Talk:Barter/Archive 1

History
Can we not have a section about the history of barter? T Servaia 8.25pm 4th April 2006

There is a sall one now, to be improved. -- Olivierchaussavoine 07:02, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merge from Swapping (barter)
While I'm not the one first proposed the merge of Swapping (barter) into this article (though I did add the to this; the  was not mine), but  fully support it, as the swapping article doesn't really add anything that isn't already in this one. &mdash;LrdChaos 02:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I wary of merging in an article that started out as a link farm. It has potential, though, so I added a link to it.  --DryaUnda 23:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I also wary a little bit for the same reason, but since swapping does not use any monetary system and is a trade, swapping is welcome. The en.wiktionary already considers the two words are synonyms.

--Olivierchaussavoine 07:03, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Barter Economy
Shouldn't there be some page specifically for a BARTER ECONOMY? --herbivore 17:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Probably. Pretty much everything on this page is about a barter economy, not actual barter as most people think of it. -- Andrer9999 22:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I am very surprised that you think of barter outside economy, and interested to know what most people think of it. I consider myself that money and barter are both different means to make the balance of economic exchanges. We should make this clear on the article and ask for the integration of barter in economic topics. It is not for the moment. -- Olivierchaussavoine 22:55, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

The article let think that barter is for poor economic actors who have not access to money, and let feel that barter is economically inexistant. The reality of barter is very different since big organizations are using it since the beginning of mankind. I suggest that we move subjects as simple living in a special chapter we could call "uses of barter>when money lacks", and that we give to the word barter it's real meaning. -- Olivierchaussavoine 07:16, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Miscellaneous
Is there any interest in a discussion on the different financial models used by third party barter companies and how they set up their trading environments? --Itch 02:11, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

This subject could be developed in the chapter barter and money. I am very interested to learn about it-- Olivierchaussavoine 09:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Inclusion of barter in numismatics
Question: Does someone understands why barter is a part of the wikiproject numismatics since barter does not use any money? Olivierchaussavoine 10:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


 * This question has been submitted to the wikiproject numismatics, and we are waiting for a clear response.


 * This question was raised at Portal talk:Numismatics. Try Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Numismatics for the whole project and a larger reply.   Jo  e  I  09:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 * A clearer link is [Question] ; perhaps useful for readers to understand the large response.

Since the main subject is barter and not numismatics, I will personnaly continue the discussion on the discussion page of the barter article.

Olivierchaussavoine 07:25, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Local currencies
Since barter is a trade that do not use any monetary system, links to local currencies is out of the scope of the subject of barter.

Olivierchaussavoine 07:50, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Self-promotion links
I cleaned up the external links section. More than half of it was commercial sites trying to promote themselves, which is frowned upon according to Wikipedia standards. I left groups of exchanges like NATE and BANC and so on, though, since they don't really represent anyone in particular. -- Andrer9999 00:55, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

How did you made the filter? I do not consider the link I gave was of that sort, so I added it again. I propose you to sort information instead of removing it. They are organisations (most of them try to promote themselves), sofware, nets of organisations, etc. The link was erased again by someone I did not found any way to speak with. I will not fight for this. -- Olivierchaussavoine 22:54, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to know why the editors who cleaned the "Self-Promotion links" consider The World Trade Banc which is one of the largest privately held exchanges, or Barter Center International aka BCI software which is used by over 500 trade exchanges self promotional links? Why then is DoBarter allowed a link over BCI? I'd suggest the editors may have special interest themselves and what annoys me the most is the fact that The International Barter Alliance and DoBarter are the same software sites! I don't have anything against the DoBarter software as I represent a member exchange, but I also use about every other available barter software in the industry and belong to no less than 4 barter networks... I'm disappointed enough with the bias demonstrated in this publications description of barter knowledge, it's worthy of a formal complaint! I also made it a lot easier to find me to discuss any of my editing actions and find the topic of unbiased editing worthy of fighting for... -- Joerinehart 04:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it is important to place the most popular commercial Barter Systems as External links in this section. It is frowned upon in Wikipedia, when people abuse the system. Why was there a foreign (non-English) site linked here? That is wrong, that belongs some where else. I placed ITEX about a week ago, and it was erased, instead I saw another. I think people want to know who the main Barter Network and the largest companies are. This goes to the credibility of the bartering systems. I also erased the U-Exchange link to How to Barter, as it was not referring to the article but to a bunch of Barter items. If they link to the article, I am fine with them leaving their article. There is nothing wrong with commercial information, we just have to watch abuse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.88.192.173 (talk) 22:30, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

