Benefits of Barter. by Fremdfirma

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Benefits of Barter.

POSTED BY: FREMDFIRMA
UPDATED: Thursday, May 14, 2009 14:49
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Thursday, May 14, 2009 8:11 AM

Interesting article from Reason someone passed on to me cause I tend to prefer non-cash transactions for a couple reasons, not the least of which is privacy.

As the economy suffers, a nation turns toward cashless transactions.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/133215.html

One thing I find especially gratifying about barter is that the transaction, especially face to face, is personal in a way conventional monetary transactions cannot be, especially in this day and age where companies spend tons of money to insulate you, the consumer, from ever coming face to face with one of their personnel, or even voice to voice, as the typical phone-tree hell illustrates.
(I initially called it the carosel, cause it's whole purpose is to jerk you round and round till you get off and go AWAY)

Anyhows, there's just something about a person to person transaction of real goods, usually over coffee and conversation, often goods made by one of the participants, which creates and enhances social bonding and empathy in a fashion no other transaction does.

Like the little old lady who made me several large tins of corn bread in exchange for a tuneup on her ratty old car, if you tally the exact dollar amounts one might percieve a slight "loss" on my end of the deal, sure - but there's factors in that money can't express, like just how pleasant the ladys company was, or the satisfaction of a job well done in good cause, and goddamn, fresh baked cornbread with real butter ? versus store bought processed crap ?

Barter isn't just a trade of goods, it's an embrace of humanity, of social contact, in a form we've steadily removed ourselves from at a detriment to our mental health.

Also, interesting incident from a couple days ago, not completely related to the topic directly, but something worth a thought or two on.

Without going into great detail of how it came to be, I found myself in close proximity to a rather desperate looking fellow nerving himself up to do something I would consider... abysmally stupid.

But some things struck me as out of place, the faint light band around his left ring finger, lack of any jewelry or watch, dirty and battered but not yet weeks-ragged clothing, no reek of alcohol or telltale signs of drug use, and the very beginings of malnourishment visible from a slight crack at the corner of his mouth which hadn't even scarred yet - clearly this guy was a newcomer to the street, and hurting bad enough to do something desperate, without realizing he was a goldfish aiming at the tail of a pirahna.

And all I could think of... "There, but for the graces of fortune and whatever gods there are, could have gone myself." ...cause I HAVE been there, and back again.

So I whipped around face to face and demanded, "Why don't you just ASK me, like a fellow human being?"

I didn't mean to shame him, but that obviously did, and it's a pretty sure bet he hadn't counted on THAT result.

"Shit man, I'll say it FOR you, if you can't manage - dude, i'm poor, and hungry, and hurtin, and a couple a bucks, man, that might MATTER to me, might let me hang on a while longer, right ?"

Poor guy blushed, and when he did that, I realized he was quite a bit younger than I had taken him for, couldn't have been past his early twenties, heaven only knows what his story might have been and had I the time I might have asked him.

I rolled ten bucks around a business card with some useful numbers on it - day work places, a work rehabilitation service, a local food bank we supply with a code that indicates we sent em, etc - and handed it to him.

"Take it, and while you're at it, take a little faith in humanity with it, guy - we're not ALL assholes, despite how it might seem some days."

And not having time to stick around and talk, I went on my merry - whether that does him any good or not, well, that's up to him.

When you get down to the root of it all, humanity isn't so much the great grand schemes, so much as it is the little things, how we treat each other - in the end, that's the shit that really MATTERS.

Just stuff for you to think about.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Thursday, May 14, 2009 10:26 AM

BYTEMITE

Frem, if I ever met you in real life, I'd give you like a super high five.

That's awesome.

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Thursday, May 14, 2009 10:35 AM

OUT2THEBLACK

Amen , to both of you !

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Thursday, May 14, 2009 2:28 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Frem, YOU are the reason for whatever little faith I have. I've no need nor use for gods nor religions; my faith lies completely in Man, and in his thousand tiny good deeds every day that outweigh the few bad ones.

It's not money, it's not glory, it's not fame; it's being able to sleep in your own skin. You could have just walked away and told him to fuck off. Hell, you could have waited for him to jump, and then beat his ass and had him hauled off to jail. Instead, you did that most human and humane of things: you helped. My guess is, you'll both sleep better tonight because of that one tiny action.

It's people like you that make me try to be a better person. And it's the lesson you bring - the ability is in ALL of us, in all the tiny, seemingly insignificant things we do. The choice is ours whether we use that ability.

Mike

Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

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Thursday, May 14, 2009 2:49 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Thanks, folks - thing is, I think a great many of our social ills have come from the denial and suppression of our own humanity.

See, the more you suppress it, the more warped the form in which it finally expresses itself, and it WILL express itself, nature always beats a construct, just watch what a tree root does to a sidewalk, right ?

That theme is repeated commonly in fiction, often as not unintended even by the authors, for example - while I give lucas no great credit as a writer of stories, it's pretty clear that when the Jedi began to deny their own humanity (and I mean that in the broadest sense, since they encompassed many races) they planted the seeds of their own destruction, which anyone who really understood this principle could see coming a mile away - even some of their own like the Grey Jedi, saw just how disastrous that path would soon become.

I've commonly bashed the Star Trek Federation for it as well, all too often hiding behind rules and regulations when moral ambiguity brought a path that was humanly "right" in conflict with those rules and regs, which they yet violated many times for personal or political advantage, but not so much to help others.

What folk fail to understand, is that rules and laws, codes of behavior, those things are laid down to protect people and their stuff from those who would prey upon them or do them harm.

Yet over time, it's entirely possible for those predators to either wind up writing the rules, or twisting them in such a way that the rules wind up more important than, and often in direct threat to, the very things they were meant to protect - at which point it becomes ones moral DUTY to ignore and defy them, that being how the abject idiocy of prohibition was finally broken, which of course hasn't stopped that kind of stupidity itself given our "war on (some) drugs".

In that light, the most valuable ability and gift of our own sentience is not just critical thought, but the inclination and ability to commit heresy against established structures which no longer serve, or have become anethma, to their very purpose - as witnessed by our forefathers, primarily deists, when they stated...

"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

Of course, the question always arises, "but how will I know ?" - to which the answer is within us all, in that very part of our humanity most valuable, the ability to know right from wrong simply by listening to what our heart tells us, instead of external sources.

That essence, that internal empathy which I truly believe to be for the most part hard-wired within us, is our only real saving grace in a world gone mad, and given time and room to grow, will some day become our redemption - above all things, I firmly believe this, with a surety that precludes the need for faith, because THAT voice, however faint, is always with you.

Some may attribute it to heavens grace, religious inspiration or what have you, but regardless of it's source, it's in nearly all of us, at least in it's potential, and anything that tells you to suppress or purge it, or attempts to substitute its own "values" is something you should view with great skepticism, because more than any material thing - that is the primary threat to our continued survival, and what enables human beings to mercilessly slaughter each other.

Follow the truth, follow your heart.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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