h a l f b a k e r yMake mine a double.
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Sharing Point
PLatform for sharing services and products with the community | |
All people already have some level of self-sufficiency. And can easily acquire more self-sufficiency. For example: They perform several tasks in their house and garden. They can learn how to make a wide variety of products themselves, like wine, beer, bread, cloths and so on. And often, they can even
produce it more ethically and/or cheaper.
This seems very promising. But for one person to produce a wide variety of products, takes a lot of time. Because of time issues, most people limit themselves to producing a very limited amount of home made products and limit themselves to do a limited amount of tasks around the house.
But each person has different abilities. Together however, people perform a wide variety of tasks and produce a wide variety of products.
If only people were able to share their own products and services with the products and services from people living nearby, the people, as a group, could attain a higher degree of self-sufficiency.
The ability to share however could easily be attained if there was a website which allowed people to share their abilities with each other. They could register. Put in their location. Put in their services and/or products they want to share with the neighbourhood.
For example, someone who doesn’t like to mow the lawn, could look online if there is anyone living nearby who offers this service. So this person can be contacted. Paying the person for the job well done, could be illegal. But perhaps, there is something else they can agree upon. Or not.
Another example: Is to form sharing groups online. Sharing groups, as a group of people, each having their own products to offer, they meet with each other. And they share their products. A variety of home made products for each other. That could be promising. They could pay each other. Or they could collectively agree on a specified budget for the making of their products and just share them with the group.
And people could perhaps, give ratings to each other, as a hopeful mean to create trust in the society and in the people involved.
If such a website would exist and would attain popularity, it could give a boost to a completely different economy. One in which the people are the performers. Not the big companies.
So… who wants to build it?
http://www.freecycle.org/
Only for objects I think [pocmloc, Dec 05 2013]
the barter system- older than money
https://www.mint.co...e-past-and-present/
[xandram, Dec 06 2013]
Labor and Goods Exchange
http://bangordailyn...-on-bartering-site/
[swimswim, Dec 06 2013]
[link]
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yes please.
Will fix your broken or loose doors if you make my garden nicer. |
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Will make your garden nicer if you turn a bunch of boards I bought into a room divider. |
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How about choretrader.com. It appears to be unclaimed. |
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That could also save a lot of money in equipment and tools. You wouldn't have everybody on the block owning and poorly maintaining a lawnmower for example. The difficulty comes of course in negotiating the trades and such, but hopefully there would be enough of a boost in efficiency that both parties would always win. |
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In addition to listing the things you do well. list the chores or tasks that you would apprieciate others doing for you. A good way to start price negotiation might be to say, "I'd be willing to mow a lawn for 3 dozen cookies (not all at once)" and someone else to say "I'd be willing to bake 4 dozen cookies if someone mowed my lawn." |
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It seems like this would work best in very close proximity so you could just walk over to the person you were helping in most cases. That would also help build tighter communities. |
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Maybe the site would implement some kind of non-redeemable currency to facilitate 3 or more way trades. Call the currency "favors", as in if after a trade of service you would say to your neighbor, "Thanks. I own you a favor," that person gets one favor in his account. In many cases both parties in a trade could legitimately say that because both performed a job ideally suited to them. This "profit" would lead to a growing neighborhood economy. You'd probably want some decay system to prevent building up too many favors to encourage people to continue trading. The result is that people end up using more services than they would have done for themselves, so for the example mentioned, lawns would probably get mowed more often with this system, and more cookies would be consumed and/or less money from that community would be spent on store-bought cookies and yard maintenance companies. The trick for making this really beneficial would be to ensure that overall it give more services to people while also reducing the amount of work they do rather than encouraging peopel to work themselves to death.[+] |
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Congratulations, you've invented communism. Please
receive your participation trophy and complimentary lei at
the rear. |
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//some kind of non-redeemable currency// This is well baked, it is called LETS, and the tax man for some reason is quite interested in how much people "earn" of these token currencies. |
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I think before computers this was just called *the barter system*. |
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I think this is a good idea, and as [scad] says, the challenge is creating something akin to a currency to keep it fluid. Attempts have been made, e.g. see the link to the Bangor Daily News article. |
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//... the challenge is creating something akin to a currency to keep it fluid. // |
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But that's already baked. Someone invented currency.
Most people already trade their abilities for coupons redeemable for goods or services at a later date using that system. |
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You could still create a website to trade highly localised hobbyist work. Mark it up in local currency. No need to find a network of mutually satisfactory deals, allows people who can't otherwise contribute to interact and gives a good funding mechanism. |
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[Loris] The problem with the currency that has already already been invented is that any time it changes hands for a service, the tax man wants to take a cut, and if you accept currency for certain services, some government agency compains if you aren't licensed and so on and so forth. By keeping it local among people you eventually get to know very well, most of the protections provided by that overhead are unnecessary and there is an increase in efficiency. If any one system gets so big that you don't know the people, or you hav eto driv 5 minutes between locations, then you get to the point where you actually need some of that overhead. So then it can get the point where you are duplicating infrastructure that can be more efficiently provided by the exiting government. |
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I hadn't heard of LETS before, but it does seem to indicate that this idea is pretty much baked if not WKTE. And I could wee why the tax man would care. But like I said above, it seems like this is only efficient if you keep it small. If it's small it only accounts for a small portion of most people's income, and it removes burden from the local government by, for example, reducng road infrastructure and road policing needs because of fewer trips of tradesmen between businesses and neigborhoods. It seems like the tax man should allow this on a small scale. On a large scale, where this becomes less efficient, then the only real reason is to avoid taxes and then the tax man should get interested. |
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[Alterother] This it not communism at all. Small scale communism (the only type that has much hope of working) might look similar from the outside, but internally if people are free to barter whatever services they need with watever services they can provide, it will be very capitalistic. For example, if I don't like Jill's cookies, I won't mow her lawn unless she can secure some cookies that I actually like. And if I do like her cookies it may well be that I can mow the lawn in 15 miuntes and it will take her half an hour to bake the cookies for me. That's fair because I had to invest capital in my lawn mower. The capital she invested in her oven isn't as significant because ovens last longer and everyone has one. Then again if I never cook for myself and don't bother to buy an oven, those cookies might be have a higher value to me. That's capitalism at its best isn't it? |
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I love this and try to do this as often as someone else is looking. Value for value.
Screw the middle-man.
I traded a custom ensuite bath/shower/heat-mat install for custom kitchen cabinetry and we both ended up with an unheard of deal.
I traded a man a custom circular compass-point insert inside a double bordered diamond motif entrance inlay for every, (and I mean every...) single thing he'd had removed from the million dollar home he was renovating. Every door, toilet, shower stall... the whole works.
He got three days labor... and didn't have to host a garage sale, I completely renovated my own home with his stuff over the course of the next eight years. |
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The government REALLY doesn't like to be cut out of the loop like that though.
Without "legally" being able to extort money from those they are supposed to serve just seems to get their panties all in a bunch. |
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You can bet your ass, any website trying to pair value-with-value while cutting out the middle-man will be watched like a hawk by revenue collection agencies. |
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Vivre le système de troc!!! |
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// [Alterother] This it not communism at all // |
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I see that now. Nice explanation. |
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I can write ideas for you on halfbakery. |
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This annotation space for rent. |
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