Happy 69 Yr Old German Woman Has Not Used Money For 15 Years

<snip>
Heidemarie’s incredible story began 22 years ago, when she, a middle-aged secondary school teacher emerging from a difficult marriage, took her two children and moved to the city of Dortmund, in Germany’s Ruhr area. One of the first things she noticed was the large number of homeless people, and this shocked her so much that she decided to actually do something about it. She had always believed the homeless didn’t need actual money to be accepted back into society, only a chance to empower themselves by making themselves useful, so she opened a Tauschring (swap shop), called “Gib und Nimm” (Give and Take).

Her small venture was a place where anyone could trade stuff and skills for other things and skills they needed, without a single coin or banknote changing hands. Old clothes could be traded in return for kitchen appliances, and car service rendered in return for plumbing services, and so on. The idea didn’t really attract many of Dortmund’s homeless, because, as some of them told her to her face, they didn’t feel an educated middle-class woman could relate to their situation. Instead, her small shop was assaulted by many of the city’s unemployed and retired folk eager to trade their skills and old stuff for something they needed. Heidemarie Schwermer’s Tauschring eventually became somewhat of a phenomenon in Dortmund and even prompted its creator to ask herself some questions about the life she was living.

She started to realize she was living with a lot of stuff she didn’t really need and initially decided not to buy anything else without giving something away. Then she realized how unhappy she was with her work and made the connection between this feeling and the physical symptoms (backache and constant illness) she was feeling, so she decided to take up other jobs. She began washing dishes for 10 Deutchmarks an hour, and despite many were telling her things like “You went to university, you studied to do this?”, she felt good about herself, and didn’t feel like she should be valued more because of her studies than someone working in a kitchen. By 1995, the Tauschring had changed her life so much that she was spending virtually nothing, as everything she needed seemed to find its way into her life.</snip>

http://wakeup-world.com/2011/07/18/happy-69-year-old-lady-has-not-used-money-for-15-years/

Granted, the German safety net system allows for this more than our non-existent one, but the idea of a brick and mortar barter/swap shop fascinates me. Could it be done here in the U.S. without running afoul of tax law?

we are all going to have to disconnect from the corporate fascism we have, more and more. We are only going to be able to live freely if we are free from corporations that want to turn us into slaves.

Has to stake the operation to begin with. This is happening now.

We can and should pool our talents and resources to Rebuild this country!
Take the $$$ out of Expensive Corporate Junkie Imported Crap!
We can "do it ourselves", we have done it before :)

Recycle, Rebuild, Reuse & Share

certain sum. Sorry I don't have any links but I read that some time ago.

Fundamentally unfair if exchanging value for value, IMHO. Where's the INCOME in that??

I had wondered why there isn't a local Internet bulletin board where people can trade goods and services.

away free, but I've not seen any offers except for goods.

I know that there's a very active network in my city ( Orlando ) and I suspect many others exist as well.

:applause:

but that provision is nearly impossible to enforce.

I lived year round in a summer tourist area for some time. During the winter, barter was the way things worked because nobody had any money to use to pay for goods and services. You'd just mention what you needed and it would go through the grapevine and you'd either get a call or find it sitting on your front porch within a few days. If you heard of someone who needed your particular expertise, you just showed up and supplied it. It was an amazing system with few words spoken aloud and no "you owe me for this one." It was just taken for granted that if you had it, you'd give it and if you needed it, you'd get it eventually.

It would have been impossible to tax such a system because there was rarely a direct quid pro quo, things traveled around in a huge circle and often took months to complete. It looked like random gift giving rather than a formal barter system with ledgers and debts.

However, as in the story above, I too found I preferred to be moving around rather than chained to a desk. I only took office jobs when I was desperate.

but if someone sets up a shop or an exchange explicitly for barter, that's just inviting the irs to come take a look. if you don't have the proper paperwork and haven't been tracking or reporting the barter exchanges, then they presumably can fine you and/or throw you in prison.

We are truly enslaved to this system here, it's encoded in every community and the system is supported by numerical values, not human or environmental ones. This story reminds me of Korten's vision which is being acted out in various places in part, but more successfully in other countries.

There is one element missing that one might find fault with in implementing this anywhere. Property taxes and utilities are not able to be bartered, nor are rent or mortgages. Nor is mandatory insurance and other facets that enter into the equation for having a roof over one's head. Plus the same for the shop she instituted.

She didn't do that without money; or if anyone was to provide it, they had money. Unless one wants to go to a land ownership society in total, but then it gets down the rich deciding, just in a more blunt fashion than we have now.

But in general, this is a wonderful idea for simplifying one's life Those who primarily benefited, where those who were not actually homeless. In that regard, the homeless were correct that she could not help them. They are without the protection in their daily lives that property ownership, in common or singly, provides.

Thanks for this story. It is beautiful.

Not sure about Germany, but lots of Europeans have housing assistance guaranteed them as they age. An older person with a surety of a roof, medicine & doctors and a pension for the unbarterables, can probably spend little or nothing out of pocket

people here have NO safety net. many who have very little are also ill (without much access for affordable care)

Friend today, a retired school teacher. You know, the ones who bankrupted the country, so they all have to go, haha. This thing about August 3rd, she hadn't heard all the details. But then, her pension doesn't cover her healthcare so she is still working and never looks at the news. She never made enough taking care of a disabled daughter and working at the school to be able to have just the one job there, so she still has a mortgage and several small jobs. But she needs that check on the 3rd, as does her daughter.

I saw videos as Obama described it was not just SS and healthcare, etc. payments that would not be made if the debt ceiling was not raised, but all those contractors and military, will not be paid. Yet we have the Teabaggers cheering it on and even some of other persuasions who think it on will give them some advantage.

Obama said 70 million checks or payments would not be made. Legally, they can't make them, but the GOP refuses to negotiate. So this is going to be a week of reckoning, that the Germans of another generation experienced, but she has not. At least, the Reid budget proposal doesn't cut the money for people, just the wars and other things. We'll see how things go in the following week.

The sad thing is, that the majority of Americans will never feel as free as that woman does right now.

what a beautiful person...

I do not mean that as a flippant or derogatory remark

This was the goal of Marxism - do away with money and class

One out of two ain't bad

instead of them performing a service of securing our valuables, they have redefined value. Expecting this corrupt system to help us out is now delusional. Their abuse of law, truth and lack of compassion should be a warning to all of us to incrementally separate ourselves from it.

Some people have time and energy to fight this system, but for the rest of us, we do not have the money, the time or the energy to spend fighting a corrupt system. We only have energy to focus on finding a safe place to live, to find food and good people to live out our years.

Our ability to separate from this corrupt system is only limited by our imagination. We can trade amongst ourselves, share our food, plant gardens, and form coops completely based on interrelationships.

What other choice do we have?