A few months ago I read about a service called “BookMooch”:http://bookmooch.com/ on “BoingBoing”:http://boingboing.net that offers users a community full of people wanting to exchange their old books for free. I’ve used the site extensively and have loved it. I was finally able to get rid of those old Tom Clancy novels and ‘trade up’ to the classier writings of Henry James. My conclusion: there aren’t enough phrases like “class 2 tactical op” in Henry James. Luckily I can always trade down again with BookMooch.
The idea of a non-monetary economy in which people share their goods and/or services sounds like wackiness, I know, but I just read an “article”:http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/start.html?pg=4 from Wired Online about more ‘analog peer-to-peer’ sites that promise just such a cashless utopia. Each one caters to a different type of media, but here’s a short summary taken from the article:
”
“PEERFLIX”:http://peerflix.com/
MEDIA: DVD
INVENTORY: 40,000 titles
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.50
“LA LA”:http://www.lala.com/
MEDIA: CD
INVENTORY: 1.8 million titles
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.75
“PAPERBACKSWAP”:http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php
MEDIA: Take a guess …
INVENTORY: 30,000 titles
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.59
“GAMESWAP”:http://www.gameswap.com/
MEDIA: Videogame
INVENTORY: 1,102 games
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.99 “