State of article
This article is in a sorry state. The grammar and spelling are abysmal, the structure chaotic. The scientific level of the contributions is very low. The central theme seems to be that barter goes with selfless 'reciprocity', and back in the good old days when there was no money, there was no consideration for money relations - the circularity of the argument should be apparent to anyone. And then of course money came along and people stopped organizing their economy according to reciprocity and tradition, top-down command (hmmmmm I should have seen that one coming) and market democracy and became very selfish and calculative. But this argument confuses the organization of production with the medium of exchange. Tradition and top-down command are methods by which production is organized, not mediums of exchange - tradition and top-down command decide which set of productive methods and relations will be chosen out of a theoretically infinite number of alternatives, and this has nothing to do with barter. While it is true that in theory a total and complete 'top-down command' will have no need for money, it won't have any need for barter either. All economic transcations will be decided by those on top, so there will be no need to exchange anything. Ironically, not even the existent top-down command economies (or rather formerly existent) managed to rid themselves of money, no matter how hard they tried. Shortly after taking power, during the brief period of 'war communism' Lenin tried among other things to ban money and impose barter, with the result that the economy collapsed and people starved. The experiment was soon abandoned in favor of more realistic policies and money was reintroduced.

Be that as it may, I was surprised to see that the editors of this article failed to mention even a single disadvantage of barter as compared to money, so as at least to pay some lip service to objectivity. Even that was too much of a concession for you? Jean-Baptiste Danzig. Also bartering is great! [$$http://www.example.com link title$$ ]

After numismatic fetishism, we now hear about anti-communism. If it is impossible to write about such a pragmatic matter - barter - without ideological background, it's a pity. You should have a look to the french wikipedia, at the word troc.

Olivierchaussavoine (talk) 18:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Very poor
As Olivier says, this is a very poor page. There is a complete lack of balance (disadvantages as well as advantages). And trade exchanges don't even belong in it at all, however much they would like to describe themselves as barter (because it sounds more cuddly). The page's own definition of barter describes it as a system where goods "are directly exchanged for other goods and/or services without a common unit of exchange". Trade exchanges rely on a common unit of exchange - they can't work without one.

The definition is broadly correct. It is obvious to a child, therefore, why people don't barter if they can possibly avoid it. The use of barter is evidence of almost complete economic collapse. If I make chairs and a strawberry-producer comes into my shop and wants to barter strawberries for chairs, I am going to have a hard time estimating the appropriate quantity of strawberries. I almost certainly won't want as many strawberries as I require for a chair. If I agree to defer some of the strawberries to later I have no security and indeed the strawberry-grower doesn't know that his strawberries will still be good later when I am ready to receive further tranches of my payment. Maybe I don't even like strawberries, but would quite like to sell a chair to him if only he had some other way of trading with both me and third parties who do like strawberries. Frankly, if you don't understand the role that money plays in creating liquid, fungible markets, you shouldn't be allowed to post on economics articles. In fact, you probably shouldn't have been allowed to leave school.

Either wikipedia is a serious resource in which case it needs to cut a lot of the nonsense like this out, or it is a hippy's fantasy dying under the weight of voluble ignorance in the world, in which case it should keep pages like this but must expect only other hippies to fool themselves that it has value. (I do think wikipedia can still be a good resource, but on economics, it is worse than useless - it is positively harmful through the nonsense it allows whack-jobs to post.)

