Talk:Barter

proposed summary

definition and homonyms

etymology

history

• before money
• international barter such as triangular trade
• money crisis

forms of barter

• barter between states
• corporate barter
• local barter

barter and monetary trades

statistics

formal barter models

see also

Relations between money and barter

If you consider these quotes:

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal- that there is no human relation between master and slave - Leon N. Tolstoy

Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws - Mayer Amshchel Rothschild

You can figure out why most economic experts are not seriously interested by this matter, and also why contributions are accepted only if they describe barter as the outdated ancestor of money or if the subject discussed is, from an economic quantitative point of view, inexistant.

The money power preys on the nation in time of peace, and conspires againts it in time of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denouces, as pubic enemies, all who question it's methods or throw light upon it's crimes. Abraham Lincoln

This article is now a no man's land of economy. It's quality will grow only if contributions are understood and really discussed before being deleted, or it will remain as it is now.

Adam Smith saw government as having a fundamental role in ensuring that markets were not rigged to favor the merchant, and to prevent monopoly.

' “The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public” '

― Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

The quality does not grow, the definition says for example that barter does not use any medium. But any measurable commodity can be one! We should say it does not use any monetary medium. (Olivierchaussavoine 20:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC))

Barter is NOT an ancestor, outdated or otherwise, of money.

Olivierchaussavoine said: the definition says for example that barter does not use any medium. But any measurable commodity can be one! We should say it does not use any monetary medium'

WTF!? You obviously have no idea what is meant by "medium of exchange". I'll help. It is that which facilitates the exchange of one commodity for another. In Barter (Commodity for a Commodity (C-C)) transactions commodities are exchanged directly without any interceding medium to facilitate the exchange as opposed to monetary transactions (C-M-C) in which money facilitates the exchange of commodities. 24.36.14.161 (talk) 22:29, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

No evidence for barter societies?

There seems to be a single source for this, namely claims made by Graeber in his Debt. This is a bit shoddy, given that there is ample evidence of barter-based societies. Even the famous source of the whole gift economy idea, Marcel Mauss mentions that a gift was usually given with some kind of reciprocity in mind.

I would prefer more credible and more objective sources than merely Graeber on topics that do not concern only anthropology. Graeber's viewpoint seems to rest on an imagined fact that there's no known observed instance of currencies taking shape. There are countless cases of currencies taking shape, surely some of which should be known to an anthropologist. To name a few: Cowry shells, cattle and manillas were all used as currency and co-existed with bartering. Likewise, when the Roman empire founded its currencies, the currency co-existed with bartering far and wide - as far as India according to some sources. ZombiePriest (talk) 18:23, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

"Given that there is ample evidence of barter-based societies"

Some references to this effect would be welcome --JamesPoulson (talk) 07:48, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

First, consider the time period that this transition from barter systems to monetary systems is happening... written word has not even been invented yet. In fact, the first city state is not even established. What kind of evidence are people expecting to be found? Bartering doesn't leave a paper trail, after all. Further, what line of reason are these people proposing as an alternative presumption for the invention of this thing called money? It didn't magically appear one day. Hell, a monetary system is nothing but a barter system that incorporates a universally accepted medium of exchange. You can have barter without money, but you can't have money without barter. Monetary systems are, in fact, part of the indirect evidence that barter systems existed before money was invented. Christopher Theodore (talk) 02:40, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Barter quantitative model

This model makes barter practice easier for exchange of stocks measurable as quantities of quality standards. It allows the settlement of an electronic market place where each participant can find the best economic opportunity.

Using this model, a participant can search for the best association with one or more partners that would produce the lowest rate between the quantity he provides and the quantity he receives.

It does not use any monetary system, as required by the definition of barter.

Definitions

When exchanged goods are measurable by quantities of standard values, barter agreements can be modelized using the following definitions:

A barter commitment is a unilateral statement of one economic actor to provide a quantity of a standard good he owns in exchange of an other quantity of an other standard good he is looking for.

The price is the ratio between provided and delivered quantities.

Search for the best barter agreement

A barter agreement is a list of barter commitments where partners form a loop exchange that can be modelized as a loop on a directed graph.

Using the new definition of price, the equality of price of the buyer and of the seller has no meaning since the units are not the same, but the product of prices has one:

A barter agreement is possible when product of prices of partners equals to 1.

This statement remains true if we consider barter between more than two partners.

One can view the set of barter commitments as vertices. An edge exists between two commitments when the good proposed by one is the same as the good provided by the other. The definition of price is used to give a weight to each vertex and paths on this graph by the following:

The weight of a path is the product of the weight of it's vertices, and the weight of a vertex is the price of the barter commitment.

Find the best barter opportunity consists in searching for the possible loop that would give the lowest price ( it is created by looping the path having the highest price, since product of prices on a loop must be 1.).

An economic actor looking for a possible commitment proposing a stock he owns and asking for an other, can find the best economic opportunity for him, and define the best list of commitment, and set of partners for it's trade.

Those who are not choosen for the trade and want to barter are naturally incited to propose lower prices.

This model creates a market mecanism without using any monetary system but only quantities of exchanged stocks.

It's also a model without any relation to the real world. 24.36.14.161 (talk) 20:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Minimum quantity for a given price

A price is usually conditioned to a minimum quantity sold.

A more advanced model can be defined that finds the best associations between commitments where this other constraint is added, using this new definition:

A barter commitment is a unilateral statement of one economic actor to provide such quantity of such standard good he owns in exchange of an other quantity of an other standard good, for a minimum quantity provided.

Implementation

The core searching algorithm are developed and rigourously tested, based on graph theory, and inspired of broadly used algorithms in routers of the world wide web.

A software project openbarter aims at providing online the proof of this statement. It's author is searching for an economic partner that would accept to help him to industrialize this model.

Olivierchaussavoine 10:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Contradictions with description of "Barter".

Description at the beginning: "In trade, barter is a system of exchange where participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money." The article contains examples of systems that do have a medium of exchange or money (i.e. WIR, LETSystem) Why consider these barter then? I don't think they are. The LETSystem Design Manual (section 4.0) says: "Barter means that the requester must pay something back to the offerer. With the LETSystem this is not so. The commitment is to the membership as a whole, not to any one person. Further, you can make a commitment on the LETSystem with no thought of when or where you will balance it. This point should be stressed wherever possible." M.artti (talk) 21:00, 29 June 2018 (UTC)