Long ago i worked on an idea i called Barter Bucks. It was a computer aided barter system. It would figure out what you offered, and what you wanted, and work out a trading solution. It even had BBs (copper shot) as a wealth storage mechanism.
This was all easy. I could just copy e-bay, and…
I worked out that nobody really had items to barter with.
Nobody made anything. Well, nothing real.
Sure, you can find handmade leather boots, small batch coffee roasters, Lavender Oil and all kinds of knick-knacks, but anything real was just repaired/refurbished. All the stuff you could get at Wallymart, needed to get at Wallymart, because you needed it, was surprisingly lacking.
If you want bitcoin usage to go up. If you really want an alternative economy. Then, we really need to start manufacturing things. We, the people who want an alternative economy.
Distributed Manufacturing Refrigerators
I have found that not many people have the knowledge and the skill to build an entire refrigerator. It is simpler than rebuilding a typical car from the 60s, and men did that all the time back then. But, we've lost those skills, and the drive to tinker with things. And manufacturing has made sure everything is a black-box, with warning stickers saying "no user repairable parts inside"
So, one of my ideas on fixing this is breaking down the pieces into chunks that a single average guy could understand and build.
One could get a small CNC mill and machine a scroll compressor out of brass. Then you just need the gears, and a motor to drive it. A case to hold it, and a pressure vessel. Each is relatively easy.
Then you get someone to make a metal, insulated box. Someone to make shelves and drawers. And then send all these parts to someone to assemble them all, and viola, you have home-made refrigerators.
Every person in this loose assembly of people will have a very low overhead modern manufacturing job.
Working In Your Garage
Each person in this network will have about $5,000 investment into tools to make each part. And they can run it in their garage.
At first, they will probably only spend part of a weekend making parts. And maybe that is all they want to do. Run a part time business.
As more people come join the network, there will be many suppliers for each part. And, as things go, will probably be geographically spread out. So, an fridge assembler may source parts from several supplier in several areas, depending on need, availability and shipping. (and anyone repairing the fridge, can do they same)
Working in your garage lowers your overhead. If orders aren't coming in, then it just sits their collecting dust. This is something that a full blown company can't do. They have to have a minimum amount of orders, or they go bankrupt.
Making this way of making fridges quite resilient to market cycles of booms and busts. And difficult to put out of business, which is what the big corporations love to do.
The Alternate Economy
To have an alternative economy, you need BOTH, an alternative payment system, and an alternative goods manufacturing system. You need both money, and the things you want to spend that money on.
And, since we really do not have any alternative to manufactured goods, we are stuck in their system. Even if we kinda go around their payment schema, at some point, it gets converted back to bank money, so that the store can pay for another LGappliance.
Every appliance is actually ridiculously simple. We just need to start, and maybe we need to aim for the luxury/top end/custom area so that we have enough profit margin to overcome the price undercutting that is done by "manufacturing in China"
This can be done, and needs to be done.
We have to complete the circle. Bitcoin is great, but it does not make a new economy by itself.
Maybe with Trump putting tariffs in place, this idea of manufacturing, in a distributed way, appliances may become not only a reality, but an easy reality.
It is really hard to sell a fridge for $2000 when the same costs $1000 at the big box store. Even if you can get repair parts for far cheaper. But, if there is a $750 tariff on it, then we can sell the advantages of buying local, and repairing local.
Distributed manufacturing will probably permeate all markets and take over. Especially as the world-wide distribution system has failures, and the just in time production models get serious rekt from supply shortages.
So, those shouting on X that we need to spend bitcoin, are only half right. We need spend those bitcoin with people that aren't just going to hand it over to the banksters.