There is supposed to be a way of flagging up at the top of the page that an article is subject to accusations of bias and inaccuracy. That warning is desperately needed at the top of this page.

Bgprior (talk) 01:18, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Seems like people wanting to read about barter would want to see some opportunities to barter online. These would be external links, however they will quickly be removed making the section quite neutered. Why not list 10 to 15 online barter systems? People are not just looking for a historical treatise, they are looking for ways to barter and to learn about how to barter. Let's not be silly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.57.218.91 (talk) 02:54, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

IRS and bartering
Bartering, as I understand it, has tax repercussions. It might be profitable to add something about that. 69.6.162.160 23:44, 17 April 2006 (UTC)Brian Pearson

Yes, bartering does have tax consequences. As the owner of a barter exchange, I must issue 1099B forms to my membership each year. What many businesses don't realize is that taxes are also due when companies barter one-to-one my service for your product. Each product or service has a value and that value for the product you "sold" through barter must be considered in taxes.

Swapping isn't really barter, and then again it is the original barter. Swapping is trading this for that. But swapping (in my opinion) has come to mean this old thing I don't need for that old thing you don't need. Barter is more a business deal where you exchange another item (usually new and something you manufacture or sell) for another item or service.

Barter Groups, such as mine, throw a wrench in because we don't exchange one to one but rather se a point system.

Catherine Cohen Valley Barter Group www.valleybartergroup.com

I have created Free2Xchange.com and in terms of taxes we do not allow our members to make any form of application to the tax man. The reason why we set up our exchange system is because modern day money system need to change, the tax systems need to change, and the global energy systems need to change. Usury and money systems do not work and ultimately result in our communities energy exiting the community through debt mechanics employed by banking organisations. We will be merging with a global exchange system in the next 6 months and our policy will be taken forward and replicated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.5.123.50 (talk) 15:19, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Broadcasting has run on barter for many, many years
While there is certainly a lot of money exchanged for advertising, most syndicated programming operates on a barter basis: a station wants programming, and a program producer/distributor wants commercial airtime to sell. So they make the exchange: the station gets the program it wants, but its sole payment is in allowing the program distributor to sell some of the time embedded in the program to advertisers. Radio networks have worked on this basis for years, and television has moved to this model in recent years as networks have worked to eliminate the cash compensation they paid to affiliates for carriage. (Some programs, of course, are so valuable that their distributors are able to demand cash in addition to the airtime, and other programs are so valueless that stations are able to demand cash for the privilege of airing them.) In addition, a second form of barter is common at the level of local stations, where local advertisers provide goods and services to a station in exchange for promotion or advertising placement on the station. (For example, many commercial stations get their promotional vehicles this way, known as "trade-out", from a local car dealer.) 121a0012 (talk) 08:12, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Medium or not a medium?
I think it's rather peculiar to call something that's not a medium, a medium:

"Barter is a medium of exchange by which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money"

Or, distilled:

"a medium of exchange ... without using a medium of exchange"

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to call bartering a "system of exchange".

83.163.223.50 (talk) 17:07, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

No society depends on barter??
"Contrary to popular conception, there is no evidence of a society or economy that relied primarily on barter."

yet:

"A final refusal of separation lies in the Piraha's incapacity to form an abstract concept of value. Unable to understand money, they rely on barter for trade, and in these transactions tend to be painfully ingenuous."

http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter2-7.php — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justanothervisitor (talk • contribs) 02:00, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Maybe that author is falling into the popular conception? :-P

The author was referring to barter between the tribe & outsiders, inter-group not intra-group exchange. It was not their primary mode of exchange. 24.36.14.161 (talk) 07:38, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The link you provide doesn't contradict the article, which right there state that "non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economics and debt". The Eisenstein article explains that "They share with those who need meat, never storing for the future", which seems to indicate that they use a gift economy and barter is not the basis for it. This is also explained in the article: "When barter did in fact occur, it was usually between either complete strangers or would-be enemies." Diego (talk) 06:52, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, gift economies as observed in tribes also rely on reciprocity. Gifts also serve a social function and usually do not replace bartering as the main method of trade. In fact, it is rare for gifts to be anything but a way to placate for prestige. Bartering is not only observed, but it is the de facto standard of trade, even within communities. See the kula ring, koha customs , moka exchange and potlatch . Also of interest may be The Gift.


