The trouble with being paid for things is that it feels like
you're holding people to ransom. Say you're a surgeon
and
you get paid for performing that life-saving operation.
What are you going to do if you don't get paid? Let them
die. Not a particularly realistic example, but there's
a
nasty feeling that if you are offering something which
people need, withholding your labour will kill them or
make their life terrible, so why aren't you doing it for
free?
On the other hand, there are things which are useless
and
therefore people will pay for them simply because they
want to and it enriches their life. They could buy a
Beatles
record but if the Beatles never existed, they could've
bought a Stones record instead. Or they could see a
Shakespeare play, but if Shakespeare had never been
born
they could see a Bacon play instead, and so on. These
things are interchangeable in a way water, oxygen and
essential knowledge, skills and experience are not.
When you get to the checkout in your local supermarket,
you generally either pay by some electronic system or
hand
over cash. This means that the business benefits from
you
and so it carries on. If you were able to trade food, say,
for cleaning the supermarket or mending their fridge,
that
would be good, and it could theoretically circumvent the
need to pay with money. Barter.
However, what if your special skill is of the
circus/entertainment variety rather than practical, as it
should be because if you can do something useful you're
basically being a git if you ask money for it? For
instance,
what if you can balance a pile of seventeen items
artistically on the counter or perform finely balanced
acts
of contortion, or spin pizza bases on the end of poles
made
out of broomsticks? The cashier who agrees sight unseen
to your performance may end up getting disappointed,
and
in the case of the pizza bases, they could end up
unhygienically all over the shop.
Enter the Balance Mastercard. You have this skill and the
local clown college can vouch for it, so they give you a
card which says you are known to be skilled at balancing
seventeen items atop a cash register. Hand the card over
at checkout in lieu of payment or for a reduction, and
you
will make the employees' day brighter by a fraction in
return. The value is decided by a disinterested
committee.
Note that this transaction is immediate and face to face.
A supermarket full of circus performers may be of some
value to the business itself. For instance, fire breathers
may slightly reduce heating bills, lightning calculators
may
be useful for Z readings at the end of the day and lion
tamers might deter potential shoplifters. Beyond that,
the
morale of the employees could be lifted too, thereby
increasing turnover, reducing absenteeism, and all the
rest. Even so, the material benefits would dissipate
rather
rapidly without the confines of the edifice. This need
not,
however, be a problem with a small business rather than
a
chain, as the employees are all there is, or there may
only
be two levels in the hierarchy, and this is simpler.
Thanks to [eleventeenthly] for the input.