Barter Brings People Closer To Each Other

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from The Wall Street Journal): “As Europe’s leaders struggle with a five-year-old economic crunch that has saddled Spain with the industrialized world’s highest jobless rate, young Spaniards are increasingly embracing such bottom-up self-help initiatives [time banks] to cope. …

“Besides time banks, they include barter markets springing up in barrios, local currencies designed to spur the flagging retail economy, and charity networks that repurpose discarded goods. …

“The growth of time banks revives a concept pioneered by 19th-century anarchists and socialists in the U.S. and Europe, who wanted to test their philosophy that prices of goods and services should more closely reflect the labor involved in producing them. …

“The Valladolid Time Bank, started by the city government just before the crisis started, has attracted more and younger members with the crumbling of Spain’s economy. The new unemployed appreciate the bank’s egalitarian ethos, says 32-year-old administrator Juan Manuel Primo. ‘Everyone’s hour has the same value here,’ he says: An hour’s labor by a seamstress is worth as much as that of a lawyer. …

“’Having a network of support like this is really important at a time when you’re vulnerable,’ says Alessandra Melis, 30, who recently lost her housekeeping job after her employers were themselves laid off. She has been using the bank to get rides for her errands around town, in exchange for offering cooking lessons and dog walking services.

“When a hair stylist who belonged to the bank had to shut down his slumping salon not long ago, he was able to count on meals and other necessities from members in return for cuts. …

“Spaniards are also bartering goods—say, books or furniture in exchange for fresh produce—at markets that are being organized in seemingly every neighborhood.”

“Carlos Bravo, a 35-year-old information technician who helped launched a small bank in central Madrid this year, says time banks have a different sort of value: helping urban Spaniards rekindle a sense of closeness among neighbors that facilitates asking for favors and other forms of mutual assistance. …

“‘Some economists worry that the rise of such informal systems of economic exchange is pushing more of Spain’s economy underground—out of the view of regulators and tax collectors, and effectively sending the country back in time developmentally. …

“Others, though, say the measures represent a significant stabilizing force in society. For ‘people who can’t find work, these kinds of possibilities of exchanges and mutual help can help make bearable a situation that otherwise would be unsustainable,’ says José Luis Álvarez Arce, director of the economics department at the University of Navarra.”

My Comment: This is the element of reciprocity, mutual aid, and it will exist as long as the state does not become sympathetic to the people and the entire society does not acquire the form of mutual help. For the time being, the government does not like such a tax-free exchange even if it helps people survive. The next step is to organize one’s own network of buying and selling goods and services without a hundred percent markup and middlemen.

Then, this network will dictate its prices and necessary goods to producers. This can bring the prices of essential goods to the minimum cost. Then, people can become responsible for volunteer service to the population, the city, and thus reduce all the municipal costs and consequently all taxes (levies) on the population, and people can organize studies for schoolchildren in groups, additional classes and clubs, etc.
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