Trading with anyone?

In 2001, a few months after graduation, I was invited to live in one republic of the former USSR for a little while, staying with a friend's family. The experience totally changed my life and I would very highly recommend it to anyone. See, in a largely subsistence economy, money was practically irrelevant. The rouble had collapsed and had instantly wiped away everyone's savings. In any given year, the family I was staying with would spend less than 20 dollars. Everything they needed, they either produced, or they neighbours would produce it and they would just depend on each other.

Say your cow was pregnant: your neighbour would supply you with milk, without thinking, and without keeping precise accounts. Come summer if you had lots of cherries, you'd share them with the whole village. While money practically did not exist, people felt very rich and shared with people poorer than themselves. Jesus was king, no contest: to everyone this was evident. Anybody who did not know this was obviously a bit backward. That or the poor soul had never received a proper schooling. It was criminal to raise a kid without this knowledge, and without them having access to God. All the time I sat back while my neurone-connections were slowly getting rewired by their way of life. Mostly, I was amazed.

Admittedly, that's a rather lengthy introduction for the one idea which I wanted to introduce in this post. The people of that country did not understand capitalism! It's the weirdest thing in the world! We went to the market once and I saw a musical instrument which I wanted to buy. I could afford 100 times the asking price but they would not sell it to me. Uh? What? Even if I offer a relatively huge price for it? What's wrong with you?

It turns out that they would not sell it to me because (a) I could not play it, (b) they had put lots of work into it and it was not getting turned into a souvenir for some young French girl and (c) they wanted to sell it to a local person like themselves whom they knew was doing some honest work and to whom it would be valuable: they wanted to know where the money was coming from that would buy their musical instrument. It was a "no", and a very firm "no" at that.

When we got back to my friend's home he told me that he was ashamed of my behaviour. Hours afterwards his face was still red with shame when we discussed it. I really wanted the instrument so I had offered more and more money, to convey that I wanted it, that I valued it. In my mind I was saying: "it's a great instrument, I would pay lots to have it". I did not understand the language or the culture well enough to realise that it did not work like that.

Earlier today, I was thinking: Wesley, Wesley, Wesley... The problem is that if you want to give a lot you have to earn a lot, and no matter where you earn your money from, it's always from somewhere bad. I have a public sector job, but the taxes that pay for it were generated by big businesses, so it's hardly an ethical option. The people that sell us ethical coffee and organic cotton T-shirts are getting paid by this very same money of dubious origin.

That's until we start thinking like our guy, until we refuse to trade with just about anyone. Until we want to know where the money that pays for our goods and services was generated and how. Just how countercultural is THAT?

(And here for an interesting historical reference)