[olivier]

Conservation and efficiency are goals of economics. I beleive the worldwide economy does not work because the measurement instrument used is prevaricated. Money is not related anymore to the gold standard, and emitted by those who buy primary goods.

We cannot trust a science whose measurement instrument is wrong! can we?

An alternative is barter, that can be computerized as financial system is. I made a prototype that does not use any value standard except those used to measure exchanged goods (baril or wathether), and allows exchange cycles between more than two participants.

It is the result of 5 years of software development.

I would like to explore with you how we could develope it on large skale to give to the world economy real measurement instruments.

[Aimrehtopyh]

Even if the world economy contracted by 50-80% we could not fall back on gold and silver as the basis for any widespread currency. It'd be a total nightmare. Silver&gold might end up being "survival currency" for a few people here and there but not for the world economy. That is unless we go back to 1890 levels of international trade volume, in which case we're all dead anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that the accepted economic model is broken mainly because it's largely disconnected from physical reality. I also think that precious metals are a good speculative investment right now.

Computerized barter system, very interesting. It would drive the taxman out of his mind but could prove very useful during periods of hyperinflation or devaluation.

This program you helped develop, could you turn it into some kind of E-barter-Bay? What do you mean by no "value standard"? I understand why you wouldn't want to use dollars as the basis for your item value calculations but how do you get a computer to understand barter without using ANY kind of numerical valuation?

edit: spelling

[olivier]

I said "except those used to measure exchanged goods". We use numerical values to measure them - a baril is used for petrol, an ingot of 1Kg for gold, etc. The calculation is made on them. More informations on:
http://60gp.ovh.net/~danselav/barter/wa ... a=HomePage

[olivier]

Does anyone interested to find solutions to the peakoil problem?