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July 10, 2007
Written
by Bob Meyer, Editor of BarterNews
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From the desk of Bob
Meyer...07/10/07
Currency Expert Tom Greco Speaks In China
Tom Greco,
author of Money: Understanding & Creating Alternatives To
Legal Tender, made three presentations in China
recently, speaking in Beijing, Hangzhou and Shanghai. The
appearances were arranged by Sun Xi of Beijing Barter
International. Beijing Barter is a member of IRTA.
Kyle MacDonald Readies For International
Barter Tour
The
25-year old Canadian blogger who traded a red paper clip�in
a series of 15 trades�for a $50,000 house in Kipling (Sask.)
will soon have his book (about his bartering experiences)
out, and then will embark on an international promotional
tour.
Volcker Worries About Private Debt
Former
Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who helped put an end
to spiraling U.S. inflation after taking office in 1979,
says it�s not government debt that worries him, but the
private debt that is being piled on private debt in an
increasingly leveraged situation.
New Tycoons Highlighted
Alpha
Magazine�s annual ranking of the world�s most highly paid
fund managers shows that today�s rich keep getting richer.
The top
five moneymakers in the hedge fund industry for 2006 are:
$1.7
billion - James Simons, Renaissance Technologies
$1.4
billion - Kenneth Griffin, Citadel Investment Group
$1.3
billion - Edward Lampert, ESL Investments
$950
million - George Soros, Soros Fund Management
$900
million - Steven Cohen, SAC Capital Advisors
All back issues of
"From the Desk...� can be accessed by
clicking
here.
(Please feel
free to forward our newsletter to your friends and
colleagues. We have a �box� at the end of the
newsletter for your convenience.
See you next week. . .) |
Artist Co-op & Studio Barters For Nearly Anything
Gallagher Studios and Creative Center, an artist
cooperative in Ocean Shores (WA), has local artists pitching in with the
day-to-day operation of the gallery in exchange for lower commission rates,
greater promotion, and discounted supplies.
Owners Tina and Sam Gallagher say the gallery�s
co-op nature will make it easier for artists, photographers and sculptors, to do
their own promotion and prepare for shows. Their commission rates will be 20%
for volunteers and 30% for people who have no role in the gallery. Most
galleries, according to them, charge between 40% and 50%. Tina says she wants to
make money off her own paintings and not rob other artists blind with commission
fees.
Volunteer artists will also lend a hand during
the poetry readings and kid�s classes that are planned as weekly events. The
kid�s classes and book readings are Gallagher�s attempt to get children inside a
place where they�re surrounded by art, places which aren�t usually known for
being kid-friendly.However, they primarily want other artists to
use the galleries as a means of exposure that wouldn�t be available otherwise.
They have an open-door policy for artists or anyone with an interest in selling
their art.
Tina admits she may have to use a cash register
one day. But for now, the Gallaghers are more interested in bartering to
complete the gallery. �We are willing to barter for anything right now,� Sam
remarked. �This is not a cash-up-front place. If someone comes in and says that
they�d like a particular painting for their living room and don�t have much
money, but have a really great computer desk...it�ll be sold right then.�
They give credit to their landlord for getting
them started by providing carpeting and knocking out a window for more natural
light.
What Cost Bottled Water?
In 1976, the average U.S. consumer drank 1.6 gallons of bottled
water. Last year they drank 28.3 gallons. Only carbonated soft
drinks are more popular. But at what cost to our environment?
Charles Fishman, an expert on environmentalism, writes that
shipping Fiji�s famously sturdy U.S.-made bottles to the distant
island to have them filled and shipped back wastes too many
resources for near-imperceptible improvements the water represents
over clean, free tap water.
San Franciscan�s who drink mineral water bottled from springs
might not realize that most of their tap water comes directly from
Yosemite National Park, unfiltered. Bottled water �is often simply
an indulgence, and it�s not a benign indulgence,� noted Fishman.
With one billion bottles of water consumed in the U.S. weekly,
and 38 billion bottles estimatedly thrown into landfills annually,
�the conspicuous consumption of bottled water�that we don�t
need�seems wasteful, and perhaps cavalier.�
ANNOUNCEMENT !
Check out the
BarterNews daily blog at
www.barternewsblog.com
for new contacts, strategies and techniques.
"Trade is nothing but the release of what one has in abundance to
obtain some other thing one wants."
By Frank Chodorov (1887�1966)
[This article is excerpted from
chapter 6 of The Rise and Fall of Society.]
