Talk:Gift economy/Archive 1

message: I'm surprised this article has no mention of Burning Man, one of the largest gift economy events in North America. 148.87.1.170 (talk) 10:55, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Burning Man

message: Recent addition to the page: "Anarcho-communism uses a gift economy, as there is no money or market. Products are given away and freely distributed." I can't exactly disagree, but this seems an odd statement given that (1) the page Anarcho-communism does not even link to gift economy and (2) the only even indirect reference to a gift economy on that page is in discussing the ancient philosopher Zeno. -- Jmabel 01:07, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: 2004 talk

message: Although Wikipedia almost certainly deserves mention in this article, does it contradict Wikipedia: Avoid self-references in its current form? Perhaps if the "and the article you are currently reading" were eliminated. Derrick Coetzee 23:39, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self-reference 

message: I don't believe that the first sentence of the article is accurate. Right now it says, "A gift economy is an economic system in which participants give away things of value for the shared benefit of the community." This is no more true than if one said "A market economy is an economic system in which participants truck and barter for the shared benefit of the community" or "A socialist economy is an economic system in which industry is managed for the shared benefit of the community."  The claim of benefit here is just an assumption that gift economies are good. I believe it would be much more accurate to say "A gift ecomony is one in which participants give away things of value without directly receiving money or things of value in exchange. In general, an equivalent return is expected, but not in the form of an explicit quid pro quo." Does anyone have a problem with that? I'll leave at least 24 hours for response before I make the edit. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:37, Nov 28, 2004 (UTC)
:I agree that the definition could use some clarification, but what exactly is the problem? "for the shared benefit of the community"? This sounds true-- after all, gift economies don't exist to give away things to the detriment of the community-- but the definition of "beneficial" and who benefits is certainly up to question. Perhaps the gift only benefits the receiver.
:Perhaps we should approach this first sentence by placing it in context of the systems of economics, such as A gift economy is an economic system in which goods and services are given, rather than traded. --Chira 06:52, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition 

message: I remember hearing that a gift economy tends to happen where humans are scarce and there is a surplus of goods. Perhaps this was mentioned in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Does anyone know more about the role of surplus vs. scarcity and how it effects the economic system that people tend to use? --Chira 06:52, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Role of Scarcity 

message: I've removed «There is some confusion about the terms free software and open source software. Open source software may be free (to copy & modify), but it also may restrict copying and modifying. The author quoted below seems to use them as synonyms: ». 
Justification : just read The Open Source Definition (http://opensource.org/docs/definition_plain.php) articles 1 and 3 and you'll see that this sentence is false :
«1. Free Redistribution.
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.»
and
«3. Derived Works.
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.»
So, I agree that FS & OSS are different, but :
* it's not the right place to make such distinctions
* it's not on these peculiar matters that they differ.
-- Raph 14:22, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Free Software vs Open Source software 

message: This statement worries me: Gift economies in the form of communal sharing of food were and are almost universally practiced among ancient and modern hunter-gatherer societies, where sharing acts as a safeguard against the possible failure of any individual's daily foraging. Where's the research? And how did the researcher get information about all those ancient hunter-gatherer societies that we haven't discovered? And how did the researcher arrive at the theory that these people practice a gift ecenomy in order to "safeguard against possible failure"?
I'd prefer to have this section rewritten to something like According to so-and-so, gift economies in the form of communal sharing... etc. Or better yet, replace it with a few examples of hunter-gatherer gift economies, and a few leading theories into why they practiced gift economies. --Chira 07:06, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical Gift Cultures 

message: This article is quite haphazard and unclear.
There should be clear distinction between elaborating on the idea of a gift economy, and theoretical issues, and examples. I will try to partially reorganise it for now. -- Natalinasmpf 20:19, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You are welcome to weed out generalised statements and replace them with more accurate ones, just not delete them entirely. If they are POV, fix it - don't delete the entire paragraph. I believe it says many tribes, not all? -- Natalinasmpf 12:24, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organisation 

message: Peer to Peer file sharing (for better or worse) is probably also a gift economy?  Not sure how to word it, so will leave it to someone else to write up. Mat-C 01:40, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wouldn't that be related to free software, though? -- Natalinasmpf 01:54, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It wouldn't really be related to free software, in fact I'm having a problem seeing how F/OSS is an example of a Gift Economy. Information trading yes, and that would include P2P (legal or not, IP or not), but not F/OSS projects. The F/OSS community at large, maybe. Apache and a SQL server project may create between them (and other parties) a gift economy, but I can't see how withing Apache itself there is a Gift Economy. JoeHenzi 02:26, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  peer to peer 

message: it says that wikipedians get no matterial rewards.  however this is not really true, they get a free encyclopedea with alot of free information which can be used for all sorts of purposes.
:Wikipedia is essentially a public good. What the article is saying is that contributors are not directly rewarded for their contributions (except perhaps by the occasional compliment).
:To give an analogy, if a group of townspeople volunteer to build and run a lighthouse, they may benefit indirectly by better trade or saving the lives of family at sea, but they are not directly compensated. However, there's two effects that discourage people from participating in the effort:
:* The freerider effect: Whether or not a person contributes, they receive the benefit.
:* The drop-in-the-bucket effect: In a huge work, an individual's contribution seems tiny. Little would be lost, on a relative scale, if they do not contribute.
:What's remarkable about gift economies such as Wikipedia is that people contribute despite these effects, for whatever reason. 05:04, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  no rewards?! 

