Common sence about barter
Common sence is sometimes wrong. What about the word barter?
Official definition
Barter is defined by wikipedia as a type of trade that doesn’t use any medium of exchange. This definition doesn’t consider that any measurable commodity can be a medium of exchange. A lot of commodities like gold or petrol (when you don’t burn it) are less perishable than money. It should be more positive to write a type of trade that uses any medium of exchange, and more true.
A trade with money is a special case of barter
Barter is seen as the ancester of money, but if you consider money as a measurable commodity, a trade using money is a barter where you exchange money for a commodity. But barter can be multilateral and trade using money is just a special case of barter.
Barter and logistic are different subjects
Difficult logistic questions are out of the scope of finance, are solved using boats, trucks and warehouses. Barter should be considered as a mean to exchange ownership of commodities as money does. Logistic questions remain unchanged using barter instead of finance.
Speculation
The word “speculation” includes two different behaviors, like microbes can be symbiotic and healthy, or dangerously parasitic. Finance doesn’t care about the distinction, and (willingly?) maintains the confusion. Barter reduces the parasitic speculation.
Barter does not use any monetary medium
Even if very important international associations claim it can.
Tags: barter