Part II
The point is emphasized by the strategy of war.
The objective of a general staff is to destroy the marketplace mechanisms of the
enemy; the destruction of his army is only incidental to that purpose. The army
could well enough be left intact if his internal means of communication were
destroyed, his ports of entry immobilized, so that specialized production, which
depends on trade, could no longer be carried on; the people, reduced to
primitive existence, thus lose the will to war and sue for peace.
That is the general pattern of all wars. The
more highly integrated the economy the stronger will be the nation in war,
simply because of its ability to produce an abundance of both military
implements and economic goods.
On the other
hand, if its ability to produce is destroyed, if the flow of goods
is interrupted, the more susceptible to defeat it is, because its
people, unaccustomed as they are to primitive conditions, are the
more easily discouraged. There is no point to the argument as to
whether �guns� or �butter� is more important in the prosecution of
war.
It follows that any interference
with the operation of the marketplace, however done, is analogous to
an act of war. A tariff is such an act. When we are �protected�
against Argentine beef, the effect (as intended) is to make beef
harder to get, and that is exactly what an invading army would do.
Since the duty
does not diminish our desire for beef, we are compelled by the
diminished supply to put out more labor to satisfy that desire; our
range of possibilities is foreshortened, for we are faced with the
choice of getting along with less beef or abstaining from the
enjoyment of some other �good.� The absence of a plenitude of meat
from the marketplace lowers the purchasing power of our labor. We
are poorer, even as is a nation whose ports have been blockaded.
Moreover, since every buyer is a seller, and
vice versa, the prohibition against their beef makes it difficult for
Argentineans to buy our automobiles, and this expression of our skills is
constricted. The effect of a tariff is to drive a potential buyer out of the
marketplace. The argument that �protection� provides jobs is patently
fallacious. It is the consumer who gives the worker a job, and the consumer who
is prevented from consuming might as well be dead, as far as providing
productive employment is concerned.
"Any
interference with the operation of the marketplace, however done, is
analogous to an act of war."
Incidentally, is it jobs we want, or is it beef?
Our instinct is to get the most out of life with the least expenditure of labor.
We labor only because we want...the opportunity to produce is not a boon, it is
a necessity. Neither the domestic nor the foreign producer �dumps� anything into
our laps. There is a price on everything we want and the price is always the
weariness of toil.
Whatever causes
us to put out more toil to acquire a given amount or kind of
satisfactions is undesirable, for it conflicts with our natural urge
for a more abundant life. Such is a tariff, an embargo, an import
quota or the modern device of raising the price of foreign goods by
arbitrarily lowering the value of our money. Any restriction of
trade, internal or external, does violence to a man's primordial
drive to improve his circumstances.
Just as trade
brings people together, tending to minimize cultural differences,
and makes for mutual understanding, so do impediments to trade have
the opposite effect. If the customer is always �right,� it is easy
to assume that there is something wrong with the nonbuyer. The
faults of those who refuse to do business with us are accentuated
not only by our loss, but also by the sting of personal affront.
Should the boy with the tops refuse
to trade with the boy who has marbles, they can no longer play
together; and this desocialization can easily stir up an argument
over the relative demerits of their dogs or parents.
Just so, for
all our protestations of good neighborliness, the Argentinean has
his doubts about our intentions when we bolt our commercial doors
against him; compelled to look elsewhere for more substantial
friendship, he is inclined to think less of our national character
and culture.
The byproduct of trade isolationism is the
feeling that the �outsider� is a �different kind� of person, and therefore
inferior, with whom social contact is at least undesirable if not dangerous. To
what extent this segregation of people by trade restrictions is the cause of war
is a moot question, but there can be no doubt that such restrictions are
irritants that can give other causes for war more plausibility; it makes no
sense to attack a good customer, one who buys as much of our products as he can
use and pays his bills regularly.
Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions
throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any
political union of peoples separated by trade barriers. Indeed, can there be a
viable political union while these barriers exist? And, if freedom of trade were
the universal practice, would a political union be necessary?
Let us test the claims of �protectionists� with
an experiment in logic. If a people prosper by the amount of foreign goods they
are not permitted to have, then a complete embargo, rather than a restriction,
would do them the most good. Continuing that line of reasoning, would it not be
better all around if each community were hermetically sealed off from its
neighbor, like Philadelphia from New York?
Better still, would not every household have
more on its table if it were compelled to live on its own production? Silly as
this reductio ad absurdum is, it is no sillier than the �protectionist�
argument that a nation is enriched by the amount of foreign goods it keeps out
of its market, or the �balance of trade� argument that a nation prospers by the
excess of its exports over imports.
