Free-Range Living

‘Delicious dosh’  ( 'FR Living' book excerpt )

No, of course it’s not the money that’s consumed, though, it’s really just a medium -  it’s what it can give access to that really counts: survival, security, exclusivity, social standing, clout, protection, conviviality, pleasure, personal development, philanthropy to name but a few.

What is this money, this ‘dosh’, this ‘spondoolicks’ anyway? There was a time when money didn’t exist, or if it did, only in rarified pockets (!). This was also the time before urban centres, when people all lived in smaller closed communities with a high social content, and, for better or worse, everyone knew one another. In those far off days, A made and mended shoes, whilst B made thatched roofs – perhaps he was an ancestor of Mrs. Thatcher?  Both needed each other’s skills and services, but instantly there’s a big difficulty – B needs A’s (small) services several times each year, but A only needs B’s (much larger) services once, say, every twenty years, and having no common medium to work in, bartering between them for their respective services is at the very least, pretty problematical.
 But help is at hand, someone conveniently invents the common medium and for some  reason or other calls it ‘money’. A can now charge all the residents of the community who use his shoemaking/mending services over the year, and over the years put by some of the money so that when he needs the new roof after the twenty years – no problem, he has the cash collected over the years to now pay B to do the roof for him - sounds so simple in these days of high finance, hedge funds, derivatives, sub-prime products and the rest.
Yet, by far the biggest job money still does is surely to facilitate the exchange of goods and services, a vitally important function, and reminding that business is essentially about social transactions – if you produce something but no-one wants it, you may not be in business for very long.

Let’s twist again

Or rather, the twist is to now play ‘lets’. In a bid to get closer to the real heart of ‘trade exchange’ and to remind themselves of the potential mind numbing effect of always dealing in and with money, as well as aiming to foster a waning community spirit, some freerangers have formed ‘barter’ groups, in which people exchange their goods and services. These are generally known as ‘lets’ groups, which certainly increases local social contact, a good thing as according to the psychologists, people are social animals, whatever the of the message of them as ‘lone economic units’  that may emerge from a free-market money culture.

These barter groups, though, then encountered the same type of problems as the pre-moneyites all those years ago; that is the exchanges sometimes to be proved to be ‘lumpy’- what C’s got to offer can’t easily equate with what D’s got to offer. Some groups instituted a system of credits, some have even inventing their own internal currency, which doesn’t necessarily imply the scheme doesn’t work. In practice it can seem to work well to facilitate local social interaction, and also to raise awareness as to the use and value of money, particularly maybe to youngsters- a good ‘freerange’ type initiative all round.

If, then, money represents the transaction value of goods and services, it can be seen as a representation of goods and services. It follows then that if E aims to have more money than F, E is in reality wanting a bigger share of the cake than F, and the reality is that there is a finite size of cake to share, rather than an unlimited supply of money. E having more than F ties in with a competitive, ’out-for-self’ culture, but presumably could incur problems if overdone within a more socially orientated culture:

One South Sea island community had a unique solution to achieving the individual/social balance. Individuals were encouraged to do well and make wealth. When, though, they reached a certain level of personal wealth, the community tradition was that they then gave most of it away, back to the community, for which they received great social acclaim.

The self–orientated culture and the socially- orientated culture could represent the two ends of the scale - presumably what’s needed is a culture which can adequately cater for both self and social human needs, working towards an effective balance between various values, needs, priorities, that are deemed important to people, particularly, maybe, those of the freeranger breed.