An item with money qualities might be a good barter item. To be an Optimal Barter Item it must also directly fulfill multiple human needs in the circumstances of the barter.

For each scenario under consideration ask yourself what items would directly fulfill multiple human needs and be widely accepted in trade in excess of the trader’s need. If the item is also transportable, divisible, storable, measurable and hard to counterfeit then it’s a winner: An alternative form of money in the circumstances of the barter.

Since anything can be used in barter it’s worth making an equation as a tool to separate the wheat from the chaff:

(M * N * LP)_1-n = Optimal Barter

Where M are the money qualities, N is how directly the item fulfills a need and LP is the Life Priority of the need fulfilled. Note the 1-n subscript. That’s because an item can fulfill needs across multiple categories of life. In fact, the best barter items do.

Money & Substitutes – (M)

One way to compare barter items with each other is to compare each with money and rate them according to how they measure up. The top items on the resulting list are possible money substitutes. Their fulfillment of human needs, however, is another matter entirely. See ‘Ammo vs. Money’ where I compare ammunition with all the attributes of money.

When barter is king money is dethroned: It takes a backseat to the direct fulfillment of human needs. The concept of money and its substitutes is still useful, however, because many items that fulfill human needs are also decent money substitutes.

Water, food, syringes, antibiotics, IV Lines, portable water filters, firearms, ammunition, batteries and radios are worth more than the money used to buy them even in good times. In a crisis some of these are needed so badly they might overcome the biggest stumbling block of barter: The lack of a double coincidence of wants.

Direct Need Fulfillment – (N)

Water quenches thirst, Food satisfies hunger, Tarps block rain and wind.

The more direct the fulfillment the higher quality the item. I’m a big fan of substitutes but they’re not as easily recognized in the midst of a crisis as the real thing. Since barter items are best stocked after covering the essentials for your family it’s best to focus on items that fulfill needs, directly. There’s one exception to this line of thinking.

The best barter items span multiple categories of use: They directly fulfill some needs and indirectly fulfill others. Water is an easy example: It directly quenches thirst and cleans skin and has an almost infinite number of other uses. Water’s indirect uses multiply it’s desirability as is the case with other Optimal barter candidates.

Life Priorities – (LP)

It’s a constant burden to mankind that choices must be made with imperfect knowledge. With perfect knowledge ordering priorities is a cinch. However, wait too long for specifics to prepare and risk not being prepared, at all.

My Life Priorities are the same in good times and in bad. In a crisis I’ll rely on intuition to reorder priorities according to the scenario. For instance, although Water is #1 the urgency in finding a source is greater in a desert than in a rainforest. Medicine is #5 though in the absence of sickness or injury securing communications might pay bigger dividends. These are not compromises; just working flexibility and a trust of intuition after being prepared, in general.

For the purposes of preparing in advance for a non-specific crisis I’ve chosen to order life’s priorities in the following categories:

1. Water
2. Shelter & Clothing
3. Food
4. Security
5. Health & Medicine
6. Communications
7. Power
8. Hygiene & Sanitation
9. General Tools
10. Transportation

Going through your own reasoning process and placing these categories in order is surprisingly useful. Knowing your priorities is key in making disciplined and balanced choices when allocating limited resources.

Narrowing Down the Barter List

1. Think through your Life Priorities and order them into categories (As many as you find useful).
2. Consider the bolded items in the Comprehensive Barter Item List as barter items worthy of consideration (And please send me your suggestions).
3. Group the resulting items from step 2 that strike you as filling the most pressing human Needs into your life priority categories.
4. Sort items within each category by your sense of its importance.
5. Use your Life Priority categories and assign a primary category and then the secondary categories that the item serves.
6. Take each item compare it with the attributes of money and assign a value where 10 = Money and 0 = nothing in common with money.
7. Keep sorting using the criteria in steps 4 thru 7 until you narrow the list down to 20 to 50 items or however many you’d like to use as input to the Barter Equation.

