Basically, the more scarce an item is and the more people want it, the more valuable it becomes. Value is always based upon the law of supply and demand. Whereas we see gold as being much more valuable than salami, if we were starving to death, the gold wouldn’t keep us alive but the salami could. You have to realize, value in such a time is measured differently than it is in “normal” times. The key is to determine what sorts of goods will become valuable during an economic collapse. That way, both parties walk out of the deal feeling like they made out well. Ideally, the items being traded away will be items that their owner doesn’t feel are of value. The idea is that you trade something that they perceive as being valuable for something that you perceive as valuable. Items that feed the vices of other folks can be good for bartering.īartering requires having something that will be valued by others. Many farmers who had been poor became well off, due to that black market bartering. When the war ended and life returned to some semblance of normal, they were able to sell that silver and jewelry, making a sizeable profit on it. This ended up being very profitable for the farmers. Once out in the country, they would trade those items to the farmers for hams, cheeses, sausages, butter and other preserved meats. People in the cities, would visit the country, “on holiday” to see “friends and relatives.” They would make the trip carrying a large suitcase, which rather than being filled with clothes would be filled with silver and jewelry. Unfortunately, the people they were taking it from needed it as well. They needed those goods to finance their war machine. The Germans were trying to take as much of the product of the occupied counties from the citizens of those countries. This was basically a barter market, mostly in foodstuffs. Bartering Can be Profitableĭuring World War II, the nations of occupied Europe had a healthy black market going on. This is actually rather common in times of financial collapse, as people struggle to survive and feed their families, in the midst of financial hardship. If the dollar can’t hold its value, it will make much more sense to trade common goods, which have a relatively stable understood value, rather than having to adjust prices every day to keep up with inflation. People will deal with this hyperinflation by returning to barter as a system of trade. High inflation will make that very difficult, bringing many industries to their knees. When it does, the world will switch over to some other reserve currency, leaving the United States to make do as best we can. Many have been speculating for the last few years that the value of the dollar will crash. This is especially true when it comes to petroleum, which is one of the biggest international commodities.Ĭountries amass dollars to pay their debts for petroleum and other goods, which helps keep the value of the dollar high, as compared to other currencies. But there was no contest for the strongest currency, the dollar won, hands down.Īs the world’s reserve currency, the dollar is the main medium of exchange for international business. We rebuilt Europe and Japan and to a large part, the aid we had given to the Soviet Union during the war, managed to keep them afloat as well. At the end of that war, the only country which was left standing, financially speaking, was the United States. A lot of that has to do with World War II. We saw this in the 2009 crash.Īctually, the dollar is what is known as the world’s reserve currency. So, anything that affects the value of the dollar ends up affecting the value of all other currencies, around the world. Pretty much all modern currencies work under the same system, with those other currencies values pegged against the dollar. What I mean is that the dollar is no longer backed by gold or silver the only thing that gives it value at all is that everyone believes that it has value.

I know we tend to say that in a joking sort of way, referring to how much the dollar has devalued due to inflation, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The thing that most people don’t realize is that our money isn’t really worth anything. We would see unemployment topping 25%, along with skyrocketing inflation making everything we need harder to get. If the dollar were to suddenly lose its value on an international basis, our economy would crash, bringing financial hardship to pretty much everyone.

One of the biggest concerns facing us today is the risk we collectively face of a collapse of the dollar.

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