Back to this unpleasant subject again. It’s been a very long loop; I haven’t considered it much since first attempting to barter goods from the wee homestead.
It’s something we really do take for granted in our modern economy, whether one takes that as an inherent good or evil.
The good part is that it’s comfortable and I prefer it, on the surface. I hate bartering. I SO suck at it. I suck at it for reasons that are so deeply-seated (seeded?) that no logic can ever possibly be applied.
On travels to some countries barter was the norm and I was told to keep practicing as I’d get better at it. Some seem to enjoy it. These sorts always baffled me. They say, “Treat it like a game!” But that is really stupid, isn’t it, because I did not go out shopping in order to play a game. I already don’t like shopping much, to think I’d like it more by making it game-like is to make it ever closer to hellish.
So while it may not sound like it, this is the good side of money. It took me a long time to learn that. Not until I had to consider such exchanges as, which was of better or equal value, the handcrafted Top bar beehive, or the wormy, bossy, but still a good milker, Summer, a 7-year old goat?
Money, in partnership with “the Market”, make such exchanges far more simple. Since none of us has a crystal ball, and I have no idea how long Summer will live and there are no guarantees, and my friend has no idea if she’ll enjoy beekeeping, or be able to keep bees alive in our chemskies and YoYo climate, our exchange is made more simple by imagining what would be the ‘market value’ of each of our offerings.
The dark side of money it seems to me relates quite easily to the dark side of most things—like religion, or science, or even education—it provides, by its very nature, an endless potential for ‘middlemen’. It becomes a profession, then a vast sea of professions, then an institution, then an institution ‘too big to fail’.
It’s convenient and comfortable, no doubt about it. It’s easy enough for a child to use, but complex enough to build empires upon. Try to imagine living without it.
Do we really consider how we, as individuals, would place value upon goods and services anymore?
What about once money is replaced with tokens. It’s pretty much the same thing already, right? Tokens as a medium of value exchange—your massage is worth 2 dozen yard eggs. Right?
Well, the market value of your massage today is 20 tokens, but the value of my eggs is 10 tokens, today, and 15 tokens last week, and is projected to be 25 tokens tomorrow. That’s the real problem with the market, right? For you and I, as individuals deciding value between us, the eggs and massage exchange didn’t fluctuate vastly over a matter of days, or even weeks. It’s pretty steady, really. You use 2 dozen eggs per week, I like 1 massage per week, stable value exchange.
But I’ll bet you 5 economists in the room with us would tell us 50 ways it’s not really a stable value exchange. And, why be stable at all if there might be a profit to make? Then a dozen lawyers will tell us why those economists are right. And a nation full of universities will continue to produce a fat muffin top of middlemen to stuff between every simple interpersonal transaction in every tiny hamlet around the world.
I’m bothering to restate the obvious at this moment because I’m trying to re-assess the value of technology in my life. It started with the recurring headaches of social media many years ago, then moved to Smart phones, and lately it’s WordPress.
Then a cyber-friend shared a dream, which caused this spark of inquiry.
“Imagine if we could create an Agrarian world again, using technology as a tool to help us, but not control or surveil us.”
Can we make a more agrarian life through technology? Which I understand as, can technology help us to get back to basics? And by basics we mean an understanding of nature, an appreciation of its organic processes, a “re-enchantment” as I’ve heard it lovingly expressed, with the natural world. Working with our hands again, I presume, creating items of value to exchange with one another. A slower life perhaps, where we have the great luxury of time to enjoy our lives and our nature world to a greater degree than afforded to most in the modern world.
An ‘agora’ that’s not corrupted by fiat, usury, taxes, violence and coercion, perhaps?
Technology in our private life here on the wee homestead has benefitted us in a few crucial ways—helping us to learn new skills has been the most significant. But keeping us from feeling terribly remote and unconnected and uninformed has also been very important. I’ve made a few good friends thanks to the internet and I’m very grateful for that. Feelings of isolation and loneliness can be significant spiritual hurdles for some of us living rural for the first time.
