gift economy

A gift economy is an economic system in which goods and services are given, rather than traded. In theory, this is more beneficial because needs can be satisified immediately, rather than have advancement stagnate because conditions are inappropriate for trade, such as poverty. This is thus often the proposed solution to the poverty cycle, such as in Anarcho-Communism. Anarcho-Communism is defined as using a gift economy, because there is no money or market. Products are given away and freely distributed. Gift economies can co-exist with planned economies, market economies and barter economies. Gift economies in the form of communal sharing of food were and are almost universally practiced among ancient and modern hunter-gatherer societies, where sharing acts as a safeguard against the possible failure of any individual's daily foraging. A more elaborate version of such customs is seen in the potlatch rituals of Native American societies in the Pacific Northwest. Leaders would give away large amounts of perishable goods to their followers. The sharing economy is an effort to describe sharing in economic terms. Yochai Benkler in his paper Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm writes that Ronald Coase described the firm as a more efficient form of production than the market. Benkler suggests a third mode of production called commons-based peer-production. Charles Leadbeater writes about the Pro Am revolution and the Pro Am economy where amateurs motivated by non-economic reasons are growing in power and supporting the sharing economy. Efforts such as Creative Commons led by Lawrence Lessig encourage sharing and argue that society as well as corporations will benefit from sharing. Note that there are examples of societies where somebody who receives a gift is expected to give something in return, typically political support, military services and general loyalty, or even return gifts and favors. This was common in warrior societies where kings and chieftains gave freely to their followers and could expect their loyal service in return. Such systems have social sanctions built in to punish freeloaders or miserly chiefs. A default punishment would be to halt gifts or services from one party to the alleged party in wrong. Other typical sanctions might include a bad reputation, formal eviction from the lords hall, challenges to duels from men who find this behavior repulsive or public ridicule. A stingy lord would find it difficult to attract followers. A gift economy is an important cornerstone of the annual Burning Man festival, and of the Freecycle network. Information is particularly suited to gift economics, as a given piece of information can be copied and transmitted indefinitely at practically no cost. The tradition of scientific research is an example of an information gift economy. A scientist produces research papers and gives them away to other scientists, through journals and conferences. The other scientists are free to refer to the first scientist's papers. The more citations the scientist has, the more prestige and respect he has, which can attract funding and positions. All of the scientists benefit from an increased pool of knowledge. The free software community can be thought of as an example of an information gift economy. Programmers make their source code available to users and the developer community, and anyone can copy and modify/improve the code. Individual programmers gain prestige and respect, and the community as a whole benefits from better software. Jordan Hubbard, writing in Queue magazine ("Open Source to the Core", p.24--31, May 2004) while referring to open source as a "barter economy," describes it in terms much more relevant to a gift economy: "The volunteer software engineers in the open source software community are far more likely to help those who have demonstrated their commitment to the success of the overall open source software development process." cit., p. 29 In other words, reciprocity is seen as a broad community matter rather than one of explicit quid pro quo''. Wikipedia itself is, in most of its operations, an example of a thriving gift economy. There are hundreds of thousands of articles available on Wikipedia, and none of their innumerable authors and editors received any sort of material reward. Wikipedia has been constructed entirely out of gifts, and gives information freely as a gift to anyone who wishes to read it. From time to time Wikipedia has resorted to fundraising activities which ask users of the site to contribute funds toward operating expenses; these donated funds are an example of a gift, albeit an explicitly solicited gift. A very small portion of Wikipedia's income comes from actual sales, mostly of T-shirts, mugs, and the like, with Wikipedia logos. Because Wikipedia exists within a money economy, it has expenses that must be met with money, such as paying for servers, domain registration, and for certain IT work involved in server maintenance. Therefore, the information in Wikipedia is an example of a gift economy, but some aspects of the operation of its website (and its related entities) are not. As of February 2005, there are possibilities under discussion that might allow for the hosting of Wikipedia on a gift economy basis. (Mook, 2005)

External links

References

Nate Mook, Google Offers to Host Wikipedia, Beta News, February 11, 2005. Retrieved March 2, 2005.
Marcel Mauss: The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Originally published as Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'change dans les socits archaques in 1925, modern English edition: ISBN 039332043X.
Lewis Hyde: The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, 1983 (ISBN 0394715195), especially part I, "A Theory of Gifts", part of which was originally published as "The Gift Must Always Move" in Co-Evolution Quarterly No. 35, Fall 1982.

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