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Barter-Based School Catching On Globally
sethopia writes "In 2010, three people had the crazy idea to start a school where the teachers teach whatever they want and the students pay for classes with whatever teachers need — cutlery, art, advice — but never with money. Trade Schools have been popping up around the world and are now active in 15 cities and 10 countries, with almost no prodding from its founders. Caroline Woolard, one of the founders, discusses the challenges and opportunities of adapting their idea to an international audience and making the Trade School software — based on Python and Django — great."
Blowjobs?
Because I just happen to have $87,000 worth of Bitcoin.
But i could totally be making wacky furniture in 12 days!
bfd
the local mafia gets pissed whenever value changes hands without giving them a cut
heh captcha:seized
What happened to the good ol' days when you would just pay for better grades with sex? ;)
Maybe not. This may be nothing more than an advancement of an Apprenticeship. This is how I learned commercial refrigeration. When I worked in a classified space, we rarely shut down to allow outside trades in, so much of the HVAC was done in house. As such I learned much of the trade including hard silver soldering, hydraulic unloaders, adjustment and proper use of thermostatic expansion valves, etc as OJT with the textbook Modern Refrigeration and Air Conditioning which is pretty much the bible on the subject. http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Refrigeration-Conditioning-Andrew-Althouse/dp/1590702808
It took me the longest to grasp the theory of how continious cycle absorption cycle worked, but I finally understood it too.
With my training, I am now trained to charge, maintain, service, and repair systems for chilled water up to 500 Ton.
The truth shall set you free!
sexual favors
It's easy to confuse News for Nerds with News for Losers like you, but that's not the case.
...the students pay for classes with whatever teachers need â" cutlery, art, advice â" but never with money.
What the hell do they have against cash? Cash is the most useful thing I own.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Holy white on yellow batman! Their site (http://tradeschool.coop/) has successfully burrowed inside my eyes and is setting up a permanent tent city. They could use some help designing the site, or at least getting a readable color scheme. Mayo on yellow mustard surrounded by ketchup is not working.
teach whatever they want better then college as college is loaded with filler classes, way off base classes, required classes that some times are not even related to what you want to learn. Loads of gen ed and lot's theory based classes that do not give much help in learning what you want to learn. There needs to be more apprenticeship like learning out there with REAL skills. HVCA, pumpers , ECT don't take 2-4 years full of mainly theory based classes and off base filler classes to learn how to do there work.
For the tech field apprenticeship like learning is needed as jobs say they want CS but then say people with CS BA don't have the right skills. Lead to the facts that 2-4 years pure classroom is to much and that CS is a POOR fit all for tech jobs when you have tech school out there that do tech skills that are better a fits for the job so why not have some kind of 1-3 years mixed tech school + apprenticeship like learning in place of a BA,AA,MA for tech jobs as real job skills are big.
Looking at the kinds of classes they do, most of it seems like the kind of thing where if I wanted to take that kind of course, I'd probably go to my local school of continuing education. Cooking, drawing, photography, crafts, ... Here in California, at least, these courses are extremely cheap.
It seems like it's more of a political mission than an educational one.
Find free books.
Let's face it, edjimication isn't getting any cheaper... and my understanding (based on a not-very rigorous survey of people I personally know, some of whom are tenured professors at the college level in the US) is that more and more young folk are going the way of trade schools (in the traditional sense).
Why get crazy in debt for a liberal arts degree when you can get real world skills for less of a financial outlay?
Pros: -Get a job in an actual career (someone mentioned refrigerator repair earlier-- doesn't sound sexy, but fixing things and working with your hands appeals to a lot of people)
-Don't spend the rest of your life in debt
-Learn in an environment where people are there to learn (a lot of college pukes I see are there to party on their parent's dime)
Cons:
-Accredation?
-Unsure about the qualifications of a teacher who doesn't/can't get a regular teaching gig
-Facilities? I don't want to learn welding at a college where safety gear is "donated"!
There's been some important precedents set-- Black Mountain College had a similar model.
Fuck you.
I don't get why people think barter is more moral than money. I can see being against government endorsed fiat currency. But money allows complicated development to occur. You can use barter to build anything of substance. Money allows for figuring out the most efficient way to accomplish your goals.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I don't see where they are going to get teachers to teach this. Or at least full time teachers. I can't buy groceries and pay rent/mortgage/bills with cutlery, art, advice, etc...
Shills are pills lacking skills for useful fills. Bullshit mills of corrupt wills seeking thrills to pay the bills.Makes me ill, even still I want to kill, fillet and gill and poke a dill up their Jill.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
The less value paper money has, and the more regulation and taxation there is on commerce, the more of this you will see.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Im going to blow your mid.
