(09-30-2023, 05:29 AM)Grace Wrote: @"Snarl"#9 - I don't understand the precious metals thing unless it's brass which has an actual use for someone...
People will barter what they have for what they need until society rebuilds, or in any black market for those living outside of "society".
There are a lot of folks around who have a hankering for pretty, shiny baubles, same as theivin' crows do. Gold and silver don't have that value to me, because I can't eat 'em, but lots of folks take a different view of things. It'll go hard for those folks trying to trade trinkets to me for things I DO value, but they can just move on to someone else that likes shiny trinkets to do their trading, no harm done. They'll not get whatever they're looking for here for bits of shiny, but I'm sure they can find someone, somewhere, that they can get it from for trinkets.
I mean hell, the Europeans got all of Manhattan Island for 24 bucks worth of glass beads, so there is always someone around willing to trade value for pretty baubles.
But in colonial Virginia, hard money was hard to come by, so it was a regular occurrence for folks to get paid in tobacco instead, which was the local medium of exchange. I had an ancestor (Christopher Nutter) that got in a little trouble with the law in VA for stealing an Irish slave girl from the Custis family to marry her. He and she ran off to Maryland where he got a job for the colonial government there as an interpreter to the Nanticoke Indians. He was paid in tobacco, 1000 pounds a year, by the colonial government of Maryland for his services, rather than hard coin.
The thing about gold and silver, or any other medium of exchange, is that it has value for some, but not value for others. The value of a thing is defined ONLY by the value others place on it. If someone values my tobacco, for instance, then they'll bring something to trade that I value. Not gold or silver, but maybe a peck of beans, or a pound of lead, or something like that. Gold and silver have too high a melting point to melt into bullets, but lead is just right. I can't eat a silver quarter, but I can tuck into some soup beans and corn bread.
After the collapse, a fella could not hire me to secure his spread by offering shinies. I'd have no use for them. He'd have to pony up something I value in order to get me to work for him. For instance, he might be able to hire me for salary in ginseng, farm produce, or even hunting rights on his spread.
I've seen court documents where debts were settled in ginseng and hides. I've seen the records where Daniel McCune sold a wife he'd gotten tired of "for an averagable deer hide" - those sort of transactions are why a dollar is now called a "buck". Daniel Boone sold buffalo hides to the militia at Castlewood, VA, for powder, lead, flour, and coffee, the outstanding balance to be paid in coin "at some future date", which turned out to be the end of the war - Dunmore's War, not the Revolution... and to get that coin, payees had to travel all the way to Romney, in what is now West Virginia, to see the paymaster at the end of the war. No idea how many were actually willing to make that trip. My great great so many greats back grand dad (Adam O'Brien) did make that trip, because they owed him for 132 days service at 2 shillings six pence per day - a total of 16 pounds and 10 shillings - a kingly sum in those days, for scout work for the moving army on their way to Point Pleasant and destiny.
Other fellas reduced the amount that Lord Dunmore's government owed them in money by taking their muskets at the end of the war, which the government allowed but reduced their pay by 20 shillings - the value of the musket. Since the troops were getting paid one shilling and six pence a day, that musket they took was worth 13 1/3 day's marching or fighting. In modern terms, if one gets paid 500 dollars a week, that's $1333.00 worth of firearm, for what amounted to a shotgun shooting slugs... but they needed those muskets - there was a revolution coming just a couple years later, and a musket was faster to load than the rifles they carried normally... and that's an important consideration when other folks are shooting at you, and you want to be able to shoot back fast enough to stop them from doing that..
It's really all just a matter of what your vendor places a value on, whether a trade can be struck or not.
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