The future comes on like a cheap and relentless drug.
One bought almost by accident, while bartering for something much dearer to your heart, something much harder to find in that godawful nation, and something too expensive to buy, even if your currency was converted to theirs and then doubled for luck.
You walk away from the seller, he still grinning, you with an unsure crooked smile. Is it possible that both parties to a transaction over here can be satisfied? Is there not always a loser in every deal?
Maybe not. Maybe in this market wilderness where differing currencies and nationalities meet, maybe here was that chance for all to prosper, for all to be happy.
The spender from the foreign land was prepared to give the seller twice his normal price. For the buyer the product was still a fraction of what he spent back at home. For the seller, an item fetched double its normal price, the second price being 100% profit.
So there is a time when both parties to a transaction can benefit...It will never be a permanent happiness, because demand expands to fill the gap and markets push the sellers' price down at the same moment it forces buyers' price up...
If one was so motivated one could dedicate their life to a pursuit of these pre-market economies.With no more tools than a passport and a tool for receiving news (papers in pre-net countries, the net elsewhere).
Seeing where economies were prone to the condition, one need only head in that direction, purchase a few trinkets and then be off to sell them in a more stable economy, more than likely, one you call "home".
So that day I headed home, crooked smile, future in my pocket, and on it came before too long.