message: This link: Comparative simulations of simple gift, barter and currency-based economies leads to a page that is not at all self-explanatory. I'm inclined to get rid of it, but on the other hand it's not obvious junk. Can someone explain what's there and either second me in getting rid of it or explain why we should keep it? -- Jmabel | Talk July 7, 2005 06:04 (UTC)
:Yes, it's a badly-organised wiki. Work on the project also seems to have stalled for lack of interest. But here's my summary, from what I could understand of it:
:* It's a Python program to simulate simple economies.
:* The economy is modelled as a collection of "agents".  Each agent requires at least one kind of "resource" to survive.
:* Agents can "forage" for resources or get them from other agents.  How well each agent can forage is random.
:* Four different models of agent cooperation were trialled:
:** Non-cooperative: No trading allowed whatsoever.
:** Gift economy: Agents simply give their surplus to their most needy neighbour.
:** Barter: Agents can exchange a resource in surplus for one they need.
:** Money: Agents start out with a fixed amount of currency and can buy or sell resources at auctions.
:The gift economy consistently ended up with the most survivors and the least surplus.
:—Ghakko 7 July 2005 08:58 (UTC)
::So do you think it's a useful link? I can't tell from your comments. It sounds to me like it simulates a rather trivial model of a gift economy, since from your description it seems to assume that everyone is perfectly benevolent. In reality, a successful gift economy is quite complex: lacking any explicit quid pro quo, there are usually elaborate social rewards and punishments that get those with a surplus to give it away. -- Jmabel | Talk July 8, 2005 05:13 (UTC)
:::I believe it's useful as a tool for reasoning about the nature of economies in a reductionist sense.
:::But as you've pointed out, the wiki isn't easy to read and I agree that it would be a waste of time for most people.  So I'll second that the link be removed.
:::—Ghakko 8 July 2005 12:41 (UTC)
::::Does the simulation have model a cost for foraging, perhaps foraging activity increases the need for the resources?  Is there any benefit to more resources, such as more successful reproduction and higher percentage survival of progeny? --Silverback 07:03, July 23, 2005 (UTC)
:::::Agents needed a certain amount to stay alive, but didn't expend any additional resources when foraging.  The only cost of foraging was time.  The simulation also didn't model reproduction: there was just the one generation of agents.  Dead agents were also not replaced.
:::::The simulation didn't model the "health" of the agents at all. Instead, it used the number of survivors and the amount of surplus generated was used as the yardstick for cooperative success.
:::::—Ghakko 13:57, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simulation link 

message: I'll mention here a fairly elaborate treatment of a gift economy- described as such- in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, in hopes someone might want to integrate a reference to it into the article.  -SM 03:24, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gift economy in ''Mars Trilogy'' 

message: Currently, the article has the following text pretty early:
"Typically, this occurs in a cultural context where there is an expectation either of reciprocation—in the form of goods or services of comparable value, or of political support, general loyalty, honor to the giver, etc.—or of the gift being passed on in some other manner."
I strongly disagree with this view, and I believe that this is a major flaw in many pro-capitalist economists perception of gift economies. I'd rather have it further down, and rephrased as "Some economists think that this typically occurs in..."
Why? Because I (and others) believe that one of the things that are needed in contemporary western society is a strive to look outside the "measure-for-measure"-box of trade-based market economies and open our minds to new kinds of resource-distribution protocols.
The BitTorrent protocol (at it's lowest level) is an example of an economy that's neither a gift economy nor a pure trade-based economy -- the protocol is set up so you "give" as much as you can to the four who "give" you the most; regardless of the amount, and no "equal for equal"-ness is implied. It's not a pure gift economy, because you are getting something for something, but it's not a traditional market, either.
You don't have to agree with me, but the current phrasing is strongly POV. I'm planning to change this within a few days (if I remember to do so). Sunnan 17:06, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That is a element of trade in general, not a gift. Trade tends to be confined to a single transaction between two parties, and the economy is a system of such transactions. In a gift economy the receiver does not have to reciprocate to the giver in order for both of them to benefit. -- Natalinasmpf 03:14, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How does the giver benefit without reciprocation?  In a trade, the best traders get return business, not a "single transaction", and even build up a reputation that can be sold and is accounted for by the acquirer as "good will".  "Good will" can, of course, be squandered by the acquirer, or built upon.--Silverback 07:03, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reciprocation 

