[GiftEconomy] Gift Economy Book - Like it!

[Robin Upton]

Dear Bob,
> ...I'm attaching the current intro which is by no means final... but should give you a flavor of where my head's at. Let me know if you have thoughts or questions.
>
> Bob
>   
If "a massive conversion to altruism a sustainable human society is 
wishful thinking", it is wishful thinking of which I, too, am guilty. 
Your supposition about
"a group of altruists who fulfill their needs in the usual way from the 
cash economy ... organize themselves into an alliance seeking to 
eliminate capitalism by starving it of its wage laborers and consumers 
starting with themselves.... Somehow, they conclude, if they are going 
to make gifting effective in meeting needs they have to come up with a 
system to make their needs known to one another as well as make known 
and coordinate what they are willing and able to provide to others. For 
that they use computer technology and other stratagem for information 
exchange." is a close description of my vision for Altruists 
International, and explains the purpose of Altruistic Economics.

I agree with you on the importance of bottom-up, decentralized, active 
altruism, of giving an example of a better way to live, rather than 
protesting or fighting the current way things work. I am not sure how 
close US is to flashpoint - certainly, in material terms it is further 
away than Bangladesh, where I live, and in which millions of people are 
on the breadline. However, it is also much more unstable, and depends on 
the passive submission of the rest of the world to ever more hardship 
justified by spurious economic arguments about fictional dollars etc. 
That should not be taken for granted, and there are also the amount of 
US crazies with guns and high feelings of anger and entitlement. US 
technology/economy is higher than Bangladesh, so the personal 
skills/social ties are correspondingly atrophied, while Bangladesh has 
more robust, localized systems, "not so far to fall" to use a crude analogy.

BTW, have you seen CouchSurfing.org? Apart from being a very useful site 
in its own right, it is the Internet's most functional Gift Economy that 
I know of.

To summarize, a few minor wrinkles aside (ask if you like), I'm 
impressed by this introduction and looking forward to the book itself. 
My suggestion for what to do with it would be to publish it on a wiki 
(c.f. Lawrence Lessig's "Free Culture"), and invite people to edit, 
reference, translate and generally improve it. Perhaps it could 
encourage others to give away their Gift Economy visions in the same 
spirit. (Genevieve Vaugh at GiftEconomy.com has given away a book on the 
Gift Economy). I would be happy to link it in from or put it on the 
GiftEconomy.org wiki to help people find it.

Robin

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