Barter Economies That Actually Worked (and the Ones That Got Crushed)

When money stops working, what do people do? They reinvent trade. This episode explores the most ambitious modern attempts to build barter-based systems — from the WIR Bank in Switzerland, a mutual credit network still thriving after 90 years, to Austria's "Miracle of Wörgl" that worked so well the central bank shut it down. We dig into Russia's bizarre post-Soviet industrial barter economy where factories paid workers in tires and the government accepted tax payments in hay. And we examine Argentina's trueque clubs, where millions of people created their own currencies overnight after the 2001 economic collapse. These aren't textbook history — they're strange, colorful experiments in what happens when official money disappears and communities have to improvise.