Bartering is Back

Here's this week's post on BlogHer:

Now that the First Lady has announced the creation of an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn, I’m feeling empowered.  Like maybe it was my BlogHer post on the subject that may have tipped the scale in our favor.  So now I’m wondering what else we can revive, preferably a well-established idea onto which I can just piggyback at the last minute.  I know.  Bartering!

The direct exchange of goods and services for other goods and services without any money involved has been in place for a long, long time.  Since the dinosaurs, at least, like the time a Tyrannosaurus Rex reportedly bartered a delicious meal from a Stegosaurus in exchange for a swift and merciful death.  (Sorry, I’ve been playing with dinosaurs all day.)

Bartering made particularly excellent sense in the time period before currency was invented but after stealing was considered poor form:

Caveman1: What’s that?

Caveman2: A saber-toothed tiger I hunted.  You?

Caveman1: Half a mastodon.  (sigh)  Mastodon soup, mastodon stew, mastodon chowder.  I’m sooooo sick of mastodon.

Caveman2: Do you want to buy some tiger chops off of me?  

Caveman1: Only if I can sell some of this goddamned mastodon.

Caveman2: I like mastodon.

Caveman1: Okay, but I don’t have anything to give you to symbolize that I’m exchanging my mastodon for your chops.  I mean, besides the mastodon itself.  

Caveman2: Yeah, me neither.  I just have the chops.  How would we know that an actual exchange was taking place?  I mean, besides remembering what we had before.

Caveman1: There’s no way to tell.  What should we do?

Caveman2: I know.  We could just put them on either side of this rock slab and each walk to the other side and then run away with whatever's in front of us?

Caveman1: That'll never work.  We have to fight to the death.

Caveman2: (sigh) Okay, here I go again…

Once more, I apologize.  My prehistoric knowledge is limited to the Ice Age movies.

With the advent of currency, bartering fell out of favor for practical reasons.  For example, it’s hard to make change when you’re trading a mule for a bucket of eggs.  Also, coins and paper money meant that you could more easily conduct three-way, four-way, or even 16-way trades if the person who wanted to barter with you didn’t have anything you wanted (or if they had hideous taste) (or if, like me, they constantly offer poor trades).

Now that none of us has any money, bartering has gone mainstream, with sites like Craig’s List ready to set you up with someone who wants your used crap as much as you want theirs.  Bartering never really went out of style with the culinarily inclined, who might trade a jar of this for a jar of that to manage their surpluses or just to keep things interesting.  But now, with the miracle of the Internet, it’s taken on a whole new dimension.  Soup Swaps have sprung up all over the country from Seattle to Boston, where people make a batch of soup, portion it into a designated number of containers, freeze them, and then meet at a predetermined location to socialize and exchange with the other participants.  Joelen of Joelen’s Culinary Adventures hosts meal exchanges in Chicago called Brunch & Barter, where everyone meets for brunch and exchanges pre-portioned meals in much the same way.  It’s a lot like a holiday cookie swap but without the guilt and self-loathing that occurs when you go home and eat them all in one sitting.

But bartering doesn’t necessarily require that much orchestration.  It can be as simple as exchanging baked goods for fresh yogurt and raw honey from local farmers, as Kate of Living the Frugal Life demonstrates.  Or it can inspire some pretty interesting business arrangements, like the Will Work For Food Project.  The owner of a Boston-area design firm, Gates Studio, forged a relationship with several small area farms in which she offered marketing and branding services in exchange for locally grown food.  The response was overwhelming.

An economy in the toilet can mean new opportunities to get creative with your own skills and resources.  I'd like to see more of this.  Do you barter?

Comments

[Sarah]

I barter babysitting for massage! Best trade ever. I'm also about to barter putting a garden in to my friend's yard for art.

[cookiecrumb]

We give fruit from our trees to our favorite bread baker at the farmers market. We're just trying to offload the overload, but he always slips us a couple of croissants or something.
And it turns out his pastry chef uses our pears in tarts for sale! So we could accidentally buy back our free overload food.

[Mary]

"Only if I can sell some of this goddamned mastodon" You are HILARIOUS!

[Jacquelyn]

I barter! I give my hair stylist energy drinks I market in exchange for a hair cut. It works out very well.

[adele]

I love your take on prehistoric social interaction.

As a grad student who never learned to drive, I routinely use baked goods or the promise of a real, home-cooked meal to bribe friends with cars to help me move heavy things. It works out pretty well.

[Gail]

I've been hearing more and more about this and think it's great. My one issue is that I don't feel skilled enough at anything I make to consider it "barterable." Still, soup is pretty hard to screw up too badly, so perhaps I'll take a stab at a Soup Swap!

[CookingSchoolConfidential.com]

There is always some of that going on, small scale. As in, my neighbor gave me some peaches from her tree and I made her some of my famous peach cobbler.

Of course, now that I am at school (I'm a culinary school student), I've got a lot of goodies to trade.

Everybody wins!

[Sis]

Best thing about barter... NON-TAXABLE! I barter work skills for people who have work skills I don't have all the time for my small business. Works great.

(If someone who knows tax law comes at me with "barter is too taxable", then I'm pretending I don't read this blog anymore)

[Melissa]

That would actually be awesome, with food. If I knew people geographically close to me that would want to do that! Dammit.

[Tammy]

Melissa: I find I don't often have too much in the way of surpluses. But maybe it's because I'm not trying hard enough.

Sis: I'm afraid I may have just lost you as a reader because a little bird just told me that bartering is, in fact, taxable. Although I have to say that the government getting between me and somebody else's jar of pickles strikes me as a bit ludicrous. Or a pint of frozen soup. Perhaps there's a $$ minimum before you have to report your trades? Or perhaps you can pay your taxes in cookies? Or maybe I'll just pretend like I never wrote this post. (Adele, are you studying tax law?)

CookingSchoolConfidential: Yes, fresh peaches are a treasure indeed. How nice that you've struck such an arrangement.

Gail: Are you local? There's a Soup Swap in Inman Square in Cambridge this weekend: http://www.homegrown.org/events/inman-square-soup-swap-ii-at

adele: That is a great idea as having a car in the city is often more trouble than it's worth.

Jacquelyn: Tell me, does she drink the energy drinks before or after the haircut? And how does it come out?

Mary: Mastodon is the cave man's zucchini.

CC: Very cool. I'm still jealous of your pear tree.

Sarah: Those are some excellent trades! Wow. I think I need to make friends with some artists and masseuses.

[adele]

I'm not giving legal advice. Tortes, not torts, and all that.

That said, from what I gathered from tax law, technically, yes, barter is taxable (it's called "exchange in kind.") But the IRS cares more about the carpenter who needs a new pickup truck cutting a deal with the car dealer who's making renovations on his home.

If the IRS had the time and manpower to worry about your pickles being traded for cookies, the deficit would be one hell of a lot smaller.

[angelo]

it is very interesting how bartering is coming back. www.favorpals.com is the site to conduct all of your trading of services. i really like the site because it is not complicated and there are no ads floating around. it is simple and creative. take a look at it.