Towards a Gifting Culture
Timothy Wilken, MD
Yesterday, I posted Eric Steven Raymond's article The Hacker Milieu as Gift Culture as a preface to a series of articles on Gifting, Gifting Networks, Gifting Exchanges, Gifting Economys, etc..
As children we all taught that it is better to give than to receive. Certainly, that seems like an excellent philosophy for making close relationships and living in the social world.
"It is Better To Give Than To Receive"
Early Christians lived in a world far different from ours. Lots of people, in and out of the church, suffered on a daily basis without any "safety nets" between them and poverty. But Christians were especially susceptible to deprivation since discipleship took away any last vestiges of help due to the alienation from family and nation. One of the worst financial decisions to be made by anyone could be that of becoming a Christian. Yet it is from this crucible of suffering that Luke draws one of the greatest themes of the Book of Acts: benevolence. New Testament Christianity forever becomes our model of a people who took care of its own, who breathed life into the teaching of Jesus that
"To whom much is given, much is also required." (Luke 12:48)
"But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality." (Golden Text: 2 Corinthians 8:14)
"Our Lord Jesus Christ started this Faith and this Work, i.e. the establishment of one common purse. Therefore, wherever the children of God are found, there should also be established one common purse, the proceeds of which should be distributed to all, that there may be equality. That is the Kingdom of God; and it is what I have brought to the world."
This very old idea, all but abandoned in our modern capitalistic world, is beginning to again draw the attention of those working for the Synergic Evolution.
Synergic scientists are telling us that life forms have needs and that to meet those needs they must take action. For an interdependent form of life, this requires givers and receivers. Without receivers there can be no givers.
Humans are an INTERdependent class of life.
Interdependence is the human condition. All humans need help unless they wish to live at the level of animal subsistence. Interdependence means some times I depend on others and sometimes others depend on me. Once we acknowledge our interdependence and accept our dependence on others, then there are only three ways that we can get help.
1) Adversary Help – We can make others help us.
This is help obtained with coercion – force or fraud. Those providing the help are losing. When you force others to help you, they do the least they possibly can. Because the helper is hurt, adversary help is low quality help.
2) Neutral Help – We can purchase help through the fair market place.
This is help purchased from others. This is the way most of us living in the free world get help today. We hire it or we buy it in the market place. When I go to McDonald's, I pay them five dollars to feed me. The focus in the neutral market place is on a fair price. Because the helper is ignored, neutral help is average quality help. ... Or,
3) Synergic Help – We can attract help by helping others.
This is help attracted by helping others. When other individuals understand that by helping you, they will in turn be helped, they will automatically help you. When others understand that when you win, they will win, they will support and celebrate your success. This is the power of the win-win relationship. Show those who can help you, how they will win by doing so. Show them how they will be helped by helping you. Because the helper is helped, synergic help is high quality help.
** If we are FORCED to help, this is ADVERSARY – (1+1)<2>
I was forced to help him. Slavery, indentured service, tenant farming, and child labor are examples of adversary help. The criminal makes you help him, when he steals your money. The government makes you help it, when it forces you to pay taxes. You are forced to help others anytime you are given an ultimatum. An ultimatum is a choice between losing a little or losing a lot. Which do you want a broken arm or a broken leg, you are free to choose.
Adversary relationships are hurting and negative experiences. The helper experiences a loss. He is less after helping you than before. When you force others to help you, they do the least they possibly can.
Adversary relationships are hurtful. The parties in these relationships experience loss. They struggle to avoid the loss – conflict. In an adversary relationship, one individual plus another individual are less after the relationship. In other words (1+1)<2,>
When you can make others help you, coercing them with force or fraud, the helper loses and will typically give you only the lowest quality help.
** If we are PAID to help, this is NEUTRAL – (1+1)=2
I was paid to help him. Macy's, Sears, Mervyn's, Penny's, Costco, K- Mart, Circuit City, etc., etc. – malls, stores, markets, shops, and restaurants – are all examples of neutral help. The yellow pages in the telephone book are lists of places where you can purchase help. Capitalism's fair market is where you purchase neutral help. You buy help in the open market place at a fair market exchange price. This is the modern free world where help is sold as products and services.
In the fair market, the helper experiences a draw and will typically produce average quality help.