message: Are pork barrel, Roman cliens-patronus systems ant the Bitchun society with its whuffie examples of gift economies? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.84.184.125 (talk • contribs) 19 Feb 2006.
: Pork really isn't an example of a gift economy: it's been described as bribing the people with their own money, but of course that doesn't account for the fact that powerful districts get the pork, and everyone pays. The main reason it is not a matter of gift economy is that the giving is not typically really voluntary on the part of the districts that are on the economic losing end. Also, it's emphatically zero-sum, which usually doesn't lend itself to a gift economy. 
: Roman clien-patronus system: basically yes, with some elements of barter. 
: And I have no comment on a work of fiction that I haven't read. - Jmabel | Talk 01:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Scientists give each other free gifts all the time, e.g. stones, seedlings, transgene mice, cell culture samples, rare purified enzymes and such - either in coop's or completely free. That's a gift economy, ain't it?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.90.52.57 (talk) 21:21, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: How many of you really think this would work? (Gibby 00:07, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: How many...?

message: Shouldn't this section be more accurately described as "criticism of pure gift economy" or something similar? Obstacles implies they are factual rather than theoretical and thus represents a point of view. Donnacha 21:59, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obstacles to a pure gift economy (new argument :) ) 

message: How about the role of Happiness? Happiness vs Pleasure. I wrote a blog post about it... but am not sure about the ettiquette of linking vs pasting it here. I'll link it for now. Happiness, Compassion and Sharing -- Joi 20:18, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Happiness 

message: I think a brief description of the fairly new phenomenon known as the Really Really Free Market would be a beneficial addition to this page. Wanted to get some thoughts before i added it. Blockader 15:23, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Really Really Free Market 

message: It seems to me that this article, more than most in Wikipedia, is vulnerable to systemic bias.  That's because Wikipedia is a gift economy, so the people that contribute to it are at least willing to participate in one.
I can't think of a good way to counter that bias, but with some awareness we may be able to mitigate it somewhat.
— JBazuzi (talk • contribs) 16:26, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You're a bit confused - systematic bias is not a bias of point-of-view, but a bias of coverage (we're more likely to create more content about topics of interest to contributors). Nevertheless, your point is well-taken and it'd be good to dig up some better criticism of gift economy than the disputed and unsourced paragraph currently present. Dcoetzee 17:26, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Systemic bias 

message: Someone put a 'dubious' tag without creating any discussion on a claim that selling human organs for money is considered an unsavoury crime on an almost universal basis. I don't think there is any question to the factuality and accuracy of the claim and I think the tag should be removed on account of being frivolously added. 
On July 7, 2006, former Canadian Secretary of State (Asia Pacific) and MP David Kilgour and human rights attorney David Matas released their "Report into Allegations of Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China." Presenting 17 points of evidence on the harvesting of organs from live Falun Gong practitioners, they stated, "The allegations, if true, would represent a grotesque form of evil which, despite all the depravations humanity has seen, would be new to this planet. The very horror makes us reel back in disbelief.
from http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/falun-gong061107.htm on the release of a UN report concerning organ harvesting and sale in China.
The Transplantation Society devoted significant time and discussion to the prevention of organ sale during their recent (2008) Sydney conference.
http://www.transplantation2008.org/home.php
I don't have the time for doing the research right now but I'm fairly certain there is condemnation of organ sale by both the UN and WHO. 
People who tag in stupid ways like this are part of the reason why tags don't have much legitimacy in the eyes of wikipedians like me. Their uncontributions diminish wikipedia. It should be made mandatory to discuss any tags that are added, otherwise the tag should be removed without comment. --I (talk) 13:25, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organ Donation 

message: I don't think tithing is a good example of a gift economy. Tithing is more like a tax paid to a church. While in most places of the world today tithing is voluntary (there are still some European countries such as Germany in which it is not completely voluntary), according to the religious interpretation behind it, it is mandated by God. If someone is paying a tithe because they believe an all-powerful entity commanded it in order to gain entry into a good afterlife, that doesn't sound like much of a gift to me. Prothonotar (talk) 09:30, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tithing? 

message: I've put in Mutual Aid, but perhaps some of his other works are more relevant?  Is there anyone here who's read them and could provide the references / take mine out if need be?  Crinoline (talk) 00:24, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Right Reference to Kropotkin 

message: Can someone define the purpose of the external links - is it just to provide related reading or to provide examples of gift economies in action? The link to "The Gift Economy, Anarchism and Strategies for Change" is clearly the former, whereas the link to "Freeebay" is clearly the latter. I've been placing links to another site showing a gift economy in action, but it has been repeatedly removed. Could someone clarify the purpose of the external links section please?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.211.246.125 (talk) 10:41, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello-I've been undoing an external link. You can find guidelines about external links here. Particularly check out Wikipedia:El#Links_normally_to_be_avoided. I'd say that those links to examples of gift economies in action are effectively promotional, and so fall afoul of several of those points (#1, #4, #10). I haven't checked the other links-I'll do so and possibly remove others as well. If you think I'm wrong, you can go to Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard and ask for other input. If you do, please link the discussion here? Thanks for bringing it to the talk page instead of just re-adding it. CRETOG8(t/c) 16:08, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Links