Gunner Quinn
(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.)
Location, location, location
So you assemble enough barter goods to open a small general store, where, when and how do you trade these goods? Living in a rural area with lots of Mennonite, Amish, and Hutterite families, many of whom own and operate their own small businesses now each one of these small businesses is a potential location for commerce or barter. There is value in forming business relationships now and maintaining those relationships in a post-SHTF world. Being a familiar and trusted neighbor before the SHTF will put you in a better position to negotiate post-SHTF. Many people do not grasp that business is about relationships.
Reverting to local trade
Packing a truck up and heading to the local flea market 20 miles away probably will not be a good business plan post-SHTF. Being able to trade within a 5 to 7 mile radius of your home is a good assumption. Humans are said to be “creatures of habit”. If a person goes to ABC grocery store before the SHTF they will try to go after SHTF too. We have all probably traveled through small towns where Main Street consist of a post office, pharmacy, hardware store, tavern and an antique shop. Will “Main Street” still be the center of commerce post-TEOTWAWKI? At some point, it will be.
Immediately after TEOTWAWKI most trade will be very localized like within a mile of your home or among your closest neighbors. Trips that require long distances maybe challenging due to lack of resources like fuel, limited numbers of vehicles that are able to operate, security issues and a general fear of going beyond one’s smaller neighborhood community. As time goes on and supplies are used up locally that area of trade will expand. People will start to figure out how to transport goods to markets, security will be re-established to deal with criminal elements that threaten trade and commerce.
Return of the Bulletin Board
We frequent many Amish-owned businesses and other businesses that have lots of Amish customers. What all these businesses have in common is a bulletin board. These boards are full of those offering “taxi” services to the Amish, livestock for sale, other services and items for sale, including firearms. One of the small towns with a large local Amish population even has a large (3’x8’) bulletin board on Main Street. Bulletin boards will fill that gap left by the sudden disappearance of the internet and social media platforms. Having paper and different writing utensils are indeed a prep worth storing. Tape, push-pins, staple gun, and laminate sheets will also be good items to help you “advertise” your services or wares.
Here’s your Sign
Besides bulletin boards, there will be a reemergence of roadside signs. Sure there are signs along our roads now but in a post-SHTF world neon/LED signs will not work and no one will be around to change out the signs on the large billboards. What will return are the smaller signs like the ones that dotted the countryside advertising “Burma Shave”. The signs might not be as witty as the “Burma Shave” signs but the signs will be everywhere advertising items and services.
Having some basic materials in your preps to make signs will be useful. Exterior paint, paint brushes, wood and stakes can help with your post-TEOTWAWKI trade. Let us not forget that one of the most iconic advertising campaigns was that of “MAIL POUCH” advertisements painted on barns across America. Farmers actually received one or two dollars a year for their barns being used as a billboard. The tobacco company would also paint 2 sides of the barn as part of the payment. This does not sound like a lot but when adjusted for inflation at one or two dollars would be like $50 today and the farmer also did not have to worry about painting the barn himself saving money in paint and time. So do not discount this old advertising method making a return.
Establishing Prices
One of the difficult tasks will probably be determining how to value and/or price your goods and services. One of the biggest factors in determining the value of your goods and/or services comes down to supply and demand. If you are the only person with 12 gauge shotgun shells in a twenty-mile radius you can pretty much “name your price”. That is until you need a course of antibiotics from the only guy who has them in a 100-mile radius. How will you know what the supply of items is in your area? Again, people will advertise, there will also be word of mouth but the other gauge is what was the availability of those items in your local area before TEOTWAWKI? This comes back to knowing your neighbors and community or what some people call an “area study”. For example, the nearest gas station near us is 6 miles away. However, being surrounded by farms there are a lot of fuel tanks. Most of them are filled with off-road diesel. Regular gasoline is not as plentiful as diesel. Hence, gasoline may well be worth more than diesel, locally.
Something else to ponder about how much your barter goods are worth is burn rate of those items and the availability to replace those items. After an EMP, candles will probably be widely used for light. Candles are something that many rural farm area will be able to replace either by making candles with beeswax or tallow. Candles will be in high demand but because they can be replenished even after SHTF, they will not be an extremely high-value item. However, take something like a .22 long rifle round, I am confident that 90% of the houses in a 20-mile radius of me have a box of .22 long rifle cartridges. But unlike candles, there is probably not a person in that 20-mile radius that reload or manufacture a .22 long rifle round. So we have, at the onset of TEOTWAWKI, high demand for .22 long rifle ammo but we also have a good supply (90% of homes have 50+ rounds). As people use their .22 ammo up for shooting small game, target practice and even self-defense it cannot be readily replaced. Thus we will have a high demand, low supply situation.
