To think we should promote a barter culture?

[FiveMetresUp]

I was just reading on another thread about people who struggle to cook as they are so busy or just generally not very good at cooking. There are also other people who are great cooks but rubbish and cleaning. There are also other people who have skills such as hairdressing or decorating.

Do you think we should promote a culture where we can swap skills rather than paying for things?

I used to be in a LETS group. It was full of people offering aura cleansing and life coaching and very short on people offering anything I would want. When I left I had given a lot of time to people and had not managed to get anything back.

I find it better to cooperate with people I know. Share items, do favours. We have a group of 4 households and share streaming services, lifts to/from the train station, borrow cars/tools, help each other out with our areas of expertise. It works better with a small group who share values and mindset.

In my experience, people have tradeable skills are using them to earn money, and the people who want to trade are trying to swap low skilled/low value activities for higher value ones.

Most people can do things like cooking, cleaning, gardening, "well enough", or can learn to improve them quite easily they arent willing to trade their own valuable skills to outsource the easier jobs.

I once had a housemate who decided we should do this. She would cut my hair and in return I would basically pay all the household bills. I'm not sure how many haircuts she thought I needed, but I moved out not long after I realised she seriously thought I would agree to it!