inevitable and positive. The state is exclused from these transactions as far as I know (as they are from many internet transactions .. so far.). The only place Congress has given the goverment the nose under the tent is in preventing internet gambling eg the paternalistic state.
Barter is interesting, of course how trade was before money. Comecon used to trade goods between its factories and the USSR's satellite countries. When the wall fell all alot of people had to trade was the output of their outmoded USSR factories, now of course with fiscal and monetary reform (and from starting from such a low base) many are doing quite well.
The Soviet's central planning of course was doomed from the start. The only thing that kept it alive for so long was the ability to see the prices of traded goods in the non-Soviet economy, eg, the West. Just imagine how long this stupid economic experiment would have lasted (and how much poverty pollution corruption and waste) would have exsited in the USSR if the 'planners' were able to use the internet to see the prices of everything, then they could have limped along even longer.
Billions of people trading with other billions of people is the market. There is no way any group of experts can track this or improve upon it.
See this site for info on how to trade stuff without money, eg barter. Giving the efficiency of the internet pushing information asymmery ever lower this is of course inevitable and positive. The state is exclused from these transactions as far as I know (as they are from many internet transactions .. so far.). The only place Congress has given the goverment the nose under the tent is in preventing internet gambling eg the paternalistic state.
Barter is interesting, of course how trade was before money. Comecon used to trade goods between its factories and the USSR's satellite countries. When the wall fell all alot of people had to trade was the output of their outmoded USSR factories, now of course with fiscal and monetary reform (and from starting from such a low base) many are doing quite well.
The Soviet's central planning of course was doomed from the start. The only thing that kept it alive for so long was the ability to see the prices of traded goods in the non-Soviet economy, eg, the West. Just imagine how long this stupid economic experiment would have lasted (and how much poverty pollution corruption and waste) would have exsited in the USSR if the 'planners' were able to use the internet to see the prices of everything, then they could have limped along even longer.
Billions of people trading with other billions of people is the market. There is no way any group of experts can track this or improve upon it.
posted by Cameron Weber at 10:46 AM