Neutral relationships are ignoring. The parties in these relationships experience no change. They barter to insure that the exchange is fair––to insure that the price is not too high or too low – to insure that neither party loses. The open market of free enterprise generates a zone of neutrality which markedly reduces adversary relations. Neutral systems gain a marked production advantage over adversary systems. They are significantly more productive. However, this is primarily because they are not adversary. In a neutral relationship one individual plus another individual are the same after the relationship: (1+1)=2. Neutral relationships are marked by indifference with fair effectiveness and only average productivity.
Neutrality is that place where I work just hard enough to avoid getting fired, and, my employer pays me just enough to keep me from quitting.
How average is my help going to be?
Neutral relationships are ignoring and static experiences. The helper experiences a draw. They are the same after helping as before. When you ignore those who help you, you will get only fair help.
** If we are HELPED for help, this is SYNERGIC – (1+1)>>2
I was helped for helping him. Examples of synergic help in today's world are much less common. We do flnd them in family businesses and within some partnerships and small business groups. Synergic relationships more often exist in start up businesses, where the originators work together sharing in the risks and the rewards equally.
If you wish to attact synergic help you must insure that when individuals invest their help with yours, they are also helped. Then they will automatically reinvest with you. When others understand that when you win, they win, they will support and celebrate your success. Synergic relationships are helping, positive experiences. The helper experiences a win. They are more after helping you than before. When you help those who help you, you get the most help. When you help those who help you, you get excellent help.
Synergic relationships are helpful. The parties in the relationship experience a gain. They operate together to insure that both parties win. They negotiate to insure that both parties are helped. In synergic relationships one individual plus another individual is more after their relationship than before: (1+1)>>2. Synergic relationships are marked by low conflict with high effectiveness and enormous productivity.
We humans have the option to use synergic organization which is unavailable to the plants and animals. We can attract help by insuring that those who help us are also helped, then they will provide the highest quality help. They will further seek to invest their action with ours, for a share of the cooperators' revenues. They will understand that when you win, they win, and will support and celebrate your every success.
In a synergic future, relationships will be helping, positive experiences. The helper will experience a win. They will be more after helping you than before. You will attract others help by insuring that those who help you are also helped. You will do this by working together.
When we begin to conceptualize a synergic future, we have to begin by thinking outside the box. We are moving into a new paradigm. This means that many of our assumptions are wrong. But the real difficulty is not so much with these wrong assumptions, at least we are aware of them. The bigger problem is those assumptions that are unknown or unspoken.
Humans are INTERdependent. They must exchange food, things, and "knowing" in order to effectively meet their needs. What is changing is not the need for EXCHANGE. It is whether the exchange is adversary, neutral, or synergic.
Our goal then, is to develop a prototype for a synergic exchange. In a truely synergic exchange where all members are humans committed to win-win relationships, there is no need for accounting. You give to the GiftingNetwork based on your talents and skills, donating whatever action, "knowing", things, or food you can create. You take from the GiftingNetwork whatever you need. Because all members are committed to having only win-win relationships, the system will work and there will be excess and abundance for all.
However, today we live in a world in transition. MOST HUMANS ARE NOT SYNERGIC. Many humans are not even neutral.
The committed ADVERSARY will simply take from the GiftingNetwork, by force or by fraud. They are not welcome members.
The committed NEUTRALIST will view the GiftingNetwork as just another market.
