Now we can trade.

There is a market in Turin, Italy, where money is a forbidden trading method. Instead, people barter services and goods in a dark ages sort of way, trading objects for knowledge, or music for services. No money is involved whatsoever (in fact, you are not allowed to bring currency of any kind to the market). The idea is to make people value what they have, what they know and the skills they own, to become more appreciative of one another. After all, you trade something that represents you, be it something you built, a gift you don’t like or an expertise you developed.

There are some other recent initiatives boosting free trading, direct barter and even involving giving away possessions that may boost this parctice into mainstream. Like Freecycle, where people give away objects they no longer need.

Generosity is, no doubt, an excellent status for brands to promote alongside their consumers. This is an increasingly relevant idea, as there are many people trying to downgrade and become less dependent of products and services. Shrinking down good, old fashioned, capitalism, that is.

 

 

 

Best,

Francisco Duarte

 

Photo credit: rob7812

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.