In the wake of socialist Venezuela’s massive hyperinflation, citizens have returned to the original monetary system in order to survive. The barter system is now prevalent in the collapsed economy of the authoritarian dictator, Nicolas Maduro.
Barter is one of the best ways to trade goods, considering its almost impossible to tax those transactions and since money in Venezuela is as difficult to come by as food and medicine, that’s now the preferred method of trading goods and services. Women in Venezuela have been turning to prostitution and asking for payment in food instead of cash for a while now, and as the regime tightens its grip on the private sector, more will have to turn to trade to survive.
Once the richest country of Latin America, Venezuela, which sits on world’s largest oil reserves, now has a bleak future. People in this oil-rich country are scrambling for money, food and basic necessities. They have taken to swapping different items and even doing chores in exchange for packages of flour, rice, and cooking oil.
“There is no cash here, only barter,” said Mileidy Lovera, who is a 30-year-old mother of four. Lovera spoke with Economic Times while hoping to trade a cooler of fish that her husband had caught for food to feed her children or medicine for her son who has epilepsy.
Venezuela has experienced the death of cash. Payment for even the cheapest of goods and services would require unwieldy piles of banknotes or fiat currency, and there simply are not enough of those in circulation. While wealthy formal businesses in cities can get by on bank transfers and debit cards, such operations are largely out of the question in rural areas.
The economic collapse, which began under socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s government, has driven nearly one million people to migrate to other places in search of food, medicine, or other basic life necessities. Others have stayed and fight each other with machetes for some “quality garbage” that is thrown out.
Economists have even begun placing the blame on the current government – a socialist regime which actually leans more towards communism (and the two are almost the same thing anyway). Many economists say the central bank has not printed bills fast enough to keep up with inflation, which according to the opposition-run congress, reached an annual rate of almost 25,000 percent in May. “It’s a very primitive payment system but it’s also very primitive for a country not to have enough cash available,” said Luis Vicente Leon, an economist.
coming soon to a neighborhood near you…
Venezuelan pussy for the price of a few apples sounds pretty good to me. Checking airfare to Venezuela now…
Yes I will barter . I will trade you some hot lead for your shiney gold. Trading with anyone will be risky. don’t stock up on trade goods. instead buy now what it is you think you will need trade for after SHTF
Why wait for shtf to force you into barter.
I used to barter with siblings. I learned not to depend too heavily on another whom might be better than me at some trade or skill.
_
“The Resource Curse” it is called.
It happens when a nation depends solely on it’s resources for international trade and fails to produce enough goods for itself, but instead imports them. When the price of the resource goes down, but not the price of the imports, shortages occur.
When you have the reserve currency, you print your way out. Others…especially unfavored or sanctioned ones…are not so lucky.
JRS,
Good observation.
There are only a few countries that can operate “stand alone”
USA, Russia, Canada, and Australia. By that I mean they have enough internal resources to support their present populations at 21st century levels without importing anything or decreasing their standards of living.
Venezeula should have one of the highest per capita income in the world, but they can’t/don’t make toilet paper.
China is people rich, but resource poor.( no oil or iron).
rellik,
Dude!!! Going to have to disagree with ya one one point.
The “USA” thought of internal resources.
Where do you think, our fellow Wal-Fart shoppers are going to get the China dump crap they need to survive?
Never get in between a land whale, and that flat screen their eyes are going ’round in circles for.
Just think ’bout dat…
Y’all play nice now. 🙂
I am going to have to disagree a bit with you on your take about China. They have plenty of metals now. America has been selling them our scrap / recyclable metals for quite a while now and while they remanu a lot of stuff and send it back, they also have the ability to ‘reserve’ plenty if they need. They also have some rare earth’s we need for the semi conductor industry as well, so could squeeze us a bit if they needed to. Our millenials need their phones to update their fascistbook status. Those rare earths could become an issue.
Have my foil l hat on just to be safe he he he
Well glad I put my foil hat on he he he. One can never be to sure he he he
“Fight each other with machete’s for quality garbage.”
And he’s not talking about the American job market.
Yes. This is what the people of Argentina did during their financial crisis. You traded some goods and services for some paper certificates and the right to set up a table. Then sold goods and services in the designated area which had armed guards. It worked and saved lives.
This is why you need to prepare by knowing how to do ONE skill very well as the “craftsman” level and then be a jack of all trades ie know a hundred ancestral skills, plus have supplies.
Then you would likely organize your community such that you are creating a tribe who looks out for everyone including orphans, the defenseless, and elderly. You would organize the people in security first, then water gathering, the crops, then firewood and solar ovens, then community ovens for baking bread and meat, then preserving food, trapping, hunting parties, burial and church services, schools, medical clinics, etc.
And the weekly market day is a way to establish community and exchange goods and services.
If you a Christian, it’s your responsibility to save your family and foster a tribe as in history no one family could entirely protect themselves.
It is thought that by organizing in this strategic matter that you best foster a new tribe to help everyone altruistically. Otherwise, the horde will batter down your door with a ram and eventually take everything.
It’s either build a plan to establish a tribe or almost always fail unless you are extremely isolated.
You need some initial trade items like wood matches, salt, unroasted coffee beans, pool shock, or similar.
A good skill would be making sandals from old tires and also converting tires to roofing shingles. Or digging wells and building biosand filters. You need a skill which you then trade.
One very useful skill would be carefully harvesting all of the construction material in an abandoned home so you can recycle that material or barter it.
Another very useful skill would be very low level fm radio transmitters that would then broadcast to common fm radios as a communication system.
By working as a tribe, then when the livestock is annually harvested, then the meat and offal and bones are seperated, fat is rendered, soap is made, and candles are created, all at the same time by the tribe.
Scouting and salvaging missions would require many men and under arms, and with tools, and carts, to harvest material and bring it back to be bartered.
Cloth in history was immensely valuable as a trade item given how long it takes to produce on a loom and with dyes and after growing a crop of flax or cotton or harvesting wool or skinning and tanning hides. You should plan on some cloth in your supplies as it is so difficult to replicate.
How about making tires from old sandals and from roofing shingles.
One way out is to ‘dollarize’. Venezuela could rejoin OPEC and start selling oil for petro-dollars. With such foreign exchange, merchants could began to buy products again on the world market. Prostitutes could sell their snatches for dollars. These dollars would buy food.
Na hora de receber, o BIS não liberaria os dólares para a Venezuela… essa é a intenção dos khazarians, que pretendem controlar o petróleo venezuelano para suas multinacionais… logo a Venezuela está emitindo PETRO lastreado em óleo… China e Russia estao comprando ou permutando por outros bens…simples assim… deixar dólar de fora… para limpar a bunda…