Ways to strengthen local, community, state, national or regional economies by Win Wenger, Ph.D. Reportedly, several major cities in the northeastern United States, among them Ithaca, New York, have used such computer-coordinated bartering systems to restore prosperity where poverty was dominant—and apparently with less concept to guide the process than you find in this one brief. Here is how the system they've been using reportedly works: Richard Barbrook During the Sixties, the New Left created a new form of radical politics: anarcho-communism. Above all, the Situationists and similar groups believed that the tribal gift economy proved that individuals could successfully live together without needing either the state or the market. From May 1968 to the late Nineties, this utopian vision of anarcho-communism has inspired community media and DIY culture activists. Within the universities, the gift economy already was the primary method of socialising labour. From its earliest days, the technical structure and social mores of the Net has ignored intellectual property. Although the system has expanded far beyond the university, the self-interest of Net users perpetuates this hi-tech gift economy. As an everyday activity, users circulate free information as e-mail, on listservs, in newsgroups, within on-line conferences and through Web sites. As shown by the Apache and Linux programs, the hi-tech gift economy is even at the forefront of software development. Contrary to the purist vision of the New Left, anarcho-communism on the Net can only exist in a compromised form. Money-commodity and gift relations are not just in conflict with each other, but also co-exist in symbiosis. The 'New Economy' of cyberspace is an advanced form of social democracy. J. Carrico In contemporary society, we are accustomed to islands of abundance within deserts of scarcity, islands which must be defended against a constant pressure. Western ideas about economics are founded on this assumption, that there is not enough to go around. Something is considered to be valuable in the degree to which it is scarce, therefore an unlimited resource has very limited value. But this directly contradicts the basic nature of digital products - any sequence of bits can be copied any number of times. And so we are witnessing an enormous effort to prevent computers and networks from doing what they're particularly good at: copying and distributing information. This contradiction can only be resolved by abandoning the idea that scarcity is the only measure of value. A potlatch is a gift festival, a practice of native societies of the northwest coast of North America, and the foundation of the social and economic systems of these tribes. This institution evolved under conditions in which the basic necessities of life were available in great abundance (eg. salmon, cedar bark, etc.) The public display of generosity, rather than private accumulation, was the measure of social standing. These displays were often competitive in nature, challenges dependant upon the reciprocal nature of the potlatch: to maintain status, each gift must eventually be repaid. By showing us a working economy based on abundance, gift, and reputation, the potlatch provides us with a valuable reference point as we try to imagine a society in which we don't need to artificially restrict the infinite supply of digital goods in order to ensure that the creators and providers of those goods are properly rewarded. Gifford Pinchot The first step toward a sustainable sense of success is taking pride in the value of our contributions to others rather than taking pride in the value of our possessions. By extension this means striving for quality in the use of whatever power we have rather than working to get more power over others as an end in itself. In this view, profit and wealth may help us to contribute, but they do not themselves constitute business success. If we went to the grave with riches gained by gutting the pension fund, or selling pesticides we know cause more harm than the insects they control, would we count our business lives successful? On the other hand, what if we stewarded a small company that repeatedly introduced more ecological ways of doing things? Maybe other larger players who quickly copied the ecological innovations gained much of the material reward. If we barely made ends meet, but clearly made the world a better place, is that a success? Defining success by what one gives rather than what one has is neither a new practice nor an overly idealistic view. It is rooted deep in history and human nature, and is more basic than wealth or money. In the potlatches of the Chinook, Nootka, and other Pacific Northwest peoples, chiefs vied to give the most blankets and other valuables. More generally, in hunter-gatherer societies the hunter's status was not determined by how much of the kill he ate, but rather by what he brought back for others. In his brilliant book The Gift: The Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde points to two types of economies. In a commodity (or exchange) economy, status is accorded to those who have the most. In a gift economy, status is accorded to those who give the most to others. Lest we think that the principles of a gift economy will only work for simple, primitive or small enterprises, Hyde points out that the community of scientists follows the rules of a gift economy. The scientists with highest status are not those who possesses the most knowledge; they are the ones who have contributed the most to their fields. A scientist of great knowledge, but only minor contributions is almost pitied - his or her career is seen as a waste of talent. At a symposium a scientist gives a paper. Selfish scientists do not hope others give better papers so they can come away with more knowledge than they had to offer in exchange. Quite the reverse. Each scientist hopes his or her paper will provide a large and lasting value. By the rules of an exchange economy, the