And I have seen promising shifts over the years. Homesteading is clearly a bonafide cultural movement at this time, I think primarily thanks to technology, as oxymoronic as that sounds. Herbalism has become more appealing as Pig Pharma breathes heavier down our necks. Pockets of interest and learning are all over the cyber world, every craft, trade or skill imaginable is available somewhere with a few clicks, I’m sure.
But I have seen and heard some really concerning trends lately, which makes me realize that the time to be re-assessing the value of the tech in our lives is reaching a crescendo.
For example, the young entrepreneurial types who are coming in to fill the needs of the rural communities with essentials like raw milk, homegrown veggies at the farmer’s market, small service businesses and the like, well they aren’t like us in some really fundamental ways.
They trust The Science, for the most part, evident in their willingness to vaccinate, medicate, use the latest supplements and vitamins, and not question any of it. They also love the tech and fully embrace the insane trifecta of the Global Grid: Surveillance cameras, Smart phones and digital payment systems.
How is that value assessed? Who is benefitting more?
My guess would be, more often than not, the middlemen. Like any pyramid scheme a few must be making good for anyone else to follow. For a while.
Seems to me these young entrepreneurs are setting themselves up for certain failure. I met one of these ambitious young women last week on my quest for raw milk, now that my goats are mostly gone. I really miss making cheese. The price of raw milk, not even organic, has gone through the roof as demand has perked up—$11/gallon around here. It’s too much for us to afford.
What did I learn from this experience? Her surveillance cameras everywhere tell me she doesn’t trust her customers or neighbors. Her vaccination schedule tells me she does not do her due diligence in caring for her animals. Her price and her preferred payment by QR code tells me she prefers dealing with middlemen over direct transactions and getting to know her clientele.
I will not be doing any business with her, that’s for sure.
So, while I still have a lot to learn about assessing value, there is a point to this rather rambling post: The goat is dead, no bees have yet to make that hive a home—but no one else profited or lost from that private exchange—and our relationship stayed in tact to trade another day despite these apparent failures. I think nations have gone to war for less.
And that’s something so far social media, Smart phones, WordPress, and indeed money, all fail to assess a proper value.
I’d love to hear any thoughts or ramblings about my cyber-friend’s dream, what do y’all think, is it possible? Would you want such a world?
“Imagine if we could create an Agrarian world again, using technology as a tool to help us, but not control or surveil us.”
Hello my friend!
This is a great post, I appreciate your candor and astute observations on the great divide between the Trust THE SCIENCE tribe/cult and people that ask the hard questions, use intuition and critical thinking.
In my life I can see people that are younger choosing to get all plugged in and QR coded and all that jazz yes, but I also see it in my parent’s generation. Many of that age group here in Canada were raised to think this country is such a wonderful place with our “free healthcare” (actually involuntary tax payer funded Big Pharma racketeering ops, eugenics or at best dehumanizing industrial scale symptom covering) and so they all lined up dutifully to be injected with mystery genetic sludge when ordered to and they see technology as this cool jetsons type thing so they get every new smart phone and AI tv and do-dad they can get their hands on. I seriously worry that my dad will get a Musk brain chip if he can afford it or they offer him one.
They appear to be doing what this guy describes in the old movie clip here (building their own prison, becoming their own prison wardens and fighting with anyone that tries to throw them a rope ladder to climb out of their prison) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJMO0i-xsbc
Bartering was fun for me as a kid as I had access to orchards (both my parents and our neighbors) where so much fruit was wasted due to the idiotic industrial high tech fruit grading system (it scans each apple or peach with a laser beam and detects any tiny dot or scuff mark in the skin and determines that a large amount of them are “culls” and then the fruit sorting/distributing facilities will not take them. They even grade apples that are “too big” as culls, that is just crazy if you ask me) so I would take all these so called “culls” and box them up and bring them to the local pizza shop run by two Italian guys, trade em fruit for pizza and I would bring the culls up to the coast with me when I was working in Van city/Whistler and trade “culls” for glass work, home made granola, woodwork and all kinds of cool art and practical handmade stuff at farmers markets. The fruit was way higher quality than the junk they would get in stores shipped half way around the world from New Zealand or something so they were grateful and I would trade em for like 50 cents a pound.
