Motivations for a non-market, pay-forward global system
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Contents |
Advantages of market-based economies
- markets are decentralized, requiring no global point of information or control
- the price system helps people decide what is most important to them and what to leave for others
- markets are lightweight and scalable, allowing for a range of participation by each individual. there are no absolute requirements to market participation.
Problems with the market
Transaction costs and crowding out effects in the market
Money and inequity
The market operates via cash, and cash has the problem of deriving its value from scarcity. It would be worthless (and therefore an ineffective medium of exchange) if it wasn't scarce, but that very scarcity is what makes many people's lives miserable and creates the positive feedback look (via the collection of interest, because money, being scarce, gets "rented out" by the rich) that widens the divide between rich and poor.
The Tragedy of the commons
Artificial scarcity
Commodification and Isolation interfere with wikipedia:Social capital
- requires commodification (i.e. homogenization) of goods and services
- tendencies towards separation of markets, consumers, and competing firms, due to advantages from arbitrage, market makers, and middlemen
In general, the capitalist market operates via abstraction, which is also called commodification: the reinterpretation of a physical/social real-world offering into a homogeneous product which can be bought or sold in an anonymous transaction. This process increases liquidity, which leads to lower prices and higher profits--supposedly good for consumers and firms alike. The role of a market maker is to perform this abstraction--to put the market in between you and the things you need, and to take all the personalness out of products and services. This may make things cheaper and easier in some ways, but it also makes us desperate, confused, and alone.
Certain things are inevitable, given the market and the price system, and one of those is the obsessive intermediation of everything, and the homogenization of everything in preparation for the market.
Other problems
Also, to some extent, the economists are right and we *are* rational actors. We have to be, to play by the rules of the game we're in, because in a market environment weighing costs and benifits is best for our families and selves. That keeps people thinking in a certain way, rich and poor.
Advantages of pay-forward gift economies
Efficiency advantages
Psychological advantages
I've seen people's consciousness totally transformed in a matter of days when they become embedded in a gift economy, either at Burningman, in the Rainbow crowd, or in disaster relief areas. Suddenly, people are giving them and their family whatever they need, for free. And the rules are lifted. They don't have to think in this way of homogenizing, commodifying, and intermediating themselves any more. With food and lodging secured (and more importantly, good will)--even stuck in a tent or a homeless shelter, with their lives and property in ruin--they begin to stop worrying about helping themselves and their family, and they begin to concentrate on giving gifts and being connected and unique. After just a few days of relief from capital and cash, and exposure to gift.
