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If you limit exchanges to only those with reciprocal supply & demand then it becomes much less less likely to identify deals where people can use the service to
by shoo 6y ago
If you limit exchanges to only those with reciprocal supply & demand then it becomes much less less likely to identify deals where people can use the service to provide value for each other.
Assuming there are n different kinds of expert services, and each participant supplies one service and demands one service at random, then there is only a 1/n^2 probability that an arbitrary participant is able to enter into a reciprocal trade with you.
If you instead use some kind of credit system where providing service to participant X gives you credit that can be traded in later to obtain service from Y then suddenly each participant in market has 1/n of being able to reach deal with you. So by reinventing something that sounds suspiciously like money by allowing trading of debt/obligations for services we have made our expert network much more efficient at being able to identify and unlock productive economic exchanges between people.