When you remove money from a marketplace, strange things happen

2 points by vibenex 8 hours ago

Has anyone here tried building or studying non-monetary marketplaces?

We’ve been exploring what happens when you strip price out of an exchange system entirely, when value is defined by attention or effort instead of currency. The results have been surprisingly unpredictable.

How do you measure fairness when there’s no price signal? Some people give more than they get, others act more generously because there’s no transaction history to optimize against. It feels like reputation, not ROI, becomes the governing logic.

We started with a simple idea where people could exchange exposure, participation or experiences instead of money. A café might offer free meals in return for content, a gym might trade sessions for Google reviews, all voluntary, no fixed value.

When you remove money, people negotiate differently. They’re less defensive, but also less predictable. Interactions feel more genuine.

Has anyone else noticed similar behavioral shifts when incentives stop being financial?

ggm 7 hours ago

You didn't remove money. You only removed the appearance of an exchange of value. The gym wanted the revenue downstream from the review. The Cafe wanted the revenue downstream from the review. All you did is remove payment from a customer, but now the value proposition shifts from a sale from party A to customer B to a service of value to party A provided by customer B, but the actual value is .. what? What evidence? What recourse? Is it worth more or less than the food or the gym session?

If all that happens is floods of insta princesses consume chai latte at the cafes expense for shit reviews, you poisoned the well.

And a real world cost in milk and spice was consumed. This is not a money free situation, you just ignored some externalities to your model.

  • vibenex 2 hours ago

    That's the point! Money is just a symbolic intermediary for value.

    "Content is the new Currency"

    The traded asset is narrative. A party gives something tangible and in return gets visibility, context and social proof.

    You're right in asking the evidence of value in such transactions and we're exploring just that.

    In our case, the exchange stays simple, social media content in return for experiences or services. A business describes what they want to offer and people apply if they're interested. The business then chooses whom to invite. No matching algorithm or enforced pairing, entirely self-selected.

    The café still spends milk and spice, but now the transaction feedback loop runs through social proofing, not accounting.

    If visibility offsets material cost, is it measurable? Or just disguise it under a different incentive structure?

toomuchtodo 8 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5,000_Years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barter

  • vibenex 7 hours ago

    YES!!! more books to destabilize my reading queue. have you read these and what are your hot takes from them?