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Barter: The Permanent Currency

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Categories: Commerce and business, Experiences and daily life

Word count/read time: 620 words; 2-1/2 minutes

A more fitting title should be BARTER: THE ORIGINAL CURRENCY. How else would conquerors have stolen Manhattan from the First Nation inhabitants for worthless beads? Certainly barter can be misused yet its core principles diverge sharply from the fiat money system currently in place.

Throughout history, money has been devalued significantly on a moment's notice from market forces or something else. Government mandates can make it worthless overnight. That's quite an effective method of grabbing wealth, what governments do best these days it seems....

Physical objects are generally free from whimsical inflation but definitely not immune from market forces: tulip bust in Holland, Beanie Babies, fast-food collectibles, real estate collapses, etc. Barter cannot be devalued unless it becomes a crime; some countries want it reported as income and will tax it more than your paycheck so there are indirect ways governments are cracking down. Staunch privacy and freedom proponents know these exchanges only have to involve the relevant parties; Big Brother or anyone else doesn't need to know.

Modern life means clicking a mouse for our purchases which are almost exclusively funded with credit cards. That purchase costs the merchant a few points. The "standard" fee is about 3% plus a small surcharge. The realized percentage may be much more, i.e. a $4 purchase will lose 10.5% whereas a $400 purchase will lose 3.08%. If it happens to be a foreign bank, the percentage increases.

Every credit card charge reduces the effective buying power of the money. How much eventually goes to the financial industry FOR DOING NOTHING but continually and continuously wreaking havoc on the average person?! You are paying for that fatcat executive to put a down payment on their umpteenth vacation home. You are NOT supporting local businesses, yourself, lower prices, or your children's college fund. You enrich those who manipulate the system...at your expense.

Charging people for the convenience of paying their bills is fucking ridiculous! Every time you do not complete your transaction with real money or goods, you are furthering their cause and our misery.

The general malaise a corrupt financial system inflicts upon those who actively use it (the consumer) or unwilling participants (the merchant) is criminal. However, our government would rather send someone to jail for stealing a loaf of bread than a tycoon who pillages billions of dollars.

Every transaction is tracked and the information sold off. Your privacy and freedom erode by your very doing. You have no protection against data mining, no anonymity. You are paying into a system that shows no loyalty except to those who write the laws for their benefit.

A $100 bill is only backed by the word of a government. And we all know how truthful they are, so we don't have to worry about anything. My possessions will always have value that's not dependent on what some power-hungry government says. Meddlesome policies and influences should be removed from our daily lives.

Valuable goods and services or worthless "money?" You make the choice because the latter is coming whether you like it or not. Besides, it's much harder to confiscate real property compared to pressing a mouse button to vanquish your electronic money. If we don't resist and demand change then it paves the way for even more manipulation.

UPDATE 5/15/2021: (Stories like this show how stacked the deck is against the average person when it comes to the financial system. Here's a helpful tidbit that everyone needs to understand: For a modest temporary inconvenience, the commoners could completely cripple the financial institutions if we worked together. But we're too busy infighting about whether or not it is OK to "Grab 'em by the pussy!" Our servitude is guaranteed if we don't band together.

Posted by M: March 10, 2020

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