Barter Not Currency

Hi!

The problem in 2025 with manifest technology is the total lack of imagination. Smart phones are just mobile desktops, and not very good ones. AI is just job dynamic Wikipedia. Wikipedia is just an Encyclopedia.

I work in technology. I’m a software developer. This is pure speculation and generalization but most leaders in tech are abstract problem solvers and puzzlers. Their imagination is limited to their imagination. As a consequence we have yet to scratch the surface of what computers can really do for us.

Barter, not currency, does scratch the surface. What is currency? Currency is the crudest form of accounting there is. If I give you a dollar bill then the accounting is that you physically have possession of that bill.

Why do we need accounting at all? I think it was Ayn Rand who took a stab at defining accounting as hours worked plus some nebulous worth. The notion is that a blacksmith and a farmer want to trade. Well, how much is a basket of wheat worth in blacksmith goods? A horseshoe? It might be fair to trade one hour of labor. However both the blacksmith and farmer also have know-how. Is that same know-how the same value? The point here is that accounting quickly gets into the weeds.

What if the the farmer and blacksmith can’t agree on a one-to-one swap and want to take into account partial worth? There is also delayed payment. The farmer may need horseshoes now but can’t pay until months later. Well, in both cases the blacksmith can make marks, or tallies, in the form of coins to account for partial and future payment.

The worth of labor and goods is an abstract value. It is this abstract value that defines currency. Currency worth being abstract is just whim, absurd, and one-hundred-percent corruptible. It doesn’t matter if that currency is has real-world worth like gold or is just computer bits like the dollar today. The purchasing power of the currency unit is completely arbitrary and one-hundred-percent corruptible. This corruption has always plagued societies built on currency. In 2025 the gaming of currency has reached unprecedented levels. I remember before everyone having computers growing up in the US in the 1970s and the childhood lesson of teaching “the value of a dollar” was important. In 2025 suggesting there is such a thing is ludicrous given technological rug-pulls happen daily. Computers can re-value currency in nanoseconds.

The time has come then to do away with currency. No more currency. How? Easy, the capability of computers to re-value currency in seconds is the sample capability that can eliminate the need for currency in the first place.

We now have the capability to fine-grain evaluate everything about a barter trade. For example, some time in the mid-2000s I read an investigative journalist article regarding the value of a typical jar of peanut butter that sits on your local grocery shelf. The journalist was estimating based on public information. From seed-to-grocery shelf the journalist argued upwards of one-million people were involved in a jar of peanut butter. The obvious take away from the piece, the punch-line, was the number one-million. However, for me the punch-line was the journalist was able to come to this number through casual observation. Imagine if total computer tracking produced that number.

Barter economy is coming into focus now. Every entity that touches goods provides a computer accounting of the number of people involved, the labor hours, and capability worth. Capability worth is something like taking five years to build a manufacturing plant and all the knowledge and resources required.

A barter economy could be a total accounting economy. Trade could approximate and equal exchange of value or work.

This imagining of a barter economy is replacing currency with barter. However, we can use our imagination to wipe the slate clean and imagine a barter economy based upon social good.

Mesh society such as Irreni World Scale has multiple tiers of barter economy.

The first tier is the barter within the mesh node itself. This is where the majority of barter transactions take place, but not the most valuable transactions. The MGO, or micro-governing organization, is a fixed size, thirty people sovereign society that has on hand a years supply of survival goods like food and energy. Maintaining this year supply is the majority of work for people in the MGO. MGOs have farms, water plants, power plants, and everything one could think of to survive. This includes medical and dentistry bays. MGO members have a constitution that governs how goods and labor are equitably and charitably distributed within the MGO.

The second tier of barter is with neighboring MGOS. MGOs can trade with immediate neighboring MGOs using whatever ever barter system is agreed upon.

The third tier of barter is worldwide. This tier of barter is based upon contract negotiations. This tier of barter is how large population projects create goods like smart phones. The project economy is complicated and beyond the scope of this article. However, one of the traits of the project economy is that any MGO providing labor and services for projects negotiates a barter for goods and services.

Irreni World Scale provides additional barter at the worldwide tier beyond project compensation. Every MGO receives survival supplies annually in order to maintain the required year supply of survival goods demanded by membership within Irreni. This means that project contracts are for things above-and-beyond what is required to survive. Ensuring every MGO has sovereignty to leave projects and even Irreni World Scale management is critical to the mesh society design. MGOs can never have their survival threatened by project compensation. Further, barter for project goods can be relaxed from total accounting due to the arbitrary need for the goods. In other words project barter is somewhat akin to currency today in that worth can be arbitrary. However, project contracts can also specify barter accounting up to and including total accounting.

Nothing is “illegal” in mesh society. This means it is not illegal to use currency within the MGO or for projects. Currency accounting is total whimsy and one-hundred-percent corruptible. As long as everyone understands this when engaging in currency then currency will be used. I imagine currency may be used for entertainment purposes such as going to the movies, festivals, etc. Entertainment currency is only used for entertainment purposes. Entertainment currency is managed by a project dedicated to such a thing.

Capitalism is not needed. Capitalism today is a religion. Capitalism is based upon belief with no evidence. Capitalism is a game played by resource hoarders for the benefit of resource hoarders using the common person for labor. All of which is completely unnecessary and counter productive. All of the claims about capital needed for innovation and new businesses is total hogwash. As a society we can just vote on projects and work for them and use barter as terms of the contract to distribute goods.