Work out what to trade by listing what you have in surplus, what it costs you to give it up, and what the other group needs and cannot make as easily, then match the two lists. A good has trade value when it is wanted, scarce where the buyer is and light enough to carry, while essentials and seed stock are never on the list.
Part of Negotiation from Strength
Deciding which of your goods, skills and knowledge are worth offering, and which are not for sale.
Three Tests For a Tradeable Good
- Do we have more than we need? A surplus after reserves for a bad year.
- Do they want it, and can they not easily make it? Value comes from need and scarcity at the buyer’s end, not from how hard it was to make. A day spent on something the other group already has is worth little to them.
- Can it be moved and checked? Compact, durable, easy to inspect goods trade best.
The corpus explains the logic of exchange in Comparative Advantage and Opportunity Cost: trade benefits both sides when each gives up something it makes at low cost for something it makes at high cost.
Categories From the Parent Article
- Salt: for preservation, animals and health. The article notes it has historically been one of the most valuable trade goods.
- Medical supplies: antibiotics, bandages, antiseptics; irreplaceable and in constant demand. Do not trade away your own reserve.
- Seeds: especially varieties the other group lacks. Compact and light, and represent future food, so offer only what you can spare.
- Skills: a blacksmith, medic or animal breeder; service for goods does not deplete your stock.
- Manufactured goods: soap, candles, rope, leather, pottery; see Soap Making.
- Information: road conditions, other groups, weather, resources. Valuable and risky; see Controlled Information Sharing.
Method: Build Your Trade List
Step 1: Take stock. Use your ledgers; see Resource Ledgers.
Step 2: Subtract reserves. Seed corn, a season’s food and medical reserves come off first.
Step 3: Mark what is not for sale. Anything whose loss would endanger the community. The parent article’s example is seed corn.
Step 4: Rank the rest by how much it costs you to give up. Time spent making it, and what else that time could have produced.
Step 5: Learn what the other group needs from conversation and observation; see Information Gathering.
Step 6: Match. Goods you can spare cheaply that they need badly are your best offers; goods they can spare cheaply that you need are your asks.
Step 7: Review each season. Surplus changes.
Skills and Services
A skill is unusual because offering it does not reduce your stock, but it uses your people’s time. Count that time in the list: a smith spent on another group’s repairs is a smith not working for yours. Limit the amount and put it in the agreement.
Common Mistakes
- Pricing by effort. What took you a week may be worth little to a buyer who has plenty.
- Offering your only reserve.
- Leaving out the cost of carrying. Heavy goods lose value on the road.
- Forgetting that value is local. Salt is worth more inland than on a coast.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Exchange Rate Establishment — how much for how much
- Combine with: Barter Protocols — the exchange itself