 * This is congruent with the observed phenomenon that societies revert to bartering when a currency collapses. If the de facto standard is a gift economy, why do societies not revert back to gift economies during such times? Why do societies revert to bartering? When one considers that bartering is the de facto standard, it makes sense. When one claims that a gift economy is the de facto standard, it makes no sense whatsoever - not to mention that this is not observed. What is observed is gifts as a kind of initialisation of reciprocity. Either social prestige or goods within the same sphere of exchange (ie of similar value) are expected in return.

ZombiePriest (talk) 05:30, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

If you have found a group that uses barter as their primary mode of exchange you have found what no one else has been able to find and you need to publish immediately. Until then....

Gift exchange, not barter, is/has been the primary method of intergroup trade in non-monetary economies. Barter has NOT been observed to be the "de facto standard of trade" within any community. Despite your assertion, Potlatch, Koha & Moka are NOT examples of barter, not a one. They are almost universally describe as being examples of "gift" exchange/economies that are primarily or wholly non-economic in nature.

Barter is an form of economic exchange (where individuals seek to maximize their utility) involving the direct exchange of goods between individuals. Most people do not distribute goods within the family using barter nor do they try to maximize their individual utility in such intra-family exchanges. To do so most would consider sociopathic. Almost all families almost all the time distribute goods within the family utilizing reciprocity (a non-economic mode of exchange) not barter. There has been no hunter/gather tribe documented to distribute goods intra-group (between tribal members) using barter on any more than the most marginal of basis, if at all. 24.36.14.161 (talk) 08:39, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Barter quantitative model
This model makes barter practice easier for exchange of stocks measurable as quantities of quality standards. It allows the settlement of an electronic market place where each participant can find the best economic opportunity.

Using this model, a participant can search for the best association with one or more partners that would produce the lowest rate between the quantity he provides and the quantity he receives.

It does not use any monetary system, as required by the definition of barter.

Definitions
When exchanged goods are measurable by quantities of standard values, barter agreements can be modelized using the following definitions: "A barter commitment is a unilateral statement of one economic actor to provide a quantity of a standard good he owns in exchange of an other quantity of an other standard good he is looking for." "The price is the ratio between provided and delivered quantities."

Search for the best barter agreement
A barter agreement is a list of barter commitments where partners form a loop exchange that can be modelized as a loop on a directed graph.

Using the new definition of price, the equality of price of the buyer and of the seller has no meaning since the units are not the same, but the product of prices has one:

"A barter agreement is possible when product of prices of partners equals to 1."

This statement remains true if we consider barter between more than two partners.

One can view the set of barter commitments as vertices. An edge exists between two commitments when the good proposed by one is the same as the good provided by the other. The definition of price is used to give a weight to each vertex and paths on this graph by the following:

"The weight of a path is the product of the weight of it's vertices, and the weight of a vertex is the price of the barter commitment." Find the best barter opportunity consists in searching for the possible loop that would give the lowest price ( it is created by looping the path having the highest price, since product of prices on a loop must be 1.).

An economic actor looking for a possible commitment proposing a stock he owns and asking for an other, can find the best economic opportunity for him, and define the best list of commitment, and set of partners for it's trade.

Those who are not choosen for the trade and want to barter are naturally incited to propose lower prices. This model creates a market mecanism without using any monetary system but only quantities of exchanged stocks.

It's also a model without any relation to the real world. 24.36.14.161 (talk) 20:20, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Minimum quantity for a given price
A price is usually conditioned to a minimum quantity sold.

