expand_less
LifeThe gift economy is a gift.bit Passmore than an idea, but it on.will take some exploration to give it shape and make it real. Typically when you start to talk about the idea, people talk about barter, which is a form a trade or reciprocity where there are quids and quos being balanced. A gift economy in its purity doesn't involve any of that. A true gift ecomony has a depth of spirit that brings peace and joy to the whole community.
Benkler's identification of [[commons based peer production|peer production]] as another form of production alongside firms and markets, does contrast some with the fundamentally competetive of these other modes of production. On the other hand, the overall frame is one of competition. To really make this mode of production hum, we need to find the true power of gift economies. In commons based production, the big prize is in growing the collective wealth held in common such that production is easy. Translate easy to efficiant both in natural resources and labor. Commons based production must by its overall action increase the overall value of what is held in common or will will certainly face the tragedy of the commons in a big way. If we are still in a global system where growth of production and population are dictated by the nature of the sysstem, then we will still have an environmental disaster. One of the outcomes that must be produced by a new economy is to put humanity on a course towards a sustainable global population.
The only way a real change can come about is through win-win incentives. If some leaders reason that they need to priviledge their own demographic group over all others, they won't lead their communities toward shared benefits except within some community self-identified as the right folks. If we keep on competing for the commons, it will certainly be destroyed and likely humanity will go with it.
Ok, so what is the gift economy then? It involved the recognition that there are kinds of work that a multiplicative in their effects. Without a gift economy to do this work openly, to share it for the cost of replication, that is nearly zero for this sort of work because it is fundamentally information and knowledge. Well, copying the bits costs little, but copying the knowledge takes some level of personal interaction between the experienced and novices. Without any clear understanding of the dynamics of gift economies, the economists of the past couldn't see any way to give incentive for the creation of new knowledge. The truth is that these incentives may be necessary for firms and markets, but not for commons based production.
In the first place, the profit motive mainly serves to narrow the scope of what knowledge developers are interested in to what they can get someone to pay for because they anticipate future profits. Just take a quick look at the "orphan drug" issue with big Pharma. Even diseases with many sufferrers are left wanting because those who get it can't pay for it. In the gift economy people work on things because they are interested in the problems. Even physicists note that there are critical theoretical areas, for example condensed matter physics, that are almost impossible to get funding for because they lack apparent practical applications, but these are often exactly the areas that provide some of the deepest insights into fundamental question. This is exactly the work that can also lead to unexpected breakthroughs.
Benkler's identification of [[commons based peer production|peer production]] as another form of production alongside firms and markets, does contrast some with the fundamentally competetive of these other modes of production. On the other hand, the overall frame is one of competition. To really make this mode of production hum, we need to find the true power of gift economies. In commons based production, the big prize is in growing the collective wealth held in common such that production is easy. Translate easy to efficiant both in natural resources and labor. Commons based production must by its overall action increase the overall value of what is held in common or will will certainly face the tragedy of the commons in a big way. If we are still in a global system where growth of production and population are dictated by the nature of the sysstem, then we will still have an environmental disaster. One of the outcomes that must be produced by a new economy is to put humanity on a course towards a sustainable global population.
The only way a real change can come about is through win-win incentives. If some leaders reason that they need to priviledge their own demographic group over all others, they won't lead their communities toward shared benefits except within some community self-identified as the right folks. If we keep on competing for the commons, it will certainly be destroyed and likely humanity will go with it.
Ok, so what is the gift economy then? It involved the recognition that there are kinds of work that a multiplicative in their effects. Without a gift economy to do this work openly, to share it for the cost of replication, that is nearly zero for this sort of work because it is fundamentally information and knowledge. Well, copying the bits costs little, but copying the knowledge takes some level of personal interaction between the experienced and novices. Without any clear understanding of the dynamics of gift economies, the economists of the past couldn't see any way to give incentive for the creation of new knowledge. The truth is that these incentives may be necessary for firms and markets, but not for commons based production.
In the first place, the profit motive mainly serves to narrow the scope of what knowledge developers are interested in to what they can get someone to pay for because they anticipate future profits. Just take a quick look at the "orphan drug" issue with big Pharma. Even diseases with many sufferrers are left wanting because those who get it can't pay for it. In the gift economy people work on things because they are interested in the problems. Even physicists note that there are critical theoretical areas, for example condensed matter physics, that are almost impossible to get funding for because they lack apparent practical applications, but these are often exactly the areas that provide some of the deepest insights into fundamental question. This is exactly the work that can also lead to unexpected breakthroughs.