What was needed for successful bartering settlement?

Answer 1

Direct exchange requires that you have something that somebody else wants, and that THAT PERSON have something else that YOU want - and that you both agree that what you have is worth what he has.

A bartering system requires that you have something that somebody else wants, and that somebody else has something that YOU want - and that you can trade one thing for another, even if you need to get three or more people who all swap things. It works pretty well in a small farming community, for example; you have grain from your crops, and you trade your grain for eggs from your neighbor's chickens. Then you can bake a cake and give it to the blacksmith, in exchange for shoeing your horse.

Outside of a small community, barter breaks down; you need something that nobody in town can make or grow. Traveling merchants may provide luxuries like jewelry in exchange for food and lodging, but what if the merchant has just left - or your crops aren't ready to harvest? Every larger society has developed a medium of exchange in which everybody agrees that this object represents a value that can be traded, and to an extent, they all agree on what is worth what. Here in Earth, and in most places, the medium of exchange, the "object of value", is gold and silver. When stamped into disks of standardized size and weight, and marked with the maker's seals, it becomes a "coin", and forms the basis for money. But "money" is only of value for what you can DO with it. You can't eat gold; you can only trade it for something else. It's a marker for keeping score.

Today, the markers for keeping score are bits, ones and zeroes in a computer system.

Answer 2

Bartering allowed for the diversification of labor. People could specialize in providing a certain particular good and trade for others instead of being required to learn how to do everything.

Answer 3

In order for bartering to take place between settlements, travel between the settlements was required. Goods and services were also required for any exchange on both side.

Answer 4

a large, wealthy middle class