scientist hopes to come away a "loser," because that is precisely how one wins in science. Antelope meat called for a gift economy because it was perishable and there was too much for any one person to eat. Information also loses value over time and has the capacity to satisfy more than one. In many cases information gains rather than loses value through sharing. While the exchange economy may have been appropriate for the industrial age, the gift economy is coming back as we enter the information age. Genevieve Vaughan Nature offers her abundance free to satisfy the needs that nature and culture have created. Humans have altered this process by depleting the abundance, cornering what remains, and using it to manipulate other humans, keeping them on the edge of survival. This process derives from exchange, which is giving-in-order-to-receive, and is ego oriented, while the need satisfying process, when practiced by humans, is other oriented. Capitalism is based on exchange and socializes us into its ego oriented values of competition and domination which also often coincide with the values involved in the male gender identity. Communism places a different emphasis on the collective but has so far institutionalized patriarchal hierarchies, often promoting individual and collective tyranny. In contrast to patriarchal economic systems, the free satisfaction of needs is still visible in the relation between mothers and children, because children cannot "give back" anything in exchange for the nurturing they receive and they have to receive free goods and services from their caregivers. The free gifts of nature depend upon the capacity to receive of those who have the needs. The receivers' capacities can be enhanced or diminished by the presence of absence of gifts during socialization. Indigenous peoples often allowed everyone free access to the abundance of their environment, and considered themselves stewards of nature's gifts. They also often had societies in which women were respected. YES! Magazine You don't have to participate in a local currency or service exchange to be part of the cooperative gift economy. Any time you do a favor for a family member, neighbor, colleague, or stranger you're part of it. Here are some ways you can spend time in the gift economy, where you'll find fun, freedom, and connection. Marrinel Harriman I learned about giving in the slow human way. Because my mother was a skilled seamstress, I was a well dressed child. It may have been guilt or it may have had something to do with "the joy of giving" that prompted me to deliver several of my most stylish dresses to a less fortunate little girl, who lived with disabled parents. After thanking me gratefully, the little girl offered me the only party dress in her closet. Puzzled, I tried to refuse, but my mother guided me. She complimented the girl and told her how happy I would be to wear the dress. I came away knowing a little bit more about human pride and who gives what to whom. My greatest gift to the girl was acceptance of the gift she offered me. World Scripture Anthrology When we give to one another, freely and without conditions, sharing our blessings with others and bearing each other's burdens, the giving multiplies and we receive far more than what was given. Even when there is no immediate prospect of return, Heaven keeps accounts of giving, and in the end blessing will return to the giver, multiplied manyfold. We must give first; to expect to receive without having given is to violate the universal law. by Ed Phillips It's free, it's out here, but you're going to have to dig for it. You are going to have to give something away in order to receive something back. You have to participate for it to be real: a gift economy. The Internet is still a Gift Economy, where the philanthropic gestures of large institutions compete for attention with a blizzard of more idiosyncratic and independent movements. Those more idiosyncratic and independent movements, fueled by obsession, frustration, or love, are where life on the nets resides. You wouldn't know anything was happening unless you were hooked in, unless you were participating, offering something yourself. It would be overwhelming or meaningless if you weren't oriented by informal networks, links, and email. As far as most are concerned, there is a blizzard, a white-out, of information on the nets. All but the most intrepid are numbed by this blizzard of information. You won't even go out into the blizzard unless you fancy yourself some kind of Admiral Perry or unless you have cohorts or maps, unless you are a native. Professionalism hasn't come to the nets just yet, much to the chagrin of the institutions and the entrepreneurs. The New Philanthropists, the would-be commercial presences, are the missionaries of the nets. The incorrigible natives are now accepting well-crafted hand-outs from the missionaries. The missionaries are hoping that the natives will learn the value of their brands, hoping that the natives will begin to participate in a money economy of sorts. Professionalism will follow charity. These natives of the nets are particularly incorrigible because they "tribalized" the nets in an attempt to escape the emptiness of their own advanced money economies. We know the story only too well, never mind the catchwords we use to describe "the context of no context." Instead of replaying the over familiar story of plebeianized, rationalized, and now completely tautologous, advanced money economies and their media, I just want to touch on the possibility that thoughtful writing on the nets is a gift economy. A difference. June 2, 1997 Barbara J. Pescan Trobriand Islanders of the South Pacific have an elaborate ritual way of passing gifts of necklaces and arm bands made of shells. The shells themselves are nicely wrought into the items that become the gifts. But, it isn’t the intrinsic value of the item that gives the gift its importance. It is the ceremony attached to how the gifts move