Gift Economies for the 21st Century
Nathan Cravens
Also, I can imagine that within the gift economy, you might, say, put up a
web server and somehow ration access to it for various reasons (like
requiring user accounts and limiting usage per account somehow). But the
rationing approach may be different than a pay-per-use idea where those who
have accumulated the most ration units somehow get the most use. Rationing,
in that sense, will become more idiosyncratic or more related to ongoing
discussions.
Still, I've been thinking of starting a topic about "demand". Because in any
manufacturing system, you want to make what people want, and not make stuff
that is not wanted, even if you are producing gifts. In classical economic
systems, the only demand felt by the system is in relation to the number of
ration units (fiat dollars) someone has in computer memory or as paper
tokens somewhere (and billions of people effectively have next to no ration
units to indicate their needs and demands, and no way to earn them by labor
of interest to advanced economies, thus they starve locally amidst global
plenty). In alternative economics, even a gift economy, we can think about
how demand is signaled (and arbitrated) as it flows into the productive
system somehow.
Rationing does have merit in a gift economy, simply because the resource is non-commercial and may remain be scarce.
I assume a demand approach as a given, but this is important to articulate. If a product is made without demand, it must not be produced. Common sense, right? The centralized mass production model is known to have an ineffient "push" model. Its not so much in the mass production of the product itself, but the mass production of sales and marketing, known to exeed over 70% of a corporate business budget, another factor in the critique of scarcity.
Let's describe the complexity of a gift economy of a more traditional sense using a hunter-gatherer stereotype before going to a simple proposal intended for a village environment.
Paul, we're on a hunting trip and you kill the meat in our astoundingly barren and frost filled landscape. Bryan prepares the meat while mumbling jargon to himself. Eric was remembered as making the floating island housing from the bones, which prevents predators (my spell check said "creditors" , rofl!) from mucking up our camp, so he can remain idle for as long as he wants to hack the strategic design. I thought that was unfair, but because you guys think I'm nuts, my vote was not influential. All I'm known to do is chant and do ceremony and nothing else in the life-needs sense. So though we do not arrange our resources through direct barter, everyone in the group knows and reminds one another of the fact I've only run around chanting and cooing and making rounds of silliness to serve as some unusual form of entertainment at best. I was once charismatic enough to earn a more equal share, but you folk have determined I'm nuts, but interesting enough to keep around. This means after the next hunt, I will only have the scraps, as everyone in the group accepts my contribution as minimal, though I may believe I put every bit as much energy into the acts, therefore, I receive a return, a gift based on the collective subjectivity of the group in kind as the relative consensus view dictates. This example was mentioned to describe the complexity in subjectivity, the ways of social capital, or a group's internal ranking in a gift economy setting which is far too complex or unethical to apply to large groups.
To scale this ethically, especially when we consider the globe not having the same productive capacities all-at-once, we must have a way to limit free riding and encourage refinement of productive processes. Here's the village model to test. Large cities may need to form village districts to better manage resources in this way.
- Everyone within it may have what everyone else produces. Gift cards (like credit cards) are issued to members of the community
- Producers know what demands to expect by recalling previous sales demand
- A limit is set on scarce items set by the managers of production facilities
- For those that need an exception, managers are consulted so reasonable exceptions can be made.
- Community groups will form to address the more restrictive areas and rendered more abundant or accessible. For example, by forming another production plant or turning a centralised mass production plant within the village into personal production plants
- No matter how socratic a member, social capital does not play in terms of resource acquisition, so long as one is a certifiable member and uses the card, which contacts the database for a yes or no
- Anyone in the community can consult the web to determine why some resource restrictions are more than others and have the ability to do something about it and find collaborators
- The free time granted by the gift economy dynamic is used to improve the productive processes from one's personal computer to diminish toil
- Open source the means by which everything is produced so other villages may adopt the practices for themselves to defend the community from otherwise barbarian plunderers.
What else might we add to this scheme-work?