It was annoying doing the farmers market for my parents in the city and having people tryna haggle with me though, a lot of Chinese and East Indian people were always barking at you saying “I Pay One Dolla!” (for a peach that sells for 1.50$ a pound etc), so that potential aspect of barter and trade is not appealing to me.
I have really enjoyed trading copies of my book with people for either a copy of their book or homemade goods over the last year. It felt good to cut out the fiat middle men in that way.
I talk about how some cultures that we tend to have been told operated on “barter and trade” actually mostly operated their communities based on a “gift economy” model in this post:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/embracing-the-gift-economy-as-an
I try to embrace that mentality when ever people are receptive to it and I have an abundance to be able to share. Seeds, preserves from a big harvest, donating books to schools or indigenous communities that want to re-vitalize their food sovereignty.
I have had some really beautiful connections form that way, with communities far and wide as well as neighbors and people locally.
These relationships of goodwill between me and neighbors have been a real life saver when I was in a tough spot and did not have the gear to deal with it (but my neighbor did and was happy to help). I did not gift them things with that expectation of reciprocity, but that is how it often ends up.
RE: your friend’s “Imagine if we could create an Agrarian world again, using technology as a tool to help us, but not control or surveil us.”
I think it is possible, but not with the current consciousness of humans on Earth. As long as humans see all the non-human beings on Earth as nothing more than “resources” (which includes mountains filled with lithium, cobalt, iron and copper etc, rivers and forests) modern industrial civilization will move in the direction of perpetually turning that which is alive and diverse, into that which is dead, homogenized and commodifiable.
While someone that prioritizes human preferences and luxury above all else might say “who cares about the forests, eagles and rivers, I have a nice condo in my skyrise, we have parks in the city and we can filter water” they are deluding themselves to think that humanity can prop up all the many facets of the ecosystems that support us (producing the air we breath, the soil we need to grow real food and the clean water we need to be healthy) using high tech quick fixes.
Derrick touches on one aspect of that in this video clip:
This is one of the reasons I explored the value of animistic worldviews in this presentation:
https://gavinmounsey.substack.com/p/designing-bio-cultural-refugia
There are ways to apply technology while honoring the Earth and our fellow non-human beings, and there may have been civilizations on Earth that used advanced technology in that capacity (for a time) but humanity today is not there, yet, so leaning into high tech is a bad idea in my opinion.
I shared a little be about my approach to interacting with tech while also cultivating low – no tech alternatives in this comment on Corbett’s most recent solutions watch.
https://corbettreport.com/solutionswatch-lowtech/#comment-172863
My wife was kind enough to buy me high quality wood carving hand tools for Christmas (she saw me collecting odd pieces of wood with interesting grain and stalks from small trees from work and she guessed correctly that I was intending on shaping them into something useful/nice to look at).
Check out the amazing stuff this guy creates with only hand tools in his videos
https://www.youtube.com/@samuelalexandershapes
I am gonna try to cup and spoon this year.
Once I have a few of those laying around, I`ll likely start gifting them to people that I think would appreciate a completely unique hand mad spoon or cup, and the cycle of gifts from nature to me, my wife to me and from me to them can continue to flow.
Thanks for the link to this on my substack.
Cheers!
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So brilliant Gavin, thanks for visiting and sharing! I’ve gotten so much inspiration and information from your Stack, an encyclopedia of material you already have waiting there on so many nature topics. And your photography is mesmerizing, I really do cherish all the great work you are doing.