The resulting items are the best items to use as input to the equation.

Consider Three Scenarios

Consider narrowing down your preparation scenarios to three:

1. The most likely threat to your physical location.
2. The threat that comes to mind when consulting your informed intuition.
3. The everyday potential threats and outages that normal life presents.

For example, my three are Fire, Dollar devaluation/Inflation and Electrical Power Outages.

Applying the Equation

Grabbing some promising barter items from the Comprehensive Barter Item List for my three scenarios here’s my impression of the values that should be assigned to them for each variable in the Barter Equation. The equation has not yet been applied. They have merely been sorted by their primary Life Priority category and then by their respective Money qualities. This is as far as people usually go when when considering barter items.

• The higher the N the more direct its fulfillment of LP1 (As Ordered by my Life Priorities, above).
• The higher the M the more qualities of Money the Item has.
• LP1 is the items primary fulfillment category (In my opinion) and LP2 thru N are its secondary fulfillment categories.

Sorted by Primary Life Priority, then by Money Qualities

Barter Equation not Applied.

Applying the Optimal Barter Equation (First Dimension Only)

Here is where the items rank after using a spreadsheet to apply the equation to each items M, N and the LP of their primary category only. In other words, this is where the item would rank if its fulfillment of needs in other life priority categories was left out of consideration.

(M * N * LP) = Optimal Barter

Applying the Optimal Barter Equation to All Dimensions of Each Barter Item

Applying the equation now to both the primary and secondary life priority categories the item serves. Notice the increased liquidity of items that serve a broad number of categories.

(M * N * LP)_1-n = Optimal Barter

The above fifteen choices were chosen only to show how to apply the equation. It would be interesting to apply the equation to all barter items and see the results. If there’s enough interest that would be a fun exercise for another article.

The resulting Top 10 items of your application of the equation are most worthy of your barter resources. They will directly fulfill the needs of your family while providing a backup form of money or trade liquidity during barter economies. Your proposed trades with these items are more likely to be accepted by fellow traders than those who haven’t gone through the exercise.

Whiskey, Cigarettes & Chocolate

These three items have proven themselves to be good barter items in real barter ‘economies’. The equation handles them well if you add them to your Life Priority list and give them a high “M”, which they deserve.

For instance, perhaps you would swap my priority of “Transportation” with “Vices” to account for Whiskey and Cigarettes. You would also rate these items high in “M” because they do fair well as money substitutes.

Chocolate fits naturally in the Food and Health categories and has a high “M” if the climate is not too warm.

The value of everything varies continuously in time. That doesn’t mean there’s no value in evaluating their relative standing in the only moment we have: Now.

Optimal Barter Items are like Superfoods

To be honest I had a different equation written when beginning this article. After going through the entire process it became obvious that some items are to barter what superfoods are to health: They provide a kind of comprehensive nourishment; they fulfill multiple high-priority needs!

I did not rig the equation to favor items that met multiple needs. I only discovered that no item that fulfilled only one need could compete with the liquidity or desirability of a barter item that fulfilled needs across the spectrum of life’s highest priorities.

The Trade Trumps the Traded

As with the use of money trade is more valuable than what’s traded. Who makes that judgment? You do by making the trade. After all, if you’d rather keep the items you’re exchanging then why don’t you? Even protesting ‘no choice’ admits you value what you get more than what you give. And, your fellow trader feels the same, no?

The Trade Trumps the Traded, every time, as evidenced by the fact that the Trade was made.

Human Needs Trump Liquidity

The purpose of your Optimal Barter Equation is to zero-in on the barter items most worthy of your limited resources. They’re the most liquid components of your preparedness plan. Since the top candidates are also essential it’s a judgment call to decide when you have enough. While your overall preparedness will be well served with these items be careful not to prioritize barter items over the broad range of essentials needed by every family.

Copyright © 2014 by Terence Gillespie. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given to McGillespie.com