I think we should start by defining our aim for this "thinking exercise" - otherwise it's really easy to get lost.

A few possibilities come to mind:

• Just explore the subject. This feels like a week aim, as we'd just be exploring our prejudices and sapience, probably. But getting to know each other's prejudices and sapience would be enriching - and very "gifty" :-).
  
• Generate at least 5 creative ideas on how to "port" the ideas of Free/Open-Source Software (FOSS) world to the physical world.
  
• Try and find some examples of real world gift sub-cultures, other than FOSS.
  

I'll open up each topic by creating 'brothers' to this "Blue Hat" comment. Cothinking can then proceed under each of those. You can always create further 'brothers' if you want to initiate other lines of cothinking.

(By "cothinking" I mean working in some direction together - different from trying to prove each other wrong.)

(Using the "Blue Hat" to propose directions for the thinking is a role. As such, I'm only using it momentarily, and anyone can take it at any moment. It's very easy to take a hat off. I'm not a hat.)

Just explore the subject. This feels like a week aim, as we'd just be exploring our prejudices and sapience, probably. But getting to know each other's prejudices and sapience would be enriching - and very "gifty" :-).

More specifically:

• What are the concepts here?
  
• What are the elements of the "system" from a systemic view?
  
• What are the requirements for a Gift Culture?
  
• Is a Gift Culture "good"? Why? Under what circumstances?
  
• What are the long term consequences of a Gift Culture?
  
• What are the bad sides of a Gift Culture? Who suffers in it?
  
• Are there further questions we should ask ourselves when exploring the subject of Gift Cultures?
  

• Re: How to foster a Gift Economy? by J05H on Tuesday November 30, @07:05AM

  I agree, as an exercise, that simply exploring the subject could be an exercise in running in circles. Sometimes, circles lead to... lines? 8) I'm a little loopy right now, I've been dealing with both allergies and two extracted wisdom teeth for the past week. My mind is reeling from the antihistamines.... Anyway, so here are some of my thoughts on it: What are the concepts here? Economic models, IMHO, more than social/behavioral models. I fall into the "anarchocapitalist" school on most econo issues. I firmly believe, and can site evidence, that capitlism is the fairest, most egalitarian form of economics yet invented. The problem is when it isn't egalitarian, a perfect example being corporate and union lobbies, they are able to weild an influence far out of proportion to thier means, by coercion and legalized bribery. However, and this is a big however, over time, I have come to the realization that the (tired, dead, etc) arguments of "capitalism vs. socialism" are just that, tired and dead. There are other economic models that societies can be built upon. My only real requirement for any kind of economy is that it be egalitarian, and have some methods for preventing excessive concentrations of wealth and power. This is not the same as "wealth redistribution", which is morally repugnant and makes societies turn on themselves, this is about a set of checks and balances that allow anyone fair access to capital and it's equivalents. This is where the gift economy comes in. What are the elements of the "system" from a systemic view? A gift economy would be an economic model (vs. a social model, this is something that needs to scale from two people swapping something up to corporate resource management...) that has the goal of "giving" more than receiving. In other words, it would be a way of doing business in which you TRY to give the other person a better deal. The beauty of it, if it can work, is that everyone involved in a Gift Culture would be attempting the same goal, enriching everyone that participated. A gift culture, as a theoretical model, should be able to work with or without organized money. It should also work both as a face-to-face and anonymous/encrypted/ultraprivate networked economy. What are the requirements for a Gift Culture? I will maintain that the two most important elements to build a gift culture are abundance of basic materiel and some method of guaranteeing equality between participants. This is only an economic equality, has nothing to do with any social factors. This is one reason I tend to think the Net has a growing gift culture (sort of) in that a lot of "free" resources are available, and people seem willing to help each other (depends, assume some level of commonality between users) solve problems. Check out comp.lang.perl.misc to see what I mean. There's a lot of raw resources (time, net access, etc) going into simply helping others online. Is a Gift Culture "good"? Why? Under what circumstances? I'm honestly not going to try to make a value judgement on a Gift Culture. It's easy to point examples of good and bad elements from current and past economic/social models, but I'm not willing to do that on something so nascient as a Gift Culture. I keep wanting to refer to different American Indian tribes for examples, but even their cultures don't hold up a good model, since they were generally small clans and tribes that were... tribal... internally, and were traders/barter/gift(and kill) to the other tribes they encountered. I'm not sure if that is a workable example for a globally networked economy. Or maybe it is... A Gift Culture would be bad under one immediately obvious condition: times/places of scarce resources. This is when people would suffer greatly. Again, back to the Indians, having the ability to survive with the most minimal of resources would greatly help, but this doesn't help when your economics force you to shower guests with your "abundances"... What are the long term consequences of a Gift Culture? Potentially, immense social stability, and a rapidly (exponential growth curve!) rise in standards of living for all participants. Also, with any other economic model, there's always the fall into anarchy or authoritarian control. The bright side is that a gift economy could function fine in either of those circumstances, in the anarchy it would be an armed-to-the-teeth sort of trading and under an authoritarian regime, it would revert back to a pure state of favors for favors (think Mafia family...) and trade in information. However, I think those are both outside the scope of building a Gift Culture. What are the bad sides of a Gift Culture? Who suffers in it? Sufferers? hmmm. That would be 1) anyone that didn't participate in the exchange, and 2) those who can not raise even a minimum of the capital (general sense, money, time, pigs, whatever) needed to begin participation. The barrier to entry could be exceedingly low, in which case (and if you believe there's a market for everything) anyone with a little motivation could participate. The most likely place in our culture that I can see a gift culture coming about is the Net. This provides it's own barriers to entry, but even they are falling, and quickly. With a Net-based Gift Culture, identity is a series of "trusted agents", whether using encryption or not, you build up reputations that truly are your identity, and they make or break users. In a gift oriented Net, people that had proven themselves untrustworthy would find it difficult to get anyone to do business with them. Back to access issues. If cost-of-entry into a gift culture is to high, it will exclude (obviously) more people than if the cost of entry was low. Here, in Boston, it's easy to think "let's build a Net gift culture", because EVERYONE around here has access. The same does not hold true for Uganda. If there was a cheap, solarpowered "web terminal" that could handle cel or satelite uplinks, it would easily reduce the cost of entry to a Net GC (I'll abrieviate from here on) to next to nothing. Literally, if my suppositions about how a GC would build capital (exponentially), it would not be a big problem to get EVERYONE in on it. It would just be a question of economies of scale, and in a GC, scaling up should provide great amounts of capitilization. Are there further questions we should ask ourselves when exploring the subject of Gift Cultures? OK, this is going to sound WICKED paranoid, but I think that the greatest danger, if a group of people were going to try to build a GC, would be others trying to co-opt the image/skin/veneer of the GC, and use it to promote their own socioeconomic agenda. Luckily, the OIP license should cover us, though that is little compensation if someone actually did co-opt it. That's it for now. J

