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At some point the article states that money "might just be a choice", but I think the article itself is pointing to the evidence it is not. The git economy in
by m4nu3l 7y ago
At some point the article states that money "might just be a choice", but I think the article itself is pointing to the evidence it is not.
The git economy in a village and the one in a community of friends have something in common. Another hint is yet in the article when it states "it's hard to imagine a gift economy working to build skyscrapers and iPhones".
It seems pretty clear to me that the problem of a gift economy is that it doesn't scale.
As long as every person in a group knows each other it is fairly easy to keep track of gifts given and received. This becomes impossible as the group grows and the number of people each person has to keep track of grows with O(n).
Of course you can divide a big number of people into groups and have those groups use a gift economy between them by having leaders keeping track of gifts given and received between groups.
And of course can also have multiple levels of subdivision. But the problem becomes clear. The system is quite centralized and there is no direct way for someone in one of those groups to exchange goods and services directly with someone of another one without the good or service going up the command chain and down to the other side.
- pmoriarty 7y agoIt sounds like you're criticising barter rather than a gift economy. Unlike in barter, in a gift economy no one keeps track of who owes what to whom, they just all give each other what they need. To give an example, I've long participated in the open source community, where I give away software that I've written and help others on IRC, in various forums, and on stackexchange. I don't ask for or expect anything in return, but I know I'm helping the community and I seek and accept aid from the community when I need it, by asking my own questions and using software freely given away by others. This example is of a well functioning gift economy which has scaled incredibly well.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoSo similar to socialism/communism you eventually run out of people's money when the people fleecing the system drain the well because it's not being tracked. I find your open-source analogy funny when we have all these maintainers of major projects protesting about lack of funding. The gift economy fails when it comes up against human nature at scale. Humans are lazy and greedy, you need to account for that. When you're not checking who owes what, you're ripe for exploitation.
- jacobr1 7y ago> Unlike in barter, in a gift economy no one keeps track of who owes what to whom My reading of gift economies is that there often is some element reciprocity. In any given context, there might not be a direct exchange of gifts, but those not participating in the process over time get excluded from future gifting. And there are all sorts of "social status" and signaling effects that make this much more than just altruism.