A more advanced model can be defined that finds the best associations between commitments where this other constraint is added, using this new definition:

"A barter commitment is a unilateral statement of one economic actor to provide such quantity of such standard good he owns in exchange of an other quantity of an other standard good, for a minimum quantity provided."

Implementation
The core searching algorithm are developed and rigourously tested, based on graph theory, and inspired of broadly used algorithms in routers of the world wide web.

A software project openbarter aims at providing online the proof of this statement. It's author is searching for an economic partner that would accept to help him to industrialize this model.

Olivierchaussavoine 10:23, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Contradictions with description of "Barter".
Description at the beginning: "In trade, barter is a system of exchange where participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money." The article contains examples of systems that do have a medium of exchange or money (i.e. WIR, LETSystem) Why consider these barter then? I don't think they are. The LETSystem Design Manual (section 4.0) says: "Barter means that the requester must pay something back to the offerer. With the LETSystem this is not so. The commitment is to the membership as a whole, not to any one person. Further, you can make a commitment on the LETSystem with no thought of when or where you will balance it. This point should be stressed wherever possible." M.artti (talk) 21:00, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree with M.artti, there is a lot of discussion of systems that, while they are cool ideas, are not barter. Barter is exchange without any medium of exchange, a direct simultaneous (as noted in the preamble) swap. Thusly, barter requires a double coincidence of wants (as noted in limitations). When a medium of exchange is introduced such as cowrie shells, a Cincinnati Time Store note or even "monopoly money", it isn't barter any more. To give just one example, Bartercard (contained in the section on modern developments) is not barter but it's still in the page. From their website : "By using Bartercard you earn trade dollars for the goods and services you sell and this value is recorded electronically in your member account (similar to a bank account)". [source : https://www.bartercard.com.au/what-is-bartercard/how-bartercard-works.html]. The trade dollars are a medium of exchange, even though they are not convertible into government regulated money. -- briginsh Briginsh (talk) 22:53, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Relations between money and barter
If you consider these quotes:

"Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal- that there is no human relation between master and slave - Leon N. Tolstoy"

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who makes it's laws - Mayer Amshchel Rothschild"

You can figure out why most economic experts are not seriously interested by this matter, and also why contributions are accepted only if they describe barter as the outdated ancestor of money or if the subject discussed is, from an economic quantitative point of view, inexistant.

"The money power preys on the nation in time of peace, and conspires againts it in time of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denouces, as pubic enemies, all who question it's methods or throw light upon it's crimes. Abraham Lincoln"

This article is now a no man's land of economy. It's quality will grow only if contributions are understood and really discussed before being deleted, or it will remain as it is now.

Adam Smith saw government as having a fundamental role in ensuring that markets were not rigged to favor the merchant, and to prevent monopoly. "' “The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public” '" ― Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

The quality does not grow, the definition says for example that barter does not use any medium. But any measurable commodity can be one! We should say it does not use any monetary medium. (Olivierchaussavoine 20:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC))

Barter is NOT an ancestor, outdated or otherwise, of money.

" Olivierchaussavoine said: the definition says for example that barter does not use any medium. But any measurable commodity can be one! We should say it does not use any monetary medium'"

WTF!? You obviously have no idea what is meant by "medium of exchange". I'll help. It is that which facilitates the exchange of one commodity for another. In Barter (Commodity for a Commodity (C-C)) transactions commodities are exchanged directly without any interceding medium to facilitate the exchange as opposed to monetary transactions (C-M-C) in which money facilitates the exchange of commodities. 24.36.14.161 (talk) 22:29, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Don't say what the **** to people! Plus, this was last edited 7 years ago 2001:5B0:4EC6:61A8:B8B2:4A15:E008:22C9 (talk) 20:30, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

No evidence for barter societies?
There seems to be a single source for this, namely claims made by Graeber in his Debt. This is a bit shoddy, given that there is ample evidence of barter-based societies. Even the famous source of the whole gift economy idea, Marcel Mauss mentions that a gift was usually given with some kind of reciprocity in mind.