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• Re: How to foster a Gift Economy? by Lucas Gonzalez on Tuesday November 30, @04:13PM

  >What are the concepts here? >What are the elements of the "system" from a systemic view? There's the people. Gifters if they give things away. Giftees if they receive. There's the gifts. The "gifts" are things or services that "gifters" can make or give, and that benefit the "giftees". There's the rewards for giving things away. The "rewards" are proof of recognition that are in turn valuable to the "gifter". Those rewards can be given by the "giftee" himself, or by society as a whole, or by parts of it. So, in fostering a Gift Culture (GC) we can try and find ways to: make it easier to make or give gifts. We can focus in making the thing, in making it available, maybe in other aspects (?). find ways to give rewards that in turn can be traded. define and value those rewards. (Winning an Oscar is valuable because we have invested energy in believing so. Maybe we can define other valuable rewards.) (This exploration is not finished. I've tried to write it with < p r e > tag but it was ackward to read. I've finally written it with html tags but it is not easy to write: syntax gets in the way of thinking. Please don't reply to these comments here, but in other more suitable place.)

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• Re: How to foster a Gift Economy? by J05H on Sunday December 05, @12:46AM

  There's the people. Gifters if they give things away. Giftees if they receive. Important point: I've always understood the transactions in a GC to be "mutual gifting", IOW, both parties are involved in giving and recieving. The difference between this, and say barter or normal capitalism, is that both parties would be attempting to "one up" the other with more of whatever resources are being exchanged. think of it as "negative capitalism", where every party does it's best to LOSE all of it's resources. It's a counter-intuitive process, but (like in KSR's Mars trilogy) it is an excellent way to keep a culture happy, functionally productive and have increasing standards of living, without a lot of the disparities of both of the modern economic theories. There's the gifts. The "gifts" are things or services that "gifters" can make or give, and that benefit the "giftees". Could this involve a cash/credit/wattage exchange system? Actually, this might REALLY work well using exchange of electricity credits, per Arthur Clarke's ideas on the future of money, since it'd be an inherently networked society anyway, and electricity is the basis of modern wealth. Do you guys think something like this might work with some form of money, or would it be by neccesity be a barter system? There's the rewards for giving things away. The "rewards" are proof of recognition that are in turn valuable to the "gifter". Those rewards can be given by the "giftee" himself, or by society as a whole, or by parts of it. This is the part of a GC that intrigues me. Every instance of GC-behavior that I know of involves extremely communal/social groups, be they small tribes in the bush, or computer geeks helping each other with what amounts to hundreds of dollars worth of tech support and software. The main benefit to the giver is a better reputation in the community, and backing of the local community for dealing with elements outside that community. Maybe the emergence of GC is something that only happens in very "networked" cultures, like many of the nomadic peoples in the past (example: the Inuit, there was a Wired article on how the Internet is "business as usual", the Inuit are very socially oriented, with vast extended families, and a strong culture of 'help your neighbor') and many aspects of modern computer culture, including many USEnet groups and web communities. make it easier to make or give gifts. We can focus in making the thing, in making it available, maybe in other aspects (?). This is interesting, since (essentially) things like technocrat/slashdot/etc are already "making" and giving "information gifts" right now, where people are able to provide valuable insights into problems and issues, while building up a reputation as someone who knows what they are talking about. This is the only standing that anyone has in those communities, and there is no coercion to stay, people come and go all the time. This points to a starting point (the Network and the free exchange of information) as a modern example of something that approaches, on some levels, what we are thinking of for a Gift Culture. From another perspective: information and the time involved in collating and disseminatning it (time is money...) is either cheap enough or the benefits of it are great enough, that spending large amounts of time involved in these pursuits provides an overall bonus to that person's life. What other resources, aside from time and thinking, could be used, effectively, in a modern GC? find ways to give rewards that in turn can be traded. I think that a part of this is maintaining a 'reputation' for each person. If there was a permanent (Net) archive that offered double-blind encrypted identities (for security and real world anonymous