Our
society puts a value on human activities only when they can be
monetized – when a transaction involving an exchange of money occurs.
We tend to equate our time with money: If the ‘market value’ of an hour
of our time exceeds the cost of hiring someone else to mow our lawn or
make a present for a loved one or look after our children or our home,
we conclude that it makes sense to buy those services and to work
longer hours to pay for them.
This false economy leads us to buy
what we don’t need, which requires us to work harder to pay for those
unnecessary goods and services, leaving us even less time to look after
ourselves and our own needs and forcing us, in a vicious cycle (cycle 1
in red on the chart above) to ‘outsource’ even more of the things we
might be doing for ourselves. All this phony economic activity is added
to the GDP and employment data. Do-it-yourself and other ‘unpaid’ work,
and things we make for ourselves, are not considered ‘economic’
activities and hence not included in the statistics that drive our
society’s political and economic decisions. No surprise then that the
government encourages us to buy what we don’t need and what we could
provide for ourselves.
By contrast, the Gift Economy does not value monetized activity more highly than un-monetized activity. It suggests, on the contrary, that our time is invaluable
and that therefore we should ‘spend’ it, as much as possible, doing
things we love and things that are our personal responsibility, and
only buy goods and services we cannot possibly provide for ourselves.
In doing these things ourselves, we learn to do them better, more
efficiently, more effectively and more economically, saving the cost of
outsourcing them to a third party.
Thanks to this cost saving,
we then need to work less, which gives us more time to do the things we
love, creating a virtuous cycle (cycle 2 in green on the chart above)
instead of a vicious one.
The economists don’t like us doing
this, since this DIY work doesn’t involve the exchange of money or the
employment of others to do our own work, and so is not included in GDP
or employment data. This is why published trends in GDP and
unemployment are meaningless, and why these data provide no useful
measure of a society’s well-being.
The outcome of this virtuous
cycle – more time – has another benefit as well: Some of that ‘extra’
time can be invested in Gift Economy activities that yield even
greater, self-reinforcing and sustainable ‘goods’:
- Mentoring, parenting and coaching: enabling others to cope with major life challenges and problems
- Showing and teaching: enabling others to develop new capacities and skills
- Gifting, sharing and peer production: exchanging, and collaboratively designing and making stuff for mutual benefit
So under the Gift Economy, the joyful investment of this additional ‘leisure’ time spawns three more virtuous cycles (shown in blue on the chart above):
- Mentoring,
parenting and coaching others (cycle 3 on the chart) produces
healthier, happier, more competent and more responsible citizens with
fewer social problems and needs. This reduces the costs of health care,
crime, wars etc. and also makes us better at doing things for
ourselves, saving both our society and us as individuals money, so we
need to work less to pay taxes and personal expenses.
- Showing
and teaching (cycle 4 on the chart) produces a more self-sufficient
citizenry with more capacities and skills, who therefore need to work
even less since they need buy fewer goods and services from others.
- Gifting,
sharing and peer production (cycle 5 on the chart) produces goods and
services tailored for our individual needs and wants at no cost beyond
that for materials that must be purchased from the ‘market’ economy.
Open source, free libraries and file sharing, scientific exchange,
cooperatives, social exchanges such as work bees and vacation home
swaps, the Internet (and particularly blogs) and philanthropy are all
examples of gifting, sharing and peer production Gift Economy
activities. Umair Haque
has outlined a peer production model that could take us even further,
to the point ‘producers’ and ‘customers’ become
indistinguishable, where they collectively invest time, ideas and
energy in a trust relationship with others to co-produce goods and
services precisely tailored to their mutual needs, which can then be
gifted to others.
These cycles are, of course, subversive.
They threaten to undermine and starve the 'market' economy by freeing
us, the end-customers of that economy, from the need to pay money into
it. They also threaten to undermine and render irrelevant political
structures and institutions that exist to defend economic rights and
powers, to wage wars and to mete out scarce economic resources – the
Gift Economy voluntarily gives us these rights and powers, has no need
of wars to defend them, and operates under a principle of generosity
and abundance, not competitiveness and scarcity.
It is not
surprising, therefore, that the brokers, agents, controllers of
resources, marketers, politicians and other parasites who rely on the
‘market’ economy and its corporatist supporting political structures
have already demonstrated a willingness to go to great lengths –
alternately suing and bribing customers, ridiculing and slandering Gift
Economy initiatives, and bribing and coercing lawmakers to disrupt the
decentralization of power that the Gift Economy brings about and to
protect ‘their’ property from being shared or given away generously.
The
Gift Economy in fact represents a ‘re-naturalization’ of the economy.
The ‘market’ economy is unsustainable and has shown itself to be
morally bankrupt, unable to innovate, fragile and lacking in capacity
to cope with rapid change. The shift to the Gift Economy has already
begun, and is entirely consistent with the critical political and
economic demands and needs of our time, and with way nature and
‘uncivilized’ creatures thrive in a world of abundance and a spirit of
generosity (in the true ‘giving and sharing freely and trustfully’
sense of the word, not the narrow sense of charity).
All we need
to do, starting within our own physical and virtual communities, is
acknowledge that our time is precious and that making time to re-learn
to do things for ourselves and become more self-sufficient just makes sense.
Once we realize that, it will become clear to these communities that
the Gift Economy offers us a better, easier, more equitable, resilient
and joyful way to live, and to make a living. And, best of all, it just
keeps on giving. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