Listening for gunfire around your neighborhood may be a good indicator of how much ammunition people are burning through. So perhaps 6 months after TEOTWAWKI, the .22 long rifle ammunition becomes extremely valuable. So what is stuff worth? Each person decides that for themselves. Without “prices” and a universally recognized unit of trade (a dollar) worth will come down to each individual’s decision. To me, even after 6 months after TEOTWAWKI, 22 ammunition will not be very valuable to me so someone offering it to me in trade for something will not convince me to trade my antibiotics for it. However, there is a possibility that I take the .22 ammunition in trade and then use it to barter for something else my pre-SHTF gut feeling is I would not do that but if it was one of my neighbors and they really needed what I had, I probably would. The point is that each transaction (trade) will be different, based on the haves and needs of the two people bartering.
What might be useful, is having a community bulletin board that records and displays trades. This might sound odd but this is pretty much how prices for many farm goods are determined today. The USDA puts out a market report that records and shows what price ranges eggs are being sold at in different parts of the country. Some states do the same with fresh fruits and vegetables being sold off the farm or at farmers markets. Locally, we have a weekly advertisement paper that includes “market reports” from a few of the local livestock auction houses. These reports usually provide prices ranges (high and low) or an average. For example, cows are reported as the highest price paid and the lowest price paid while 100-pound bags of corn are reported as the average price. This information helps both the seller and the buyer and it helps stabilize trade.
With a community bulletin board that displays recent trades a person selling gets an idea of what his/her potatoes are worth and the buyer gets a general idea of what to expect to pay. The information can also be used to forecast demand. If few potatoes are being offered for trade perhaps the next planting season more people will plant potatoes. Prices/value may decline but that just helps stabilize your local economy. The information does not (nor should it) include the names of who made the trade. So if one trade was for a bushel basket of white potatoes for 10 rounds of .22 long rifle and another trade was for 5 gallons of diesel fuel for 10 rounds of .22 long rifle we can start to get an idea of what is needed and what is available. This type of information will go a long way to rebuilding a local economy.
One of the basic premises of entrepreneurship is identifying a problem/need and then offering a solution. The bottom line on setting prices of for your goods is what are people will to value them at as well as what do you value them at. Someone offering a nice pair of winter Gore-Tex boots in size 7 is not going to be able to command as much as a person with the same boot in size 10.5 since 10.5 is a more common size.
Security
Obviously, security and operational security will need to be planned for and considered when engaging in post-SHTF trade. The benefit of keeping trade to a small area is that word will still travel. If someone in the neighborhood is dishonest or rips someone else off, then word will travel. Without the rule of law, being ripped off or cheated on a business deal may have much worse consequences them being reported to the Better Business Bureau. Roving gangs could be a real concern, especially in the first few weeks after TEOTWAWKI, but as time goes on the criminals will be removed from society. Signs, advertisements on bulletin boards, and word of mouth can all send people you do not know your way.
Keeping your post-TEOTWAWKI trade goods separate from your family’s store of supplies will help secure them. Setting up shop on a different property may be a good way to protect your family’s supplies. The need for post-SHTF security is a foregone conclusion, what you will need to determine is do you have the ability to secure both a “trading post” where you offer your goods for trade, and your home. Traveling to and from a location with your goods also places you at risk for ambush. Every option will have risk, only you can determine your risk appetite.
Some Closing thoughts
The better prepared you are, the less of a need you will have to barter post-SHTF, hence your risks are lower for something to go wrong while conducting trade. Scouting out venues and trying to determine site security, fairness, types of goods being offered and those in need will help. Do not just scout out a trading venue once or twice but several times. What is normal? Are people talking about getting ambushed or robbed on their way to or back from the venue? Anyone people talking about one or more unscrupulous traders?
Expect the unexpected and plan for contingencies. Do not wait until you are in a dire situation to start bartering for something you may be low on. For example, if your stocks of antibiotics are becoming low, start looking before you or someone in your family becomes sick, it puts you in a much better position when you absolutely do not need something right away.
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