from island to island, and from person to person. Ira Nayman In times of hyper-capitalism, where everything is naturally seen as for sale, the idea that anybody does anything without expectation of financial compensation is considered absurd. Where examples exist, they are first explained away, then, if possible, brought into the market economy. To the extent that exchange happens outside the money economy, it detracts from economic efficiency (and the carefully calculated numbers of economists). The Internet is an example of this problem. Many writers, graphic artists, designers, programmers and others create things that are shared without money changing hands. What motivates them to do this? Ego, say traditional economists: they can show off their intellectual abilities, or, perhaps, that they are good people who know how to share. Not so, say others: the Internet is an example of a gift economy. Howard Rheingold, in Virtual Communities, was one of the first writers to make the connection between digital communications and gift exchange; since then, it has been repeated in the popular press so often, the connection is taken for granted. We freely circulate information on the Internet in the expectation that we will benefit from the information freely circulated by others. There's only one problem: gift economies don't work this way. In traditional anthropological studies, gifts are given on ceremonial occasions to members of one's tribe, or the tribe of somebody else to which one wants to affiliate. At weddings, to take one example, there can be a complex arrangement of gift giving between various members of the two families involved. Although somewhat altered, gift giving at occasions such as weddings and birthdays remains a common practice. J.Bradford DeLong & A. Michael Froomkin Governments and societies that bet on the market system become more materially prosperous and technologically powerful. The lesson usually drawn from this economic success story is that in the overwhelming majority of cases the best thing the government can do for the economy is to set the background rules - define property rights, set up honest courts, perhaps rearrange the distribution of income, impose minor taxes and subsidies to compensate for well-defined and narrowly-specified "market failures" - but otherwise the government should leave the market system alone. The main argument for the market system is the dual role played by prices. On the one hand, prices serve to ration demand: anyone unwilling to pay the market price does not get the good. On the other hand, price serves to elicit production: any organization that can make a good, or provide a service, for less than its market price has a powerful financial incentive to do so. What is produced goes to those who value it the most. What is produced is made by the organizations that can make it the cheapest. And what is produced is whatever the ultimate users value the most. The data processing and data communications revolutions shake the foundations of the standard case for the market. In a world in which a large chunk of the goods valued by users are information goods that can be cheaply replicated, it is not socially optimal to charge a price to ration demand. In a world in which cheap replication produces enormous economies of scale, the producers that survive and profit are not those that can produce at the least cost or produce the goods that users value the most; instead, the producers that flourish are those that established their positions first. In a world in which the value chain is only tangentially related to ultimate value to users - in which producers earn money by selling eyeballs to advertisers, say - there is no certainty that what is produced will be what users value the most. The market system may well prove to be tougher than its traditional defenders have thought, and to have more subtle and powerful advantages than those that defenders of the invisible hand have usually listed. At the very least, however, defenders will need new arguments. And at the most, we will need to develop a new economics to discern new answers to the old problem of economic organization. Reciprocity is the Basis of our Future Culture suggests Dominique Temple in issue No.31 of Golias: Le Journal Catho Tendre et Grinçant (Golias, BP4034, F-69615 Villeubanne FRANCE, (in French)). Reciprocity is a form of economics practiced by most indigenous people in many parts of the world. Unlke "exchange", "trade" or "barter", reciprocity is based on prestige gained by gifting. Ownership, accumulation, competition and materialism, are not recognized in reciprocity societies instead the are rooted in giving, cooperation, human relationships, and ecology. "Self-interest is replaced by "public interest"; the individual's well being is dependent on the well being of the community, so the individual's whole life and purpose is devoted to community well being. Dominique bases the main article in this publication on an examination of the Native American economy since Columbus. Columbus's logs for the first three years are filled with wonderment at the Native's proclivity for giving, and their lack of interest in exchange. In a few passages Columbus seems to almost understand the radical different basis of the cultures he'd discovered. But he succumbs to his search for gold, and his cultural roots in exploitation and domination. But through the ages the Native Americans have maintained their roots in a culture of reciprocity. In spite of the repressive efforts of the early colonists and the later neo colonialists to press them into the EuroAmerican economic system, they have held on to their own means of distributing goods and maintain relationships, except when dealing with outsiders. Their tenacity has been read by the U.S. government and others as a turn toward Marxism, and led to further repressions during the Cold War. But, Temple points out, that unlike Marxism, the indigenous system is not based on class struggle