Bytte-Bytte-Købmand, det er en lidt sjov ide, og vi har vel alle sammen, på et eller andet tidspunkt i "IT alderen", handlet en mountainbike eller en kontorstol for et website. Situationen er jo nogen gange vi skal bruge ydelser, for at komme videre, men desværre ikke har råd, eller i princip, altid forsøger at minske virksomheds indkøb, uden altid at skulle have kontanter op af lommen.

Det er jo ikke noget nyt princip - f.eks har det været, en del af de loger, ala Round table m.fl., at sørge for og skabe netværk, hvor dets medlemmer var blandet nok, fagligt og professionelt, for på den måde, før man købte en ydelse i "den virkelige verden", at høre blandt medlemmer, om der var en der kunne udføre arbejdet, mod en senere modydelse. 

Ideen og principperne er egentlig gode, Men! man henleder sig selv til at tænke på T5, Tradingvalues og andre suspekte selskaber, uden der er nogen sammenligning, men når man dels ser deres design men også når man noterer deres besvarelser og måder ikke at svare direkte på bagom liggende ting og sager, så opstår der, hos mig i hvertfald en tvivl. Så spørgsmålet henstår om barter handel er seriøst eller blot en nyere ting for at tjene lidt penge og udbygge sit kontakt netværk. Ligeledes skal der fra SKATs side jo komme en udmelding, der klart og utvetydigt fastslår om dette er lovlig handel. ABSI har en del aktiviteter omkring deres forretning, bl.a. er der på deres næste møde indlæg fra Lene Espersen. Deres organisation virker også rimelig i størrelse, hvor IBarker virker som en ene mand - og hatten af for det - men er det seriøst nok ? Begge forretninger, skal dog nævnes, kan sagtens være helt legale og hårdtarbejdende, jeg glæder mig til at se hvor de er om 6 måneders tid, og dermed kan alt tvivl og afklaring være på plads.

ABSI og IBarter er nye koncepter på internet himlen, Nedenfor et eksempel fra ABSI's web sted, på hvordan en handel fungerer;

     "Viggo skal bruge nogle brochurer til en marketingkampagne.

1. Han finder Torbens Tryksager på www.absi.dk , og får et tilbud, som han accepterer.
2. Torbens Tryksager leverer varerne, og fremsender faktura og efterfølgende transaktion via www.absi.dk på beløbet 25.000 BKR. inkl. Moms. Denne godkender Viggos Video, og beløbet står umiddelbart efter på Torbens Tryksagers konto i absi.
3. Torben kan herefter indkøbe ydelser i absi’s netværk, som han ellers skulle have indkøbt mod kontant betaling. Hans IT-server står foran udskiftning, så han køber en hos et absi-medlem.

Viggos fordel. Han har nu købt brochurer, og betalt med Barterkroner® (den interne afregningsenhed i absi) i stedet for at betale kontant. Han kan beholde sine danske Kroner "i lommen" og opnår samtidigt at spare sin bruttoavance på mersalg på sit indkøb af brochurer.

Torbens fordel. Han fik et mersalg ved at være med i absi, og kan nu bruge sine Barterkroner til at indkøbe en ny server, som han ellers skulle have betalt kontant. Ikke alene skal han ikke have likvider op ad lommen for at erhverve serveren, han opnår også en besparelse på sit indkøb, svarende til den avance han havde på ordren til Viggos Video." Ref. www.absi.dk.

Så der betales med disse systemer ikke kontant for indgående handler, men derimod med ydelser som ved f.eks en byttehandle, det er jo somsagt, i sig selv, ikke en revolution, idet typen af handel, gennem et business-to-business handels netværk har jo eksisteret i mange år tusinder.  Det drejer sig om at kunne udnytte din virksomheds overskudskapasitet, og samtidigt minske omkostninger på indkøb.

ABSI samt IBarter har så bygget nogle IT systemer, der kan håndtere medlemmer, og deres indbyrdes handler via  barter konto, du behøver altså ikke fysisk at gøre noget, når du modtager en ydelse, idet det automatisk, og med det samme påvirker din barter konto via systemet.

IBarter er nyeste skud, pt. sep. 2006 har de 35 firmaer der har meldt sig ind. Der foregår nogle heftige debatter rundt omkring, og de væsentlige spørgsmål omkring systemerne og deres respektive forfattere er;

1. Hvis du handler en del, og har lad os sige 50.000 stående på din konto - så står "pengene" ikke og trækker renter.
2. IBarter ligner til forveksling ABSI, I diverse chat forums, vil IBarter kun kommenterer at deres system er smartere og simplere. Forskelle vil de ikke kommentere på, da de ikke ser nogen grund til at fokucerer på en konkurrent.
3. Vær opmærksom på handelsbetingelser; Du afgiver 3% ved køb og salg pr. transaktion - samlet 6%. Herudover er der indmeldelse i netværket, der også koster.
4. Kørende sager og skærpet opmærksomhed for SKAT.
5. IBarter oplyser ikke hvem der er medlem på Web stedet. Det gør ABIS tilgengæld.

Barter systemer er ikke noget nyt, i udlandet, og det er muligvis derfra system koncepterne er taget fra. Verden omkring barter handel således ud hvis vi kigger lidt ud. Reference informationen nedenfor er indhentet af Roy Davies.

Links to Information about Barter

International Barter Alliance

Claims to be the world's largest barter marketplace.

