PredominantlyGiftEconomy

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Conversation

Intro

FridemarPache: NathanielThurston introduced in <->CreatingAndSharingWealth and elsewhere the term Google:PredominantlyGiftEconomy. On this page we all can elaborate it interactively in form of a conversation. As our conventional money system is debt based on the Google:FiatMoney principle, it would help a lot of people, not only the 200 million OLPC kids, to escape the credit trap, if we can find ways to donate interests on credits (pun intended!), which could be a big step towards a (predominantly) Google:GiftEconomy. Following your style to introduce refactorisation stubs straight from the beginning, to anticipate that this page becomes unwieldly too big, let me introduce the humoresque term TrueAuthorCredit, meaning donating community authors at least the price for lending them money (authors=originators of texts, graphics, music, software) and minimizing the transaction costs. This idea is sketched and set up into practice in the conversation with Sunir in <->MicroTransaction.

A problem between exchange of conventional and virtual currency

NathanielThurston: I have spent some time thinking further about what I might call the "money corrupts; absolute money corrupts absolutely" problem, and I'm convinced that the PredominantlyGiftEconomy setting isn't a sufficient defense. The problem as I see it is inherent in the existence of an exchange mechanism between SecretFiatMoney? and the VirtualCurrency? -- as long as there's an efficient bidirectional transfer, some people will be thinking in terms of the conventional currency, and the corrupting force will be present.

One answer might be to enforce a one-way transfer -- allowing conventional money into the system, but not out. So, for example, paying a third party for hosting fees could "earn" SocialCurrency?, but exchange of SocialCurrency? for conventional currency would be forbidden (and would result, simply, in the refusal to honor the purchased SocialCurrency?).

What is PredominantlyGiftEconomy?

FridemarPache: Nathaniel, you introduced the term PredominantlyGiftEconomy. So it would be helpful to expand it a bit, before we can understand, that you hold it as an insufficient defense. In my opinion each small step towards CreatingAndSharingWealth for more and more people, e.g. as SocialDomaining or other innovations in WikiNomics helps to come nearer to a PredominantlyGiftEconomy, which itself appears to me a large enough interim stage, before realizing GiftEconomy.

Segregation or not Segregation

NathanielThurston: Fridemar, I don't think I had in mind anything more meaningful than is implied by the combination of "predominantly" and GiftEconomy -- an economy in which most transactions are gifts, and in which market transactions play a minority role. In view of Sunir's observation that the presence of monetary interactions so often poisons the value of the gift, I'm no longer convinced that the mixture makes sense, and my current thinking is that it may well be best to segregate the MarketEconomy? from the GiftEconomy. My first introduction to GiftEconomy was from KimStanleyRobinson?'s "Green Mars", in which he depicted the two economies as flourishing side-by-side -- the market economy for necessities, and the gift economy for luxuries.

FridemarPache: I guess, some people might think, that this segregation can be seen as another social segregation step, predominantly as instrument for the leisure class to minimize the transaction costs of luxury transactions. What about a more holistic approach to not segregate the economy and instead of seeking integration with the current MarketEconomy?. I think it would be a great step towards more social justice and a more stable economy to donate interests on credits, just as macroeconomically proposed at: http://www.jamesrobertson.com/news-aug09.htm: "They should create it in the public interest debt-free, and then give it to their governments to spend into circulation under normal democratic budgetary procedures and safeguards." Consequently I am suggesting (on a humble microeconomical level) to mimic FiatMoney? democratically but without interests on debts in form of TrueAuthorCredits as applied e.g. to SocialDomaining. In this case, acquisiting, developing and selling domains create value for the have-nots, giving them money-free start up opportunities to work/collaborate, without locking them into an interest-trap. -- FridemarPache

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