The Gift Economy
A gift economy is the exact opposite of capitalism. In capitalist economies, the object is for the individual to accumulate and hold on to as much wealth as is humanly (or inhumanly) possible. In a gift economy, as practiced by such cultures as the Kwakiutl and Tlingit Indians of the Northwest coast and the ancient Chinese, prestige and power are measured by how much you give away.
In our mundane world, the gift economy of course remains a utopian ideal, impractical for meeting subsistence needs and unattractive to the culture of multinational consumerism.
In the Mars Trilogy the gift economy functions as a subversive underground exchange system, which makes survival possible outside the control of multinational corporations. {Page numbers being accumulated for further citations.}
In many ways, the scientific/academic community and the Internet can be seen as contemporary examples of partial gift economies: a scientist's or academic's knowledge is not worth anything unless it is given away, shared with other scientists and students through publication or teaching. Similarly, the open-handed ethos of the web encourages a potlatch mentality where people create whole sites for the purpose of giving things away.
So, if you like anything on this site, feel free to take it. Pay me back by posting a link and/or by creating something of your own to give back to the community.
That's why pond circles are the design theme of this page:
the wealth spreads out beyond us.
If you do a web search on "gift economy", you'll find some pretty lively discussions of the opposing merits of capitalist and munificent uses of the Internet.
Here are a couple of interesting links about the idea of "gift economy":
- The Gift Economy and finding things on the net
- UCSB Anthropology Faculty--Yang
Last update: 2/16/97 Some Kim Stanley Robinson Links
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