Swap

Yesterday on Twitter and Facebook I asked, "If you could swap any one thing for something else, what would it be?" I was surprised that most people who answered took my question lightly. "One old sock for the Batmobile." But I was serious.

So I'm curious. Does anyone think of swapping stuff for stuff?

Like, I think I'd totally swap my 15" MacBook Pro for a nice (not perfect, but nice) center console fishing boat, which seems like an unlikely swap (from the boat owner's perspective) but not an unimaginable swap. I'd probably swap my Mazda 929 that is old but working very nice for a VW Eurovan in similar condition.

Would you swap something for something? Or is swapping just not on your radar?

Comments

[nfmgirl]

My boyfriend swapped his Mac for a recumbent bike. So there are definitely people out there still doing it.

[mbamike]

Last week I swapped an old CD for a book using swaptree.com. Pretty cool site for trading books, music, movies and video games. I recommend it!

[Ember]

I would swap my share of investment in a house in a town for a shepherds hut under a tree in a field with a hedge round it.

UK planning law wouldn't let me do it and as the rest of the house is owned by my husband it wouldn't do my marriage much good, and there is no brisk trade in houses of any kind in the UK right now... but, since you asked...

[Stephanie]

There are lots of things I would like to swap. I would start by swapping my laundry basket chock full of clothes, shoes and accessories that I don't want or need any longer for camping gear. I would swap massage therapy services for fresh food from a garden. It would be nice to see more groups out there just for people interested in trading rather than selling.

[Dave Bruno]

Hmm. The answers (here and on FB) have me stumped. It seems like a lot of people feel that there is a hassle factor in trying to swap something.

Weird. Was it a pain to trade baseball cards or marbles as a kid? What changed with age?

[Daniel]

I swap books, DVD's, and CD's all the time- check out Swaptree.com!

[Somebody]

What changed?

Money. We now appear to have it.

(Follows a slight rant.)

So much easier to just buy (and perhaps preferably from a shop, as long as it's cheap) something with a set price than seek out and negotiate a trade (or go hunting for second-hand items).

Transaction costs in time, effort, etc., in other words. Also, the will (not in itself a bad thing) to take care of number one in not being taken advantage of in a trade, or in not being willing to part from an item without feeling one's getting enough in return.

(Call it greed, call it instinct for self-preservation, that's a question of perspective (and, if one is willing to consider it, scale). Either way, we no longer have the time, will, nor too many good incentives, to 'haggle' over the value of our 'baseball cards'.)

*

On a related note, "old" / discarded stuff has so little (perceived) resale value it's too cheap just to ditch it and forget it. Some of it _could_ of course have more _swapping_ value than the minimal resale value, but not all of it.

I've been thinking the same goes for recycling. It's relatively easy to (try to) obtain a clear conscience by recycling one's wastes and rejects, e.g. by giving old stuff away for charity. "Ditch it and forget it", as it were.

But (I'll say I've no doubt that you haven't thought of this as well yourself, considering the whole 100TC) it's so much harder to _live_ for oneself on those recycled items - it's perhaps not considered dignified enough, practical enough, or any other plausible reason - or, conversely, put a sensible limit on one's purchases in the first place (thus avoiding the future need to 'recycle' too many unneeded items). Recycling is a two-sided affair.

As a final note - I wrote in the beginning that we "appear to" have money. You probably see why, as you've also yourself talked about how we're not paying enough for what we're consuming - i.e. the monetary price doesn't cover all pertinent costs.

And thus it is that we end up consuming more than we might.

[Francoism]

I would like to swap my MacBook Air for a P series Sony Laptop.