Billy Brown wrote:
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> > 1) Barter: Here to stay, like I said a few years ago. Next on the
> > menu, if the gov't doesn't stop it: Ubiquitous business-to-business
> > miniature futures contracts. Following that: Complex barter futures,
> > probabilistic spreadsheets.
>
> Barter has always had its niche, and probably will for the foreseeable
> future. But there is a simple, fundamental reason why currency works better
> for most transactions. Comparing values of a collection of objects without
> money is an O(n^2) problem, whereas comparing values in a common reference
> currency is only an O(n) problem. It would take a rather large disadvantage
> to offset such a large efficiency gain (as witness the fact that people
> don't usually revert to barter unless you have really, really serious
> problems with the money supply).
Using barter is a great tax dodge, and so long as there is a commodities market,
you will always have a good idea of what any item is worth relative to any other
item. 10 widgets = 1.00 unit of currency = 5 wingnuts. Doing the extra step on
your computer at little to no cost saves you 5-50% of the value in taxes.
-- TANSTAAFL!!!Michael S. Lorrey Director, Grafton County Fish & Game Assoc. http://www.lorrey.com/gcfga/ Member, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Member, National Rifle Association http://www.nra.org "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - General John Stark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:29 MDT