Why Is Gift Economy More Needed Now
Posted on December 2, 2016“We’ve all been a gift, the gift of life. What we do with our lives is our gift back.” — Edo
Alex Gendler, What is a gift economy? Dec 23, 2014
Different from money economy—commodity is traded for money, a gift economy, gift culture, or gift exchange is a mode of exchange where valuables are not traded or sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. [1] This is also different from Capitalism, where surplus is either taken from people by corporation / government or bought by people from corporation. In a gift economy, surplus is given – if we have more than what we need, we give it to somebody who needs it, then social wealth (such as social status) is gained from this giving.In the future if we need help, people will take care of us, too. We call them our people. These relationships build the community, and community is the foundation of a gift economy.
Gift economy doesn’t mean no creation. In a money economy, the focus is on transactions, while in a gift economy, the focus is on relationships. When the interaction happens, the value of the gift economy is created. When we have extra things, like food and shelter, we share it with people, because it is a waste without fully using the commodities. Then what about the things that are invisible, like love, compassion and empathy? Can we share our extra feeling of love, compassion and empathy with others, and even create more value than we capture? Like mutual aid associations?
In a money economy, money is the only connection and standard between human and human, human and commodities. The problem of that is money is so often a barrier. People think – Oh, I would love to do this, but can I afford to do it? Is it practical? Money stops them.[2] Because people have been so used to getting things with money, and forget the internal and intimate connections of our lives with other human lives and non-human lives, like nature and happiness, which we used to rely more on. If you are worried about climate change, go learn more about it and be a citizen scientist; If you want to distribute to your community, go attend a community meeting and give opinions. An example of an organization connects people by providing services or sharing skills from members is Elat Chayyim Center for Creative Spirituality at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. The Center was holding an event called Mikvah in 2015, which was a retreat. The idea behind it was that participants state what they were going to provide, such as leading a walk, preparing a meal or giving a talk, or maybe even leading a dance session or meditation.
Another benefits from the gift economy is its large effects on building quality and sustainable life. Because gift economy doesn’t aim to produce new commodity but fully use the commodities already made, and builds service to reduce productions. The natural resources on our planet are more and more limited, while in the standard industrial model, we just keep consuming natural resources to produce more products to satisfy people’s needs, in a much faster speed than before. Meanwhile the wastes come from productions processes, and soon the products themselves are somehow disposed of somewhere else. While in natural capitalism, human welfare is best served by improving the quality and flow of desired services delivered, rather than by merely increasing the total dollar flow. [4]
Nowadays different forms of the gift economy are emerging. Enabled by the Internet, open source is the modern gift economy. In the software world, users gain the rights to copy and redistribute, use, modify for personal use, and redistribute modified versions of the software.[3] Provided by technology, social media is fundamentally part of gift economy, where people from all over the world share thoughts and build communities across borders. “Platform cooperativism”, says Trebor on 2016 Platform Cooperativism Conference, “is about cloning the technological heart of online platforms and puts it to work with a cooperative model, one that puts workers, owners, communities, and cities — in a kind of solidarity that leads to political power.”
Can we utilize technology and cooperative model in a gift economy so that each of us has the power to positively influence the collective behaviors within our communities and throughout the world? Can this world be built on the sharing of love, compassion and empathy?
[1] Cheal, David J, The Gift Economy(New York: Routledge, 1988), 1–19.
[2] “Sacred Economics with Charles Eisenstein – A Short Film”, Ian MacKenzie, Mar 1, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs
[3] Steven Weber. The Success of Open Source (President and Fellows of Harvard College,2004), 85.
[4] Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism (Little, Brown and Company, September 1999), 7-9.
Haijing Zhang