[crawfordcomeaux]

Retire from capitalism and join a gift economy. We're starting to build one and are currently coordinating via Facebook while we find a better fitting platform. We're literally days into this. https://m.facebook.com/groups/416107742551498?multi_permalin...

Would you be interested in helping build a platform where people help each other meet needs through giving?

[johnsimer]

not that we need to start a economic/political discussion here, but I wanted to give my two cents in the <1% chance it adds some value to your idea:

I (and many other people) think that because money (and capitalism as a whole) is more liquid than a barter economy, that it provides much more value to society than a barter economy.

It's just so much smoother to allocate resources with money. You don't have to do a receiver to giver search every time you want to exchange a service/product, and rather can create close to zero cost exchange through the technology that is known as money.

[crawfordcomeaux]

To be clear, I'm referring to a giving economy. Bartering/exchange isn't free giving...it's giving with an expectation/obligation for a return gift.

We're going to try the money-less route, first, to see how things go & possibly bring in money down the line. The main issue is many people have developed really deeply entrenched scarcity mindsets when dealing with money, so providing a money-free economy of free giving can serve as a space for people to operate free from triggering their scarcity.

Having written that, I realize I just made a case for allowing money because some people have a need to learn how to freely engage with money. For me, my desired strategy for dealing with my triggers is to practice triggering myself and disentangling the trigger to find its root & heal it (usually by modifying my beliefs). That would mean having a safe place to practice using it, like in a gift economy.

Thanks so much for your comment! We hit the <1%!! I recently started healing my relationship with money & I think this'll be a great way for me to create a healing playground for money.

As for the giver search, I don't think the design is going to require so much interaction. I'm applying a new theory of mindful design to it, which is about respecting attention, being mindfully usable, preserves connection, and responsibly uses emotions. The site is meant to require as little attention to it as possible to be useful, so when you make a request, bots take over to get things moving. Or so I imagine. That's just one thought; the project idea's days old. Besides, when gifts are given freely, things can move really smoothly.