BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – Javier Goglino, 48, a thin man with a white beard, sits at a bar in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. While the world’s stock markets wobble, the United States tries to avoid default and massive protests shake European cities, Goglino says his community has been protecting itself.
“We are prepared for the economic crisis,” Goglino says.
Goglino is neither an economist nor a political analyst. He is an engineer. But he didn’t let that stop him from creating a bartering system, christened “Proyecto Mutuo,” or “Mutual Project,” in his community of Martínez, a Buenos Aires suburb.
Mutual Project is a system in which members can exchange goods and services instead of money. Each member of the community has the option to offer a service or goods in exchange for “merits,” which later help them to acquire new goods and services. The merits register virtually in the participants’ accounts.
Goglino studied electrical engineering in Buenos Aires and is pursuing a master’s degree in renewable energy at the National University of Salta. But he describes the details of Mutual Project with the certainty of an economic expert, or at least someone who studied the subject in detail before undertaking the project.
“We began to outline the idea at the end of 2005 together with a group of parents from the school where our children go,” Goglino says. “And finally everything began to roll in November of 2008 after much reading and contacting different experts on the subject.”
Goglino says he’s proud of no longer having to go to the supermarket to buy food with money. Now, he can buy fresh food with merits from other members of the Mutual Project community. In exchange for the food, he and his wife offer piano and flute concerts. His wife also makes soap to exchange for merits. Their children then use the merits to buy items such as cookies, bread and water from their school’s grocery store.
“The idea is that it strengthens the community ties because, in order to operate, one has to look to the rest of the community and see what it offers,” Goglino says.
Members of the Mutual Project community exchange goods and services in order to reduce their reliance on money. Although some members say spending the merits can be challenging because the community is still growing, Goglino says creativity is key to expanding the system’s offerings. Economic experts say the current global financial crisis creates a need for alternative currencies like this, and even governments have gotten involved in promoting them.
International monetary expert Miguel Yasuyuki Hirota estimates that there are 5,000 bartering systems operating around the world. Hirota, who lives in Fukuoka, Japan, began investigating alternative monetary systems in 1999 and has since been involved with developing them in more than a dozen countries.
Goglino says he consulted Hirota when developing the Mutual Project. Goglino estimates that there are about 10 to 15 other bartering systems across Argentina.
Hirota says that one of the most widespread types of bartering systems around the world is the time bank, in which members offer their knowledge and skills in exchange for the knowledge and skills of the other members of the community. But unlike Goglino’s Mutual Project, the exchange in the time banks is limited to services and excludes goods.
“The key point is that one creates currency in the instant of the exchange,” Goglino says. “There is not a monetary authority that says, ‘Now I am going to produce [money].’ In this way, the currency is created in the fair amount in order to pay the transaction.”
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