eCash!) that also allowed some form of publicly available "commentary" feature, people would be able to "stake their reputation" on certain services and products? Sort of like on ebay, where some of the sellers (the ones doing it professionally, it seems), will cross-ship auctioned items to users with high feedback ratings, instead of waiting for the payment. A system that allowed a globally-accessable reputation for people, both real-world and Net, could help provide some measure of "giftability". By making a "per transaction" comment system, people could have concise summaries publically available, for potential "gifters" to help along. Wow. Something like this could be done as an adjunct to current economies, using the Net and smartcards. The biggest issue would be privacy and anonymity. define and value those rewards. (Winning an Oscar is valuable because we have invested energy in believing so. Maybe we can define other valuable rewards.) how would you keep a running tally of "worth" for each person? If the GC used a cash/credit/wattage 8) system, it would simply be two numbers, one of value-earned, and the other of value given. If it is a barter or information based economy, then something more nebulous might be needed. J

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Try and find some examples of real world gift sub-cultures, other than FOSS.

We should be objective-creative with this one. Perhaps some examples share the features of Gift Cultures, but not all the features.

My grandma told me I was great. For free. The more she said it the more I appreciated her - up to a point, anyway.

Some people are always happy, so it's a pleasure to be with them.

Information booths have to give information away if they are to succeed.

Let's look around for further examples. The more the merrier!

Generate at least 5 creative ideas on how to "port" the ideas of Free/Open-Source Software (FOSS) world to the physical world.

There's room for creativity here! We can just use brainstorming, the more formal lateral thinking techniques, or whatever. The emphasis is more in generating ideas - there will be time for criticising them later.

People who put forward "wrong" ideas are not silly - in this context. If you dislike the idea - just treat it as a provocation and generate your own. If you think of a variation, share it. If you think the exact opposit of a given idea would be a possible idea too, then lay it down in parallel with the previous ideas.

Let possibilities flourish.

Here are my first (admittedly weak) attempts:

• Create abundancy. Force it somehow. Recognise it where it is.
  
• Create role models. Find Gift champions. Crown Allan Cox, etc.
  
• Create places like Open Idea Project - so that people will have the oportunity to "feel good by sharing".
  
• Find sponsors for those who give away things. Some TV programs show children who sing well - why not show those who give things away? (Preferably their own property.)
  
• Find what interests people and give it to them if they share.
  
• Create experimental communities to see how it would work - or show those novels with examples.
  
• Set up "Gift Contests" so that schools will compete at the GiveAway sport - somehow.
  

Feel free to build upon these ideas, work in any other direction, fill in the obvious (to your eyes) gaps ... Have a go!

• Re: How to foster a Gift Economy? - CREATIVE by Lucas Gonzalez on Friday November 19, @01:07PM

  >Create abundancy. Force it somehow. Recognise it where it is. There may be abundancy of food. Of certain foods, anyway. There is abundance of ideas, technology. There is abundancy of land. There may be abundancy of time. There is abundancy of rubish, litter, polutants. There is abundancy of children. These ideas may be foolish (I shouldn't have to say this, as I'm using the Green Hat to try and be creative), but we might work on them further. When you want to cross a creek (is that the name for a small river?) you can drop a stone in the middle, and then step on it to get to the other side. Some ideas are not useful in themselves, but you can step on them to get to better ideas. Could a scheme be created to consider war-children a communal "property" (rather responsibility)? Could the ideas from "orphaned projects" be used when dealing with the "war or earthquake orphans" very real problem? Could time be shared, as in very specific, "safe vacations in broken countries" be designed? After some catastrophic event, a country draws a temporary border around a damaged area and then the international community is allowed to input vocational-vacational students (with certain limits, say some apropriate age, to be decided by the opened country) to try and do their best for a limitted period of time. Students then get recognition. Could small-crime prisioners be shared for the same purpose? Under some NGOs supervision, of course. How could we share expertise in fields other than computer science? Could we have doctors donate - through their Hospitals videoconferencing systems - some of their time to poorer areas? They would get world recognition for that. Can rubish be used creatively?

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