or government ownership. For the Native American had no interest in "property", "ownership" or "accumulation" which is as necessary for Communism as it is for Capitalism. The native Americans "wealth", or assured well being, was dependent in his "poverty", or the amount of goods s/he had contributed to others in the community. With the end of the Cold War there is a growing leniency toward the Native Americans, and toward other cultures. New studies have shown that almost all cultures, except the EuroAmerican, based their roots in human relationships, reverence for the Earth, and reciprocity. These are the same qualities gaining precedence among a growing number of progressive thinkers and Gaian philosophers. Temple sees this as a hopeful sign, and believes that we will learn that a different culture and a different economic system is not only possible but in the making. Gifford Pinchot The next step in the move toward sustainable business is to make the business itself a gift to society. Companies that use sulfuric acid end up with a hazardous waste. DuPont, instead of distancing itself from the hazardous waste generated by its customers, saw this problem as an opportunity to differentiate its offering in one of the most basic of commodities. The company took back the spent sulfuric acid, purified it, and resold it. This was good business because once DuPont got good at it, recycling turned out to be cheaper than creating from scratch. It also gained the company market share and margins in what had become to others a low-profit, uninteresting commodity. In this case, DuPont does well by doing good, thus winning both the exchange and gift paradigms. The sign of excellence in a new world of the larger self is not vast profit or possessions, but sufficient material success to allow large and thoughtful contributions to society. For some strategies of societal service, huge profits may be needed, for example to build up the capital to purchase forestry land and convert it to sustainable forestry, or to extend a chain of tutoring schools that serve those who otherwise might not read, including the poor. Other strategies for making a contribution might require only a modest income that could be used for marshalling forces for change by example or through volunteers. In a world dominated by a larger sense of self these two strategies could do equal good and would be considered equally successful. One feature of our society works directly against implementing a larger vision of success: institutional ownership of companies. In an earlier era of owner-operated businesses, an owner who thought solely of profit without regard for the effect of decisions on employees or the welfare of the community was thought to be a monster, and rightly so. In contrast, the law today forbids pension fund managers from full humanity; they are precluded by law from allowing concerns for the environment or the good of employees to interfere with maximizing return. Institutional investment laws need to be changed. Timothy Wilken, MD As children we all taught that it is better to give than to receive. Certainly, that seems like "It is Better To Give Than To Receive." Whether you believe Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ foretold in biblical scripture or just another human who lived far ahead of his time, we can all agree he said some remarkable and wise things. His followers were called Christians because most of them believed he was the Christ foretold in the scripture. "Early Christians lived in a world far different from ours. Lots of people, in and out of the church, suffered on a daily basis without any ``safety nets'' between them and poverty. But Christians were especially susceptible to deprivation since discipleship took away any last vestiges of help due to the alienation from family and nation. One of the worst financial decisions to be made by anyone could be that of becoming a Christian. Yet it is from this crucible of suffering that Luke draws one of the greatest themes of the Book of Acts: benevolence. New Testament Christianity forever becomes our model of a people who took care of its own, who breathed life into the teaching of Jesus that ``it is better to give than to receive'' (Acts 20:35)." Jesus of Nazareth may have been one of the first humans to embrace synergy. His words seem to capture the very essence of synergic morality. Synergic morality is more than not hurting other, it requires helping other. Jesus was one of the first humans to state the fundamental law of synergic relationship. It is known as the Golden Rule: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law.” What would you have others do Confucius 579-471BC “Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you!” “This negative form of the “golden rule” is next found in the Jewish Book of Tobit 4:15 from the Old Testament Bible (3rd Century BC): “And what you hate, do not do to anyone.” It is also found in the writings of the Jewish scholars Hillel (1st century BC) and Philo of Alexandria (1st centuries BC We can restate this a little more clearly as: “Do not do What would you have others not do Here the best one word answer is hurt. “Do The negative form of the Golden Rule is true and correct as far as it goes. In fact, it is the underlying premise for the Neutral Morality Synergic Morality rests then on the premise—that when you help others, you will find yourself helped in returnTowards a Gift Economy
One puts into the system whatever one wants to, for whatever others in the system are willing to pay for it, and draws from the system whatever products and services one desires within the systematized price of the values one has put in. In the deepest inner cities, I've been advised that at times and in some neighborhoods the U.S. dollar currency has in many instances become only a secondary basis of economic activity, people having managed to build enough value from what they've put into the system to trade wherever they please to advantage.