I live in a country were college education is FREE FOR EVERYBODY. You can do medicine, lawyer, engineer, what you want, for 0 $
Originally, all transactions were based are barter, before human beings discovered that the use of money was a much more efficient means of matching up supply and demand. With barter, you need to match up with somebody else whose needs and supply are the reciprocal of your own. With money, your supply and demand get translated by "the market" into monetary values, and you can exchange goods with people halfway across the world. Explain to me again how barter is a superior system...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You need to file form 1099-B to report bartering income.. Enjoy paying tax to the government for that old cutlery you don't even want...
An exchange of valued commodities plays some role in the courtship rituals of most if not all mammal and avian species, meaning it predates the "oldest profession". I suppose you'll claim that since teaching a class doesn't amount to courtship then blowjobs sound more akin to prostitution?
In any case, we know the ancient greeks and roman boys rewarded their teachers with blowjobs and anal sex.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
To all the cretinous imbeciles suggesting this is a way to avoid taxes, you better stop misleading the rest of slashdot readers: http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=187920,00.html
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why get crazy in debt for a liberal arts degree when you can get real world skills for less of a financial outlay?
Or go to ITT Technical Institute or IvyTech and still go into debt.
Look, it's quite simple.
The money we use now is debt-based. How does money get created? Suppose you apply for a mortgage. This will involve you signing a contract that you will hand over part of your future economic productivity to the bank in exchange for currency. Where does that currency come from? Well, once you signed the contract, the pledge to hand over economic productivity very obviously has economic value, so the bank will "trade" it with the central bank to obtain currency.
So, the bank gets paid for exercising its privilege to convert a very abstract good which you "created" (a pledge) into money (which gets newly created in this transaction).
Now, the problem is: if that money is in circulation, there is SOMEONE who borrowed it and pays the interest on it - which in the end means routing part of the overall economic productivity towards the banks. What for? Basically for the service of being able to use a very widely accepted means of exchange.
Why use a high quality product if a lower quality cheaper product can do the same job just as well? When using barter rather than currency, one does indeed "avoid tax", but it is NOT tax paid to the state (which HAS to be paid on barter!), it's the hidden tax paid to banks via interest that is avoided.
I found this article on the subject quite enlightening:
http://permaculture.org.au/2011/06/22/when-to-not-use-money-and-why/
So, they read the Tiffany Aching books by Terry Pratchett, and went, "Hey, that system of education sounds really effective and workable"?
Legally you are supposed to pay tax on barter and those laws are there exactly to prevent what you describe. It just hasn't been profitable to enforce, and barter tends to be impractical for significant sums, but if too many transactions involved barter, the tax man will come.
By the way, this looks like the utopian anarchy from Ursula Le Guin on the book "the dispossessed". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed
(wikipedia has a link to the full text)
The UK Government recently issued a report about barter and multilateral trade as a way for businesses to save cash. A copy of the report can be found here: http://www.bit.ly/KSwB0P
"We are all aware of the shortcomings of conventional finance, so it shouldn’t surprise many to learn that the business world has continued to develop alternatives for some time. Both the general concept and the practical implementation of bilateral and multi-lateral barter and ‘nonmonetary’ exchange are not, in fact, new, but what may surprise people is to know how large a share of world trade takes place in non-monetary terms, more than 20% by some accounts, especially in the form of countertrade,"
Stuart Fraser
Chairman, Policy and Resources Committee for the City of London
5 December 2011
“Barter capacity exchange could act as a major stimulus to both domestic and international trade, something of great interest to all in Government and business seeking to promote sustainable growth and prosperity. Countertrade and barter accounts for a significant and growing percentage of global trade worth over US$ 100bn and accepted by over 100 countries as a form of commerce. London is at the heart of global financial services. It has the right talent and the right regulatory and business environment to ensure that high quality, value creating innovation of the sort which an international capacity exchange could represent, has the best opportunity to succeed.”
Andrew Levy
Managing Director, UK Trade and Investment
5 December 2011
It should be noted that the SWISS WIR have had a multilateral trade network oprerating as a complimentary currency for approximately 80 years. With more than 80,000 participants performing approximately 1.8 billion swiss francs per annum in transactions between them (Approximately 1% of Swiss GDP).
WIR has not only been successful but it has survived to the present and thrived because the system provides benefits beyond cushioning its members from economic downturns.
Other global multilateral barter exchange networks such as the Ormita Commerce Network Barter Exchange (http://www.ormita.com and http://www.ormitausa.com) offer the ability for businesses to exchange excess capacity for essential goods and services. monetises capacity in areas which are asset rich but cash poor. When credit is hard to come by, surplus capacities are often found wanting of a market. On the other hand, buyers for those products may exist but be unable to afford traditional forms of payment. If both buyer and seller suffer from excess capacity (or able to generate new sales at a lower incremental cost) then a trade can be made without a great deal of cash and the needs of both participants can be met.
As more cash expenses are offset in this manner the need for national currency is reduced accordingly and the profitability of each subsequent transaction rises.