I would prefer more credible and more objective sources than merely Graeber on topics that do not concern only anthropology. Graeber's viewpoint seems to rest on an imagined fact that there's no known observed instance of currencies taking shape. There are countless cases of currencies taking shape, surely some of which should be known to an anthropologist. To name a few: Cowry shells, cattle and manillas were all used as currency and co-existed with bartering. Likewise, when the Roman empire founded its currencies, the currency co-existed with bartering far and wide - as far as India according to some sources. ZombiePriest (talk) 18:23, 13 January 2013 (UTC)


 * "Given that there is ample evidence of barter-based societies"
 * Some references to this effect would be welcome --JamesPoulson (talk) 07:48, 23 June 2017 (UTC)


 * Also, it seems at the very least odd to invoke Marcel Mauss in this context as he was also of the opinion that no barter-only economy has ever been found. In fact, to my knowledge, he opposed gift-based economy and barter, insisting that the first one requires a certain amount of time to pass before reciprocity without which it would be reduced to barter, and that the fundamental form of exchange between humans is the gift, not barter, contrary to what classical economics suggest. Cf. this section of the Marcel Mauss French Wikipedia page. – I am axx (talk) 10:01, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

First, consider the time period that this transition from barter systems to monetary systems is happening... written word has not even been invented yet. In fact, the first city state is not even established. What kind of evidence are people expecting to be found? Bartering doesn't leave a paper trail, after all. Further, what line of reason are these people proposing as an alternative presumption for the invention of this thing called money? It didn't magically appear one day. Hell, a monetary system is nothing but a barter system that incorporates a universally accepted medium of exchange. You can have barter without money, but you can't have money without barter. Monetary systems are, in fact, part of the indirect evidence that barter systems existed before money was invented. Christopher Theodore (talk) 02:40, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Graeber's book has 100 pages of sources, that's about 1/6th of the book. There is always the option of taking a moment to look through those sources to see whether or not he is the "single source for this", I mean that's me ASSUMING (unrealistically, based on your tone and content) that you are trying to be reasonable.

Until today I had no idea that the "written word" is the only way that scientists and humanity can find evidence of things. We know that dinosaurs existed because dinoaurs were writing about themselves right? Or are there other kinds of evidence besides the "written word" which would show evidence of a thing existing? Do atoms write about themselves? Is that why we know they exist? Or are there other kinds of evidence? The way you talk makes it sound like it is 100% absolute fact that barter predates markets and that anyone saying anything else is a flat earther, anti vaxxing, disguisting subhuman. It's an extremely insulting and offensive way to speak to other people.

Instead of asking other people to prove the truth to you (an editor vehemently opposed to the idea that it might not know something), go and read the book yourself. It is not anyone's job to prove something is real to you. Not that you didn't know that before, of course you knew that other people aren't supposed to do your work for you. But you have this idea that the rest of us, who you treat like subhumans, have no idea of anything in reality.

Based on your writing it is obvious that your nature is to be as offensive as possible. It will take significantly more than a moment of self examination and self critique before you stop being offensive and hostile, not that I for a moment would be fooled to think that you want to stop this bad behavior. It is obvious that you relish in your cruelty, inhumanity, and hate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.38.66.198 (talk) 17:01, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Barter is an anti-evolution myth
Barter is made popular by Adam Smith. The recent debunks on the "myth" is based on anthropologist research on remote jungle in Madagascar. As David Graeber have put pages on his study, it is difficult to derive a fair value of stuff, a reciprocate method is created, which, David_Graeber have put lots of work define it. Those who support existences of barter are impossible to derive potential inferior trade dispute : what happens if another party cheat? Imagine all this dispute happens inside a village or tribe, you will have endless dispute and I doubt humanity will able to progress at all with barter. From the search engine, I saw conservative tank put a lot of effort of counter it, but I have yet to read any plausible hypothesis on how they can resolve the endless disputes.--Tan S.L. (talk) 12:34, 5 April 2021 (UTC)