Urgent Evoke

A crash course in changing the world.

Gift economies have the adaptability, resilience, and accessibility to be the economy of choice for the world.

"In the social sciences, a gift economy (or gift culture) is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any
explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards (i.e. no formal quid quo pro exists)." (from Wikipedia)

One modern version of gift economy is the various versions of a 'Time Bank'. Members are basically exchanging their time and energy with each other, and there is no need for units of currency. One example of this is the community project in Edmonton called 'FavourPod':

"Simply put, it is a gifting economy, and FavourPod members do each other favours. Once a favour is complete, the Giver's community standing is increased, and the Getter's community
standing is lowered. This score reflects each member's overall
contribution to the wellbeing of the community. In FavourPod's economy,
the more you give, the more you get."


What really stands out about Gift Economy are the Emotional and Psychological Benefits. I think we all realize that money does not necessarily equate with happiness... often, the opposite is quite true! With this sort of sharing, the requirement and responsibility to make transactions is removed. This means that transactions are based upon recognition and respect for every person's contributions... how wonderful! I believe that this aspect will be the bridge that allows for economic relationships between those living in poverty and the wealthy. The enormous value of those two categories helping each other out is fully expressed in the joy of freely giving * * *

An historical case of gift economy in the modern area comes from the region of Aragon during the Spanish Civil War. Though living with the hard realities of war times, these communities embraced:

"a currency-less gift economy where goods and services are produced by workers and distributed in community stores where everyone (including the workers who produced them) is essentially entitled to consume
whatever they want or need as "payment" for their production of goods
and services."


Views: 20

Comment by Elastika on April 2, 2010 at 5:09pm
I love the idea of Time bank! In our city (Ljubljana, Slovenia) the time bank was established last year and it works quite fine. The only problem according to the time bank managers is that at the moment people mostly offer "intellectual services" like teaching foreign languages and not so much the "concrete" services like plumbing, ...
My IMAGINE1 was about time bank :)
Comment by Turil Cronburg on April 2, 2010 at 5:31pm
I too promote the idea of the gift economy! I use it myself most of the time. Taking whatever I need from what is available to me, and giving what I no longer need away to anyone who wants it. It works so beautifully! Freecycle and some local website communities are useful for this, plus there's always the streetside "free stuff" pile to either browse or get rid of stuff.

Time banks and the like are steps to the gift economy, but they are not quite there yet, as they are still using the idea of money (time dollars), just on a more local basis. While the full idea of the gift economy can be seen in both nature, and in families, where you don't bother to keep track of some artificial score, and you just give and receive freely.
Comment by Turil Cronburg on April 2, 2010 at 5:38pm
Also, in the gift economy, it's equally as valuable to give as to receive, so if that FavourPod organization wanted to embrace the spirit of the gift economy, both the giver's and receiver's status would go up, because both are doing a favor for the other. The giver is giving the receiver something useful, and the receiver is using something that the giver no longer needs, and is otherwise using up their resources being in their possession. So if I have too many kale seedlings for my garden space, it's in my best interest to find someone who has too few of them and will take those seedlings off my hands, so I'll have more space, and if I have too few chard seedlings, it's in my best interest to find someone who has too many.
Comment by PJE on April 7, 2010 at 10:05am
Thanks for this. Ben blogged about gift economies this morning, you might like it.
PJE

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