Spot on, as you say here,
“As long as humans see all the non-human beings on Earth as nothing more than “resources” (which includes mountains filled with lithium, cobalt, iron and copper etc, rivers and forests) modern industrial civilization will move in the direction of perpetually turning that which is alive and diverse, into that which is dead, homogenized and commodifiable.“
We can certainly start with ‘human’ resources! That might be a good first step, stop enslaving each other.
Wendell Barry said this in 1999, have we ameliorated much, I wonder?
“This is going to have to be a private movement as well as a public one. If it is unrealistic to expect exploitative and wasteful industries to be conservers, then obviously we must lead in part the public life of complainers, petitioners, protesters, advocates, and supporters of stricter regulations and saner policies. But that is not enough. If it is unreasonable to expect a bad economy to try to become a good one, then we must go to work to build a good economy. It is appropriate that this duty should fall to us, for good economic behavior is more possible for us than it is for the great corporations with their miseducated managers and their greedy and oblivious stockholders. Because it is possible for us, we must try in every way we can to make good economic sense in our own lives, in our households, and in our communities. We must do more for ourselves and our neighbors. We must learn to spend our money with our friends and not with our enemies. But to do this, it is necessary to renew local economies, and revive the domestic arts. In seeking to change our economic use of the world, we are seeking inescapably to change our lives. The outward harmony that we desire between our economy and the world depends finally upon an inward harmony between our own hearts and the originating spirit that is the life of all creatures, a spirit as near us as our flesh and yet forever beyond the measures of this obsessively measuring age.“
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wish there was a like button for UNREGISTERED like me….so very happy to copy some of those links and blog from that other person naturesheartbeat….wow….more info for me! and links…links…links…that i can’t get through the search engines anymore. thank you to kensho and that other reader of yours kensho…
unfortunately, for me anyway. i can’t hit a ‘like’ without being part of the group! or being unsubscribed. i don’t subscribe through a machine, ever. but i do follow kensho voluntarily and my machine didn’t have to approve it !
thank you for those links. truly grateful!
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Even those of us with accounts, registered and here every day can’t always ‘like’ for some strange reason!
Glad you’re liking Gavin’s links! He’s got so much material, it’ll keep us busy for years. I’m going to do a review of his book as soon as it arrives, so look forward to that. 😊
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excellent article well written. i usually come out the short end of the stick in a bargain or barter. money has value only because people believe it does. it is monopoly money backed by debt not by gold or silver or anything of value. it has value on because people BELIEVE it does. much like a religious faith. you have to have faith to see value in it other then what it is…wood pulp, colored and with numbers printed on it.
bartering is the same thing….do you BELIEVE what you have to offer is worth a pair of used shoes, or a piece of leather or a piece of meat or a chicken and an egg? what is the value TO YOU! if you really need those shoes they become priceless. if your starving…an egg would be a good swap for the shoes. it is all based on value your value versus someone else’s value.
i have learned the hard way…i don’t swap animals. i have had people trade me a jersey milk cow that is sterile for one of my beef heifers who isn’t sterile. they basically stole from me because they knew what they had and they were willing to cheat me. in their belief system if you can cheat a person…do it! in mine that is criminal and ranks up there with murder! different strokes…for different folks.
i might barter a pair of leather gloves i made for some flour or the like but breeding animals i don’t swap for…too easy to be lied to and lets face it…lying is the new american way….its hallmark of fame. it beats the 10 commandments. i have had amish people cheat me in a barter! easy to do they knew i didn’t. we have an amish produce auction not far away i bought from only once. i asked the amish that came with their buggies…how they grew it as in what fertilizers, chemicals ect. which they are not supposed to use. they said….IT GREW…okay…with what? IT GREW! and then i saw the tractor trailer in the parking lot and when i went to look the produce in it was made in mexico grew in mexico not here. they repackage it and sell it as amish grown when it isn’t. and never was.