--
Nathan Cravens
Effortless Economy
OPEN SOURCE >> AGGREGATE >> INTEREST >> DISCUSSION >> DESIGN OUTLINE >> DESIGN >> MATERIALS REQUEST >> FABRICATE PROTOTYPE >> OPTIMIZE
Paul D. Fernhout
> Let's describe the complexity of a gift economy of a more traditional sense
> using a hunter-gatherer stereotype before going to a simple proposal
> intended for a village environment.
I really like where you are going with this in terms of specific examples
and policy suggestions.
A note on hunting. Hunting is often a cooperative effort, including:
* knowing where to hunt,
* knowing how to make traps and weapons,
* finding material to make weapon components like arrowheads,
* finding and sharing specialized items to shape things like spear points
and arrowheads (like big rocks with holes in them used in forming arrowheads),
* actually constructing spears and arrows and traps,
* obtaining food to eat on the hunt,
* finding signs of animals,
* scaring the animals to move in a certain way,
* wearing an animal down by following it,
* killing an animal,
* butchering the carcass,
* transporting the butchered results,
* distributing the butchered results,
* preserving some of the remains by drying or salting or other means,
* tanning hides and working bones into tools,
* religious rituals important to individual and group health (thanking the
animal for allowing itself to be killed, thanking Mother Earth, etc.),
* training new hunters,
* finding or traveling to hunting grounds,
* maintaining hunting grounds (like keeping trails open), and
* maintaining hunting ground boundaries (through complex treaties with other
tribes, or occasional physical skirmishes, or through other complex social
ceremonies including marriages and friendships and parties, etc.).
And there are probably more I have not listed.
In general, many of these activities are interwoven with songs and stories
as memory aids, so those are important aspects of these activities, meaning
singers and storytellers have an important role to play. Celebrating and
remembering hunts and hunters in song and story is an important aspect of
making this whole thing more effective (for both information transfer and
social rewards then related to social status and mate selection).
So, it is very US American (especially Republican and/or Propertarian
Libertarian) to think, OK, someone killed an animal, so it is "their" animal
they are gifting to the tribe or other members of the hunting party. But if
you look at the long list of things above, you can see that the moment of
actually killing an animal is only a small part of what needs to be done as
part of "hunting".
Hunter-gatherers had a *lot* of time to think about these things, and most
were probably a lot smarter socially the us Americans (not being dumbed down
by "school"), and they shared likely in part because they understood the
community aspect of a joyful life in the wilderness (it takes a village),
and as social insurance (people get injured on hunts, even today, like
falling out of trees is the most common injury now for deer hunters using
rifles), and also because meat spoils quickly so not sharing it means a
pointless big waste, and also because of closer and more obvious family ties
in villages. There seemed to be evolved rituals and traditions for sharing
the remains of an animal with an aspect of reward, like the one who actually
did the killing act got certain preferred parts of the remains or the pelt,
as a reward for the personal risk of getting close to a big animal.
Note that such groups may also have distinguished between bigger game like
deer or bear that benefited from more cooperation to hunt, and small game
like rabbits (or fish) that were smaller efforts.
I was at a "wildlife" museum a few days ago, that could more properly be
called a "hunting" museum (maybe why this is on my mind :-). It was
interesting to see there how much of early manufacturing was really about
the interface between the village and the natural world -- weapons to kill
animals, fishhooks and nets to catch fish, containers to keep insects from
food, pens to manage the movement of animals, knives to skin animals, wood
frames to tan hides, buildings to keep the rain away, and so on.
I'm trying to convey a certain feeling about what early technology was used
for. This notion of manufacturing for amusement (DVDs, complex toys, fancy
cars, etc.) was there too, with musical instruments, simple toys, basic art,
and memory aids like wampum (hunter-gatherers had a lot of spare time). But
the balance seems to have shifted in our society so that I would suggest
that by comparison most manufacturing in our society is for amusement
purposes or cultural purposes.
One can ask if these different aspects of the economy should have different
ways of rationing. In pre-scarcity pre-formal-rationing societies, it is
easy for these societies to have different rituals that govern different
aspects of society. In our society, dominated by exchanging ration units, it
is harder to do that (though we do have the notion of "charity" which is
about giving ration units to individuals and organizations).
