Also what the fuck would a nuclear engineer barter exactly?

And would that mean a pencil factory worker would be paid in pencils?

The Idea works on paper, that's why it's so appealing to some people. But when you actually look at the nitty gritty it fails on every level. At most it can work on the very small scale, maybe a dozen people or so, after that you start to need an armed bloated government to tell everyone what to do.