they figure we are the english! we are not part of their church so lying to us is acceptable and expected. if you want them to do work for you. you have to babysit all the time because they will stop working and you will pay for them to sit around. they cheat you willingly. we are not part of their community so lying and cheating and stealing, violating other people’s property rights is perfectly okay and they do it!! regularly. i learned the hard way not to do any business with them.
i do buy raw milk from an amish store that has to be picked up early in the morning right after milking. and they give me fair value and good milk. but other then that….i wouldn’t barter with them. we swap green backs. the wood pulp with numbers on it. for now. eventually i don’t know how i can do business with them as they will be the first to screw you over!
not many people around us that i could barter with. my meat processor for our steers we take in once a year will barter is labor for processed beef hides with the hair on it. we get the hides back every year and process them ourselves. make gloves. mocassins. and rugs. that is a rare swap though he does love the hides he gets back. he gives me a hide he wants done. i never give him one of my own. i keep those!
i once was in a training class and i asked the people in when technology takes over your life what use is there for you? if they can get a robot to do your job your not needed anymore. and besides which the sense of achievement is lost when a machine can do better then a person. one of the class mates, a lady, sort of, told me to get out of the way girlfriend or we will run you over! technology is where it is and you better come up to the times or we will flatten you like a train running you down. and we will do so happily! she was cheered by the class while i was given silence.
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I LOVE that song! Thanks for sharing, and more so, your stories.
I used to say many years ago when I was still on Fakebook, folks are skipping their way to the guillotine. My view hasn’t changed at all since then, nothing has ‘mellowed’ with age, I have not been ‘tempered’ with some new hope or faith. I see it only getting worse, and more choosing to skip, or kneel, or bow, and to find some prevailing righteousness in their cowardice. It’s truly sick and twisted. The only response of the sane to that training group would be something along the lines of: “Enjoy the shithole of your own creation without me, I wouldn’t join you there for all your fool’s gold!”
Your Amish stories are very interesting. I’ve often wondered how real our image is, considering it is manufacture mostly by media. More toxic ‘us vs them’ but well-masked, hidden behind a veil of ‘do goodism’ and resistance to ‘Babylon’. Apparently not so much. Sounds kinda like other exclusive-type groups who like to image-enhance, like the Masons, and pretty much all the religions. When folks group themselves into the cultish systems there is no other way than ‘othering’ it seems, in-group/out-group tribal craziness.
Thanks for sharing, appreciate your perspectives!
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i am 100% with you in that sentiment kensho. i am watching family and friends go down the slide to hell you could say except it is a man made one. they hoot and holler and enjoy the ride….they have phone in hand never releasing it for anything. it is getting so we have almost no place for us. we are definitely outside it.
the amish to me are hypocrites. they can justify anything. they brutalize their horses and dogs and animals at the same time they say they ‘dominion’ given by god. they eat at mcdonalds and buy frozen fish patties by the cases. buy the same things we do and run a refrigerator as long as it is in a shed by the road. okay. makes no sense. i have met many of them from many states and they don’t vary much.
i watch them sit 6 people in a buggy with a single horse pulling it and it is 100 degrees outside, the horse is black and the asphalt road radiates heat making the horse foam even more and somehow that isn’t animal abuse when they do it. no mercy for the animals at all. none. i have little regard for people who have no pity or mercy to them. i don’t trust them.
recently, here a teenage boy 15 or 16 impregnated his 12 year old sister. she only said it was the woman’s duty to submit no matter what male asks for the ‘favor’. even her own brother. he went to prison for a year she had the baby, when he got out of prison he went back to his playground so to speak. the amish community just says well, that is god’s will. granted that is one family but that is the sort of thing you don’t hear about much you do if your next door or local but the outside media keeps that quiet.
i can’t think a god would give them a pass anymore then anyone else for that matter. they seem to think they are outside of the world but from what i have seen they are the same and in many ways more brutal and sadistic and certainly without mercy.