 

IRTA: The International Reciprocal Trade Association

IRTA is a non-profit corporation established to foster the interests of the commercial barter industry in the U.S. and around the world. IRTA's web site gives statistics on the total value of goods bartered by North American companies.

 

Barter Consultants

Barter Consultants offers barter services, B2B trade & exchange, barter trading methods, trade exchanges, barter systems for barter clubs members using trade dollars to swap, trade, and barter online.

 

Euro Barter Business

A network using transferable credits to facilitate exchanges of goods and services.

 

Bartercard

This is a large, international computerised bartering system which started in Australia.

 

BarterNet

The Online Barter Association's website.

 

Barter Networking Inc.

A trading system, based in the mid east coast region of the US, designed to help small and large businesses alike by bartering goods and services to each other.

 

BarterNews Magazine

This magazine was founded in 1980 as a voice for the barter and countertrading industries in the US.

 

Equity Trade Exchange

An internet based, business-to-business barter exchange designed to help business owners broker their own trade transactions, and save substantially over the cash fees charged by traditional barter exchanges.

 

National Association of Trade Exchanges

NATE's purpose is to educate, inform and advise on the barter industry. It has some members outside the US.

 

U-Exchange

With listings in over 70 countries, U-Exchange.com gives you the option of bartering local or worldwide irrespective of whether your interest in bartering is for business or pleasure.

 

Tradeway.com

Classified listings of goods and services on offer, with a search engine.

 

TradeFirst

An Irish Barter Exchange system using a virtual currency

 

ITEX

The ITEX Retail Trade Exchange is the world's largest retail trade and barter exchange.

 

BarterItOnline

Equity trades are among the services offered. The future value of startup companies can be used as a 'currency' to make necessary purchases for growth.

 

Swap Thing

A site catering for a wide range of users including collectors and traders, parents, small business owners and nonprofit organizations.

 

Mydrew

An online marketplace for buying, selling and trading. Mydrew has taken the social networking concept that there are just "6 degrees of separation between any two people in the world" and used it to create a better kind of online market.

 

How to Barter

A guide offering helpful suggestions and advice on how and why you should barter. It deals mainly with reciprocal bartering.

The History and Relevance of Barter

Barter is often regarded as an old-fashioned means of exchange that was superseded because money is far more efficient. After all, in a monetary system an apple grower who needs shoes simply has to find a cobbler. In a pure barter system the apple grower would have to find not just any cobbler but one who happened to want apples at that time. Thus in virtually all civilizations, except the Incas, money came to play an important role.

However the inconvenience of barter was just one factor, and in most places was probably not the most significant one, in the origin of money.

As Glyn Davies wrote, barter has, undeservedly, been given a bad name in conventional economic writing, and its alleged crudities have been much exaggerated. (Quoted from A History of money from ancient times to the present day, new ed. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002. Page 10).

Barter and money are not necessarily completely incompatible. One of the most important improvements over the simplest forms of early barter was first the tendency to select one or two particular items in preference to others so that the preferred barter items became partly accepted because of their qualities in acting as media of exchange although, of course, they still could be used for their primary purpose of directly satisfying the wants of the traders concerned. (Quoted from History of Money page 10).

Barter still often plays an important role in trade with countries whose currencies are not readily convertible, e.g. the communist countries during the cold war. At the retail level barter has become the main means of exchange on occasions when currencies have collapsed completely as a result of hyperinflation, e.g. in Germany after the two world wars.

In normal circumstances retail barter is much less important but its persistence has puzzled some economists. The magazine Exchange and Mart devoted partly to barter has been published in Britain every Thursday since 1868. Jevons noticed it in its early years and was obviously puzzled that any such publication, partly dependent on serving such a long obsolete purpose as barter, should appear to have any use to anyone. We must assume, concluded Jevons, ... that the printing press can bring about, in some degree, the double coincidence necessary to an act of barter. (Quoted by Glyn Davies in A History of Money, page 22).

If the printing press could, as Jevons acknowledged, make barter more feasible then the computer can certainly do so even more effectively as demonstrated by the links below. It is worth noting however, that some of these computerised barter schemes do use units of account to facilitate comparison of the values of the goods and services offered and therefore in such cases the barter circles are using a form of money, albeit one with very restricted functions.

It is also worth noting that the free exchange of information that the Internet facilitates could also be regarded as a form of gift-exchange, a version of barter. See my essay on Should Information Be Free?, a version of which was published in the inaugural British edition of Wired.

For more information about the connection between barter and the invention of money see the Origins of Money and Banking.

Cashless and hopeless on the streets of Buenos Aires

People resort to barter as they battle outbreak of 'Argentinitis'. The Guardian, April 25, 2002.

 

Karl Polanyi: some observations

A critique, by Dr A. J. H. Latham, of Polanyi's writings which emphasise reciprocity and down-play the role of money.

 

Corporate Barter and Economic Stabilisation

An International Journal of Community Currency Research article by James Stodder.

 

Economic Means to Freedom - Part 5

by Frederick Mann. Many so-called barter clubs are not pure barter systems as they utilize their own forms of barter currency as media of exchange. Mann says that his article is now largely of historical interest because his proposals have been overtaken by the development of alternative currencies such as e-gold.

 

The new global currency

by Tim Phillips. Bartering is not only a great way for small businesses to save cash, it can also generate new trade, especially overseas. The Guardian, February 27, 2003.

 

The Babe Ruth of Barter

An article about Chris Sweis who was the CEI of Ibart, a barter banking firm that by 2006 had gone out of business. 27 May 2003.