I'd also point out that some anthropologists who have studied hunting in
detail suggest, depending on the exact circumstances like the climate and
abundance of animals, that hunting requires so many calories that it can be
a net loss of energy compared to gathering, but may still be important to do
to acquire bones and pelts and certain vitamins. Though it is hard to know
for sure, since it may well be 100,000 years ago that most animals were not
shy of humans (like on the Galapagos islands), so hunting may not have been
much more difficult that just walking up to a small unsuspecting animal and
killing it with your hands back then. Technology like knives and bows and
arrows and spears and fishing nets and so on may have been a response to
animals being selected for being avoidant of humans, as well as increasing
scarcity of animals in general. The Biblical story of the Garden of Eden in
Genesis may be a myth about this increasing scarcity of animals and plants
from overpopulation as "Eden" is gradually lost, forcing a shift to toil in
agriculture. Related:
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6812.html
"For instance, the shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture
approximately 10,000 years ago has commonly been seen as a major advancement
in the course of human evolution. However, as Larsen provocatively shows,
this change may not have been so positive. Compared to their hunter-gatherer
ancestors, many early farmers suffered more disease, had to work harder, and
endured a poorer quality of life due to poorer diets and more marginal
living conditions. Moreover, the past 10,000 years have seen dramatic
changes in the human physiognomy as a result of alterations in our diet and
lifestyle. Some modern health problems, including obesity and chronic
disease, may also have their roots in these earlier changes."
Fast forward 10,000 years of refinements in technology and rationing, and we
get this classic insight by Doug Adams:
http://www.mindgazer.org/dontpanic/default.htm
"""
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western
spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this
at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly
insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so
amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat
idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of
the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions
were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned
with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on
the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And
so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were
miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the
opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in
the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and
that no one should ever have left the oceans. And then, one Thursday,
nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying
how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on
her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that
had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could
be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and
no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she
could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe
occurred, and the idea was lost forever. This is not her story.
"""
Maybe that girl figured out how smart networked digital watches with
built-in 3D printers could be used to implement open manufacturing and
global cooperation, like in "The Skills of Xanadu"? :-)
Though more like she just had a spirit dream about a talking wombat: :-)
http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
So, this technology we are so proud of in many ways (including every fancier
ideas about rationing and "economics") is mostly just an attempt to get back
to the better part of the life our ancestors had 10,000 years ago without
it. It's a good question if and how those ideas and habits of
hunter-gatherer days can "scale ethically" in your term to a global economy.
In your suggestion, a key idea in talking about "demand" is you are moving
in some way from "open manufacturing" to "open government" in some way.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
Paul D. Fernhout
> To scale this ethically, especially when we consider the globe not having
> the same productive capacities all-at-once, we must have a way to limit free
> riding and encourage refinement of productive processes. Here's the village
> model to test. Large cities may need to form village districts to better
>
> What else might we add to this scheme-work?
I see this thread got mentioned on the Abundance mailing list.
In rereading Nathan's post and suggestion for a way to organize demand and
rationing, it occurs to me to say the obvious: whatever scheme one picks for
determining demand and doing related rationing, it is going to work a lot
better if there is general abundance, so that there is less reason to fight
over the basics, and the fights can be less immediately life-and-death.
(People may still fight, of course, for social status reasons, depending on
the culture.)
So, general trends towards perceived abundance through automation and better
design make all sorts of informal social arrangements possible that
otherwise might collapse pretty fast in the face of extreme scarcity.
Ecology and Evolution studies show something similar -- when there is not
great selective pressure or where the environment is fairly abundant and
stable (like the deep oceans in some places), there can be a huge diversity
of organisms, since there is little pressure to select against any
arrangement. The gift economies of the past were likely places where the
individuals involved felt that, relative to their wants, they lived in
abundance (Sahlins).
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
(Although one can ask, which came first, the abundance or the gift economy?)
One can find examples of human generosity even in the most extreme
conditions like concentration camps, but I would expect the social tension
is going to be higher under scarcity, seemingly limiting people's options more.
--Paul Fernhout