your right about the rest of the world. i feel like a pariah sometimes. i won’t join them. i stay to my homestead and prefer to relearn lost skills that i feel will be worth more then the chinese garbage that can be bought. i even saw a way to melt metal with a homemade smelter..the technology as you say helped with that a youtube.com video. i buy books mostly. i buy books on weaving, quilting, animal care, and butching, on making shoes, on processing leather. and then i adapt the parts that work for me and ignore the parts that don’t. i have an attic room full of books. technology is getting to where you can’t find what you want anymore or rather, very little…the censors have taken down most of the really good sites for info. and left us with the ”official” paid liars.
that is another reason i like your word press blog. i have bought several of the books you recommended and have not been disappointed. not at all. and the cook books. those are very valuable to me.
i recently found a way to get clay from the soil. another youtube video and another one on how to fire it without a kiln. how to make pots the old way without electric turn tables and without kiln. i have NOT tried it yet. hoping to get time this summer.
i am stepping aside with family and friends and watching them fall one by one. i can’t join them and they can’t join me. the ones who joined the injections are all gone except for 3 who are very sick and on their way out. the others who didn’t take a shot are still joined to their phone and the political world i haven’t nothing in common with them and they look at us as freaks they can’t understand.
long winded of me. sorry. usually am. my mind rambles.
thank you for all your posts and your books and links you give out. very very very helpful!
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Wow! Yup, the whole ‘God’s will’ thing, never understood that on multiple levels. The most obviously being—So you are the arbiter of ‘God’s will’ just because you read a book and got a license? Hmmm . . .I don’t think God sells his will that cheaply.
And talking about racing right into their traps, have you seen this one, demonstrates this perfectly. And this woman is just thrilled to be corralling the kids into DARPA nets, what a sicko!
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WOW…normalizing insanity!! machines inside the body because you can’t know if you took your vitamins….holy shit!! i can see people lining up for this. to become borg. once inside you can’t get it out! your tracked and traced for life!
talk about a slave system that is infallible. you can’t get away. no railroad of freedom for these slaves…no place to run. no where to hide….wow….you have to be ‘authenticated’ by circuits inside the body.
there is so much wrong with this it is mind numbing. All i can say is OH MY GOD! i didn’t see that coming!
selling it to young people…they can have a DESIGNER TATOO for their authentication. it will control what they think, how they think what they wear, what they are allowed to buy. you name it. total power and control. insane! not me!
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I was talking to a friend of ours we work out with who grew up in Barbados. He said it’s admirable when parents teach their children survival skills, gardening, making things at home, etc because we never know when our tech systems and economy may collapse. This man designs tools for astronauts to use in outer space.. that tells me enough. We do not allow “smart” surveillance in our home aside from cell phones (which is plenty). I do not like the direction the world is going.
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I have a homesteading/homeschooling friend nearby who has embraced all the tech—full surveillance home and ranch, Siri/Alexa on all the time, Smart phones, all Wifi and kids homeschooled via Internet. They are a very happy family, eat healthy, she’s a great mom. But, they are sick quite often, seems to me. I really wonder if the constant frequencies contribute to that, and if she knew for sure that they did, if she’d be able to rid herself of any of it, she’s that immersed.
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So many of my homeschool friends have smart homes and use Alexa in their schooling. Oddly (/sarcasm/) enough the main ones who don’t are the ex-military and the ones where dad works as a govt contractor and they’re as un-tech as possible at home. Likewise my sister has a bunch of smart tech and her kids are public schoolers and they stay sick constantly.
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Isn’t that interesting, ex-military aren’t as enthused about the tech. 🤔
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The U.S. monetary system could collapse at any time, so pretty soon, we will be back on a bartering system. I hope folks have a skill set that allows them to trade. I can assure you that making hamburgers at Burger King is not one of them.
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Maybe the first new skill set for the service-oriented types will be ‘Personal Barterer” and they’ll be willing to work for me for cheese. 😊
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Cheap, processed cheese, no less!
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