All this simply means that, based on the competence of the software and the prevalence of networked computers, and the competence and integrity of the people supervising the largely automatic system, a kind of electronic currency under whatever name has grown up to provide a more even playing field to the participants than they had been finding from accumulated disadvantage in the national and world economy.
Most of the existing companies engaging in barter appear to have "global" in their names but not in their operations. (Nor am I in a position to evaluate adequately the relative merits of the existing companies currently pursuing some sort of barter system.) You may need to pull people together locally to comprise your own system in order to appropriately address local needs and resources, whether or not you link up with one of the existing companies to give your exchange capabilities greater clout. This is a system which, like conventional currencies and national economies, can be abused and can damage people. This first of the "five-fold paths" seems simple in principle and actually is, but also may require the utmost attention in terms of how well you select the people who will supervise it initially, and who and what will comprise it.
Even if most of the information on this one path, as compared to the other paths, has yet to be developed, one thing is clear: this bartering approach allows even the most poverty-stricken or recession-stricken region to focus, not on what it doesn't have but on what it does have, and so can immediately start building from there. Again: what's crucial in a down economy is not what people don't have but what people aren't doing. Get people doing, get them producing things, and the economy heads upward.
There are certainly problems to overcome, the main one that of safeguarding the system and the values it will contain. But it allows people to no longer have to depend upon the systems and institutions which have left them at cumulative disadvantage. As wealth is created, they can re-enter the main system but from strength instead of from dependent weakness.
You can get away from what you don't control, by refocussing from what you don't have, to what you do have and thus do control. What you do control, you can do things with immediately. When you don't control, it can take you a long, long time to achieve desired things.
Your local economy doesn't have to have "money." You do have to have people producing—producing what they can do well, and exchanging for what they need. In a marketplace, money and barter are two alternative methods. Throughout the world, there are some regions where money is effective and appropriate ... and there are all those places in the world where it is not. But there is no need for poverty to prevail there. In all those places where money is inadequate, a good barter exchange system is another way to steer people and resources to productive and more productive uses.The High-Tech Gift Economy
a decentralized architecture for gift economies
The Gift Economy For-Giving
37 Ways to Join the Gift Economy, Now!
Giving Is Receiving
A Religious View of Giving and Receiving
The Internet is still a Gift Economy
The Gift Must Always Move
It is important how the next receiver is chosen to receive the gift. It should be someone who has not had the necklace or arm band for some time. Arm bands get passed one way around the islands, and necklaces move in a circle in the opposite direction. These objects are carried from island to island by canoe. And the journeys take much preparation and take several days and cover hundreds of miles.
The current owner carefully plans when and how he will give the object to someone else. The one who is to receive the object waits and wonders when it will come. The whole thing goes on with great decorum and with particular valences attached to how long one person keeps one of these necklaces before passing it on. People’s reputations are made by how they participate in the giving and receiving ritual. It may take two to ten years for the object to make the rounds of the islands.
The important thing with the Trobriand people is that to possess is to give—“someone who owns a thing is expected to share it, to distribute it, to be its trustee and dispenser.”
In the world of the gift, you not only can have your cake and eat it, too; you can’t have your cake unless you eat it, that is, unless you distribute it, consume it, use it up by giving it to someone else.
The Gift of Generalized Exchange
Speculative Microeconomics for Tomorrow's Economy
A Bill Ellis' Review
Doing Business as a Gift to Society
A Spiritual Basis for the Gift Tensegrity
an excellent philosophy for making close relationships and living in the social world. Jesus of Nazareth is credited with saying:to you? The best one word answer I can find for this question is help. “Help others as you would have them help you.”is credited as the author of the negative formof the Golden Rule:and AD), It occurs in the 2nd-century documents Didache and the Apology of Aristides. It also appears in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, and Seneca.”to others what you would have them not doto you.”to you?nothurt others as you would have them not hurt you.”found in the western world today. But, Synergic Morality requires more of us than simply not hurting. It requires more of us than simply ignoring others. It requires us to helpothers—to helpeach other. Jesus of Nazarethunderstood this on the deepest of levels. He called for more than a prohibition against hurting others. He ask all humans to helpeach other.— “As ye sow, so shall ye reap.” Synergic Morality is morethan the absence of hurting. It is the presenceof helping.
