Looking over history, the primitive man, as many children, didn’t know or handled money, their needs and wishes were fulfilled by barter. It was not an easy task, generally they get through holy limitations “I like your iPad. And I like your ball sign by James. Yes, but dad won’t let us trade”
The concept of value shows up in an unexpected way. A university mate, Carlos Pereira, taught me that value is the arbitrary dimension, objectively or subjectively, that we give to everything we associate with. It can be possible that for the kids in the story the iPad and the ball have the same value objectively talking and there’s the possibility to suggest bartering. However, the same doesn’t happen with the kid’s dad, who has a great appreciation for the ball signed by James, even though it’s used and dirty. It’s subjective value lies in the high admiration that he has for the famous player, and the iPad value isn’t even close to the subjective value that his admiration for James gives it.
This example makes us think in that value, subjective or objective, that things have for us when it comes to bartering. Before, in the first ages of humanity, it was a little bit easier; maybe colorful snails could be traded for really hard rocks that were useful to be turned into weapons to haunt and get food, in fact, the word salary has an interesting story, salt, in its moment was a fundamental food to complement the diet. Since it was difficult to get in certain communities of Europe, there was bartering for salt, and that’s the origin of the word salary. We could almost say that its historic value is preserved, even though nowadays with our salary we get a lot more than salt, which has lost its value for it’s industrialization.
Nowadays there’s a big problem going on, we have to stay home reducing the possibility to generate salary, since not everyone can go out and work on the streets, or generate incomes to sustain their families, their companies, big, medium or small. Then it seems necessary to start thinking again with the intelligence of the primitive man and children, get back to bartering; maybe a lot of things that we acquired with spare money, today may have less subjective or objective value compared to certain urgencies, and what if we take advantage of the technology to make the ball signed by James available to a soccer fan and exchange it for the iPad that the kid needs for its online classes?
