YACK on: Barter Island
Grant Sanders
You'd have to be blind not to see it. Money dominates this little community. More than anywhere else, it seems, money is what matters here. Want to build a massive expansion of the Point Breeze hotel? All you need is millions to design it and get it approved through the town boards and build it and then people with more millions will come and stay there. Want to keep a country road from being paved and a subdivision from being built? Write a check for $26.5 million to buy out the developer and make everyone happy. Want to run a TV station here? Attract big-money advertisers with the promise of putting their messages in front of very wealthy eyeballs. Want to live comfortably for the rest of your life? Create a business that caters to the super rich. Not the merely wealthy. The mega wealthy. The people who have so much money they could afford anything they desire. It's par for the course in a place where the mega rich are elbowing out Nantucket's old money kind-ofrich, buying their $4 million summer shacks and putting $8 million palaces in their place. It's pretty stunning, when you think about it.

It's especially stunning for those of us who are simply here, raising our kids and buying groceries and going to work every day. Our roads get wider and smoother and harder, our views get crowded, our fishing and hiking spots become fenced in and our costs to live here go up and up and up with the need for more sewer connections and fire trucks and police cruisers and everything else that is required because we continue to grow. Thanks to money.

Of course, it's not money that's all that bad per se. A $20 bill carries no inherent evil with it. The problem lies in the hearts of people who want to "leverage" this place. Make a buck from it. Squeeze it. Shake it until money falls from the scrub oaks and pitch pines. These are the people with the win-at-all-costs attitudes that turn a community into a resort community, and then into merely a resort. They sap the soul of this place the same way they gut the soul of a historic home and replace it with modern blue board and plaster, and Viking ranges and soaking tubs and climate-controls and flat-screen, wall-mounted TVs.

The solution: I'd like to propose that we ban the use of money on Nantucket, forever.

We already know from reading the New York Times that Dr. Lepore will perform surgery in exchange for a goat and seven chickens. (Tim, if you're reading this, I have a hernia that needs repairing. Would you accept a late-model squeaky SUV in exchange?) And we've all heard stories about how one carpenter will frame his friend the plumber's new shed dormer in exchange for a newly plumbed outdoor shower. And if you've been on yackon.com, you know that a lot of free ads go up in hopes of an unspecified reciprocal favor, or a round of beers in the future. This island already operates, at some level, on the barter system. To the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, I would estimate.

But if we outlawed the use of money on this island entirely, and made everyone trade goods and services, suddenly the community would be equalized in a truly interesting way. People with skills would suddenly grow in worth and social stature while the leisure class would generally become less valuable members of the community.

Imagine a person pulling into the harbor with his huge yacht only to be told by the harbormaster that he can enter Nantucket harbor, but in exchange he must pick up trash with the DPW for six hours during his stay here. Or being told that the price of five bags of groceries at the super market would be to go out into the parking lot and collect all of the shopping carts that shoppers were too lazy to return when they were finished with them and then restock the dog food aisle.

Real estate transactions would soon become interesting trades for oil paintings, or the promise of earnings from blue grass recordings, or a pledge for babysitting or lawncare services into the year 2023.

Both banks would go out of business. The TV stations and newspapers would start running more ads for local food stores, car dealers, propane purveyors and gas stations in order to cash in on the trade opportunities and would stop running ads for investment firms and off-island real estate opportunities that require money or credit. And greed would be replaced by a sincere desire to acquire something by working hard in exchange. Kind of like the way things used to be. A community that cares about the people in it more than the things it acquires.

Yes, Barter Island would be a wonderful place to live. I'd pay good money to see that in my lifetime.

YACK on. I

Grant Sanders is the host of YACK, The Nantucket Online Community at www.yackon.com and he writes this column in exchange for being invited to The Nantucket Independent cookout every year. His views are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of The Nantucket Independent. Or his wife.