You don't pay taxes if you sell personal stuff, right?
And if you are a merchant, you may not be satisfied with
multiple exchange items - you'd like to pay off the costs
and make some profit.
I am quite familiar with multiple barter exchanges from
Russia - it was typical for apartment exchanges.
I was working on a program for automatic finding
of multiple simultaneous matches - a closed subnetwork
of wants and needs in the barter system.
Lots of problems with simultaneous transactions.
Should be easier with software and member reputations.
In any case, it looks at the very least like a useful
social experiment.
This can also help cross geographical boundaries, with what
I'd call "correlated transactions". Also, from my previous
experience: People R1, R2 live in one country; people A1, A2
live in another. R1 wants to send money across the border
to A1, and A2 wants to send the same sum to R2. Borders
are guarded and taxed. The solution: A2 gives money to A1;
R1 - to R2. No values crossing borders - just signals;
no tax on those. This "value tunnelling" could probably
be taken further.
If the system is run as a business, how will it make money?
Want to make a business case?
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Sasha Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:44 MDT