It hints that with Second Life – because there is a monetary system ie. People can pay each other, it was able to go further than it’s a previous similar things called Active Worlds.

I am trying to get my head round what in fact bartering systems MEANS for a community.

Does it mean that excess resources in one area of the system can more easily be put to use? (because, say, one person’s ability to babysit would not be called on unless an add appeared for a request for a babysitter… then the babysitter can trade that to pick up on other excess resource in a system..

So its as though.. much more of a system gets called on, brought to life..

Does anyone relate to what I am saying..? (again, this is very much non-finance person speak!)

Maybe that is how the peer-to-peer paradigm shift really makes itself felt…by enabling this to happen without a middle man taking a fee… and without putting other conditions in place.

Is this about a community’s right/ability/freedom to redefine, according to them, what is of VALUE.

Ie. Is it a way of a local –system being able to best use its own resource, because the VALUE of those resources is assigned by that community itself, not by far-away market forces?

But then what defines the exchange rate between the Barter unit and the local mainstream economic market
And, are there barter systems where one cannot exchange with the mainstream market? (ie closed systems??)

What is the right conditions for this last question?

Forgive the ignorance please, I was always allergic to mainstream economics out of a deep mistrust of all of it, until I read Small is Beautiful and The Ownership Solution (Jeff Gates)

I brought into the discussion a book that I have read over Christmas “Wir nennen es Arbeit” (We call it work) about the Digital Bohéme in Berlin (their blog is also included in our blogroll). The authors wrote one chapter on the new currency “respect” and we have concluded in our discussion yesterday that we need a paradigm shift away from money as a currency to respect. So the question shifts from “How do we make money?” to “How do we gain respect with people for our work?”

For finance dummies like me here is a general website:
http://int.bartercard.com/
http://www.brandeins.de/home/inhalt_detail.asp?id=1414&MenuID=130&MagID=49
(German innovative business magazine…for the IMAGINE Generation I: that was the brand eins issue that we received at the conference!)

I have added Bob’s blog “BarterNews” to our blogroll.

Hey AIESEC, maybe this is a topic for the Finance Learning Network?