You are the type of person who generally weighs benefits against costs, but the costs usually win. Family and friends look to you as a pillar of strength, and rightly so. Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time at an auction hoping to buy either a key chain with a built-in flashlight and panic button or a green and yellow striped sweater vest. Be on the lookout for poorly written technical manuals. You should consider shopping at stores or businesses beginning with the letter B, but do not buy any products with a serial number or product code containing the number 406261. Your preferred shopping venue is thrift stores. Your special symbol is the comma (,).

As a Brown Pragmatox, you are down-to-earth and practical. You are hard working and industrious. You are frugal to the point that you might even refrain from making a purchase that you really, really need. Doing so often causes problems down the road. You definitely go with function over form and substance over style.

A method of trading goods, commodities, or services, directly for one another without the use of money. Barter was the first type of market exchanged undertaken by human civilization as people advanced beyond self sufficiency in the satisfaction of their wants and needs. Modern economies still use a modest amount of barter to allocate resources. The key to a barter exchange is a double coincidence of wants, in which each side of the exchange wants what the other side has and has want the other side wants. A barter exchange tends to be less efficient that exchanges involving money.

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Mona Mallard Duct Tape Industries, the world's a leading producer of duct tape (that all-purpose, omni-present, shiny gray tape), is located right here in Shady Valley. Perhaps you've heard that they recently developed a new-fangled form of duct tape that's certain to revolutionize duct tape as we know it. This revolutionary development has, however, created a "situation" that we, pedestrian explorers of the economy, should consider. Mona Mallard's new duct tape uses "quagliminium," a relatively limited mineral found only in the quaint and courteous Republic of Northwest Queoldiola. Prior to this duct tape development, quagliminium had only one use, as lubricant for OmniStraight shoestring straighteners. The Northwest Queoldiolan supplies were sufficient to lubricate shoestring straighteners well into the year 3000. As a duct tape input, though, quagliminium deposits will be exhausted in a scant 50 years. Should we, could we, allow Mona Mallard to exhaust the supply of quagliminium? If they do, how will future generations lubricate their shoestring straighteners? Should we call for a moratorium on quagliminium use?
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