Kyle MacDonald had a paperclip. One red paperclip, a dream...and bills to pay. Oh, and a very patient girlfriend who was paying the rent while he was once again “between jobs.”
Kyle wanted to be able to provide for himself and his girlfriend, Dominique. He wanted to own his own home. He wanted something bigger than a paperclip.
So he put an ad on Craigslist, the popular classifieds website, with the intention of trading that paperclip for something better.
A girl in Vancouver offered him a fish pen in exchange for his paperclip. He traded the fish pen for a doorknob and the doorknob for a camping stove. Before long he had traded the camping stove for a generator for a neon sign.
Not long after that, avid snow-globe collector, and television star Corbin Bernsen, and the small Canadian town of Kipling were involved, and Kyle was on to bigger and better things.
In One Red Paperclip, Kyle takes you on a journey around the globe as he moves from paperclip holder to homeowner in just fourteen trades.
... Quirky and inspirational, this story of a regular guy and a small, red, now-legendary paperclip will have you looking at your office supplies-and your life-in a whole new way.
When I read stuff like that I think there is something strange and wonderful about Americans. But, it also sounds very decadent to me. Frankly, it disturbs me a bit. You know what I mean? Are we just having fun, or are we laying the groundwork for the eventual collapse of all ground?
PUNDITARIAN COUNTERS: I don't get your take on this at all. What's decadent about free trade? How is this story fundamentally different from the story of Dick Whittington and His Cat?
Far from revealing decadence, this story highlights the vigor and vitality of the free market. At least that's how I see it.
PUNDITARIAN COUNTERS: I don't get your take on this at all. What's decadent about free trade? How is this story fundamentally different from the story of Dick Whittington and His Cat?Far from revealing decadence, this story highlights the vigor and vitality of the free market. At least that's how I see it.
Every body involved in the trades got something out of it.
ReplyDeletei.e. something s/he wanted more.
Entertainment, something to do, the nice feeling you get when you do a good deed. An item preferred over the item traded. Reflected glory.
That is what is so neat about the free market. It can satisfy needs that are hard to quantify.
YES!
ReplyDeletebuyer ANDS seller get what they want.
it's ALWAYS even-steven
like foreign trade.
HEN CE....
there is no "foreign trade imbalance".
we get goods; they get $.
even-steven.
See, that is the part of it which I think is strange and wonderful.
ReplyDeleteBut really, check out this analysis, which I think, perhaps, drives even further into the heart of this story:
"What is going on here? It is a question that Mr. MacDonald never addresses, but we can try. It's unusual to encounter a market in which the participants have neither a strong desire for the items they bargain for nor any wish to convert them into cash. Yet to a large degree, this is what Mr. MacDonald has created. Rhawnie and Corinna were not in the market for a red paper clip; Annie was not on the prowl for a fish pen. (An exception here is Mr. Bernsen, who is apparently always interested in new snow globes.) Most of the people in the red-paper-clip chain could not have easily sold their items for cash; in any case, they didn't want to. At last report, Annie still has her pen--after all, as she says, it's "famous"--and Rhawnie and Corinna held onto their paper clip. They returned it to Mr. MacDonald only so that he could twist it into an engagement ring for the redoubtable Dom.
True, some of Mr. MacDonald's trading partners did actually want the goods being offered. Ms. Gnant and Mr. Hubbard were happy to pick up the recording contract and the movie role. But in such cases, it's really the traders themselves who are the goods; their goal was to become known. Mr. MacDonald warmed to this aspect of his endeavor, too, becoming ecstatic when "Good Morning America" gave air time to his exploits. Even Annie was delighted when her local ABC affiliate allowed her to publicize her views on "challenging the concept we have of value."
So is the world of the red paper clip a kind of labor market, in which the participants offer up their talents? Not really. The people who won the recording contract and movie role merely had something wacky to trade, not necessarily talent. And Mr. MacDonald and Annie were offering just themselves--as fodder for content-hungry media.
So if the world of the red paper clip is neither a typical goods nor a typical labor market, then what is it? Perhaps it's the world of another Alice, the world through the looking glass. On one side of the mirror, the side where most of us live, we each make our way in the marketplace based on our own unique bundles of ability and work experience. The object of our quest--money--is just the opposite. It is utterly interchangeable; a dollar is a dollar, and we don't know or care about where it's been or what it's done.
On the other side of the looking glass, the world of one red paper clip, things operate in reverse. Here it is individuals who become interchangeable and their past experience irrelevant. Content is content, and anyone can fill the bill for a recording contract or film role. The objects of the quest, by contrast, are unique or idiosyncratic--fish pens and doorknobs come across in Mr. MacDonald's book as having more personality than their owners--and are valued precisely for where they've been and what they've "done." Why else would Rhawnie and Corinna hang onto the paper clip? It's because, as Mr. MacDonald says, it has "a great story."
Ultimately, Mr. MacDonald wants us to marvel at the fact that he exchanged a paper clip for a house, and so we do. Still more marvelous is the exchange that made it possible: between the qualities of people and of the objects they possess."
At best, one could say that the worse elements of this process are Dadaistic Capitalism.
ReplyDeleteAt worst, one could say that this is Postmodernism creeping into the Capitalistic system.
Which is stronger, Capitalism, or the rot of Postmodernism?
Capitalism is, I believe.
I would love to hear what you guys have to say about my comments now.
Reliapundit edited the post, so you guys didn't get the full flavor of what I was trying to get across.
punditarian's comment WAS made on the full version.
ReplyDeleteanyhow... it's not a new story; we're all familiar with it when it happened.
ReplyDeleteSo, you're saying this story falls outside the parameters of what you want posted at this blog?
ReplyDeleteOk, if so.
I thought you'd appreciate it. To me it smacks of creeping Postmodernism.
free tarde is good.
ReplyDeletewhat people trade might not be.
if i am not in the trade, then i do not care.