Gift Economy
is an ambitious project that builds on our
altruistic economics and
friend2friend projects. We are developing a
decentralised, internetwide system of exchanging goods and services that rewards
altruism, by facilitating productive
(win-win) interactions.
In preparation for this, we launched a
Gift Economy wiki
to help people rediscover the concept, and to help coordinate those who are working
on establishing an Internet Gift Economy.
Although using high technology,
the system is in many senses a return to our primitive roots;
for almost all of man's history, we have relied on a gift economy
to mediate our transactions. The influence of abstracted, anonymous power that we
refer to as 'money' has only been in existance for a few thousand years, whilst
centralised money systems have existed for an even shorter time.
The selfishness of capitalism is not innate in people, as opposed to their
natural desire to engage in lasting
relationships. Much of the selfishness that surrounds us
stems from the
zero-sum systems we use to organise people, which tend to focus on numbers and
profit maximization not on
friendship or on human wellbeing.
We believe that it is high time people were offered a
more constructive way of doing business
and would welcome any offers of assistance to help us provide one.