Yet, if we detach ourselves mentally from
entrenched myths, we see that acts of internal isolationism such as described in
our syllogism are not infrequent. A notorious instance of this is the French
octroi, a tax levied on products entering one district from another.
Under cover of
�quarantine� regulations, Florida and California have mutually
excluded citrus fruits grown in the other state. Labor unions are
violent advocates of opulence-through-scarcity, as when they
restrict, by direct violence or by laws they have had enacted, the
importation of materials made outside their jurisdiction. A tax on
trucks entering one state from another is of a piece with this line
of reasoning.
Thus, the
�protectionist� theory of fence building is internalized, and in the
light of these facts our reductio ad absurdum is not so
farfetched. The marketplace, of course, scoffs at such
scarcity-making measures, for it yields no more than it receives; if
its offerings are made scarce by trade restrictions, that which
remains becomes harder to get, calls for an expenditure of more
labor to acquire. The wage level of Society is lowered.
"Perhaps
the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more
for the cause of universal peace than can any political union�"
The myth of �protectionism� rests on the notion
that the be-all and end-all of human life is laboring, not consumption � and
certainly not leisure. If that were so, then the slaves who built pyramids were
most ideally situated; they worked much and received little. Likewise, the
Russians chained to �five-year plans� have achieved heaven on earth, and so did
the workers who, during the Depression, were put to moving dirt from one side of
the road to the other.
Extending this notion that exertion for the sake
of exertion is the way to prosperity, then a people would be most prosperous if
they all labored on projects with no reference to their individual sense of
value. What is euphemistically called �war production� is a case in point. But
there is in fact no such thing, since the purpose of production is consumption;
and it is not on record that any worker built a battleship because he wanted it
and proved his craving by willingly giving up anything in exchange for it.
Keeping in mind the exaltation of laboring,
would not a people be most uplifted if they all were set to building
battleships, nothing else, in return for the necessaries that would enable them
to keep on building battleships? They certainly would not be unemployed.
Yet, if we base our thinking on the natural urge
of the individual to better his circumstances and widen his horizon, operating
always under the natural law of parsimony (the most gain for the least effort),
we are compelled to the conclusion that effort which does not add to the
abundance of the marketplace is useless effort.
Society thrives on trade simply because trade
makes specialization possible, specialization increases output, and increased
output reduces the cost in toil for the satisfactions men live by. That being
so, the marketplace is a most humane institution.
Universal Law-Of-Reciprocity Key To Trade Exchange Success
Every trade
exchange owner in the world should not only be aware of the
law-of-reciprocity, but using it, in the operation of their
business.
Trade
exchange owners are invited to e-mail
bmeyer@barternews.com
for more information on how you can become �the exchange of choice�
in your area. When e-mailing Bob Meyer, put �Law of Reciprocity� in
the subject line.
Hotel
General Managers
Here�s
The Easiest $100,000 You�ll Ever
Bring To The Bottomline!
Collect
cash, as usual, from the guest accounts staying at your
facility that require the use of professional AV services.
And rather than shouldering your ongoing employee costs, or
your current vendor�s cash agreement for AV services,
here�s a much better alternative:
Work
with a proven national vendor (a sterling 25-year track
record) who will provide all of the AV services for your
hotel on a 100% TRADE BASIS! (Payment to be in the form of
hotel rooms and/or trade dollars.)
Your hotel�s annual AV billings must be a minimum of $200,000, and this
offer is available only in the continental United States.
For a
confidential introduction contact Bob Meyer via e-mail:
bmeyer@barternews.com.
(Please type in AV Services On Trade in the subject
line of your e-mail.)
Attention Trade Exchange Owners:
If your
member hotel(s) have a minimum of 10,000 sq. feet of meeting
space and annual billings of at least $200,000 for AV
services this is a great opportunity to earn substantial
cash service fees on the hundreds of thousands of trade
dollars your hotel member will be paying the vendor. Contact
Bob Meyer at the above e-mail. |
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The Growth and Use of Secondary Capital (New Money) Creates
Unprecedented Wealth In Today�s New Age Of Possibility
There are
many forms of secondary capital�which can be defined as any
financial instrument that measures and communicates value in a
common language. Would you like to see and learn more about the many
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We have 70
free, informative and inspiring, articles for you in our �Secondary
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www.barternews.com/secondary_capital.htm.
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