I do not have great faith that gift economies will work on a large scale. It is too easy to take, move along and then take some more. The Shaker experience of "winter shakers" in the late 1800's in the U.S. is an example of this. People would join the faith to live through the hard winters on the earnings of their 'brethren" and then bail when the weather and conditions improved.

I am much more inclined to a "co-op" model. Credit Unions are an example of this, where the members are also the owners. The contstant attack on credit unions by the banking industry indicates that this model does in fact work and poses a threat to the massive profits and the constant drive for expansion by the shareholder owned companies. Health care co-ops make sense, and should have been considered much more seriously in the recent health care debate. There are many Rural Electric Co-ops (RECC) that have been successful for decades. Co-ops allow the professional managers of them to make a good living but deter the type of gambling expansionist behavior of for profit companies. We should consider a healthy mix of the two, with for profit firms to take on the "risks" but for the potential of greater reward, and the co-op models considered for many ongoing staples in life, the firms that require stability and longer term forward planning.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone, the lights are still on...what more can we ask? :-)

RC

I can't imagine gift economies working for large numbers. Even 150 seems too big. One of the "benefits" of money is that it reduces all the complexities of valuation to a single number - "what's it worth?" becomes "how much does it cost?" It is arguably this often brutal reduction that accounts for the ascendancy of large social groups. Money is a curse and a blessing - often both at the same time. Having a gift economy is not going to work as a means of allocating scarce resources in a large society. I have a jaded view of economics. It's more of an apology than a science. But it's tough to imagine a group of people who don't have some means of numerical accounting meeting the day to day challenges of a hard scrabble existence.

A gifting economy will probably only work for groups of people who share a common myth. The US has a population with diverse and frequently conflicting story lines. Would I be happy sharing a ride with someone who is haranguing me about how Sarah Palin is going to save the country? No.

Cuba is far more homogenous than the US. I can imagine ride-sharing working there but I don't see it as a practical solution here in the big cities. I wouldn't pick up strangers in LA. No way. A driver in a car is very vulnerable to attack from a passenger.

Gift economies can't properly be described as "easier to operate." No one is operating them. They either work or they don't. And the politics of a gift "economy" is going to be orders of magnitude more complicated. Not necessarily a bad thing but it would take a few generations of people doing it for the process to iron itself out.

Watch a few hours of Fox and the idea of the US embracing any form of gift economy seems about as likely as Ayn Rand becoming a communist.

Happy Thanksgiveing Gail, Everyone.

From the first two comments I can deduce that the idea of a gift economy is a bit foriegn to many. Perhaps as things become more local.

It occurs to me that the gifting meme is generally a cultural/regional thing. e.g., in the Southern US, after the "War of Northern Aggression", gifting was very much a part of the culture, as there was little cash available, and bartering for anything of great value was limited to Yankee Carpetbaggers for the most part; the Southerners had little of great value left to barter with. I know this from the many stories passed down from my deep southern roots. There was also a difference between "lending" and "loaning".

When my family began its move to Southern Appalachia from the Atlanta area, the gifting culture was in full force. Neighbors shared many things; their harvests, their time, their livestock genetics, hunting dogs, transportation, etc. One's level of status was (is) very much affected by one's level of gifting. This is still part of the culture here among the locals. When an uninsured person needs expensive medical care, donation jars will be in all of the local stores, donation accounts are set up at the local bank, and the VFW or Churches will hold a benefit of some sort. Caretakers will be provided, and work around the sick person's home will be done, often by relative strangers. The smaller townships, (this holler or that gap) still exist as "subdivisions" of the larger community, as they have for many generations.

Gifting is a defacto form of organic credit.

About #5, above; During my "hobo years" I hopped freight trains and hitch hiked a lot (early 70s) and there was a strong gifting culture among the "on-the-road" set. Folks would share their food, drink, tobacco, pot, with people they never expected to see again. Many areas in the US west had free ride booths set up at highway on-ramps. The PTB didn't want folks walking the Interstates hitching rides. It was sort of a "park-your-but-and ride" system. Worked well for me, though it involved a great deal of trust. I'm not sure it would work today. Why is that?

The feeling in the past was that every act of giving or kindness would be returned to the giver seven-fold; a karma thing. We need to restore this way of living or we're (sorry) doomed.

Can anyone see ways that a gift economy could be adopted outside very small local groups? Would it make sense to try to do so?

To overcome the limit of 150 people you would need something to boost human memory, such as a computer database. In a society with total surveillance with a chip in every human being that stored all the good deeds and bad deeds they had ever done, strangers could possibly put a scanner on someone's chip and instantly know if a stranger was a good person or a bad person. Then if anyone didn't do someone else a good turn, the stranger that they were mean spirited to could add that as a "black mark" on their personal file, similarly if someone did something kind-hearted to another stranger, that stranger could add that as a "browny point" to their character.

If a social norm was then set up, that it was acceptable not to help strangers with bad reputations without getting "black marks" yourself, but if you withheld a good turn to a stranger in need with a good reputation you could get a "black mark" on your reputation, then people might help stranger for the fear of getting a bad reputation to the point where strangers no longer help them.

What this means in terms of personal privacy, or what would happen if someone hacked the system I don't know!

Between monetary exchanges and gifting, there are a wide variety of other economic exchanges.

The relationship of the husband and wife on a family farm is not so much one of gifting as it is a partnership with understood roles and responsibilities. It would be silly for the husband to pay the wife so much per dozen for picking eggs or the wife to pay the husband so much per hour for cleaning manure out of the chicken coop. Instead, both are contributing to a shared economic enterprise.

Even in a large organization, effective organizational units are run on the basis of roles, responsibilities, and communal contributions to a shared enterprise. People are paid monthly salaries or hourly wages, but they are seldom measured on a detailed piecework basis. And there are often a variety of tasks that must be done that are not very susceptible to measurement, but which are critical to the success of the organization. Furthermore, the diligence, skill, and judgement with which people discharge their responsibilities are not very measurable, but they contribute significantly to the success of the organization. Effective management creates a climate where people aspire to contribute their best efforts, where excellence and teamwork is recognized, and where contributions are fairly rewarded by monetary and non-monetary means.

An organization that attempts to push cost accounting, internal pricing, internal marketplaces, and profit and loss statements down to very low levels is one to avoid, since it is likely on its way to failure.

Gail;
Gratefully Giving Thanks to you, a very thought-provoking post.

I was particularly happy to see the comparison of efforts such as the Volunteerism in both sites like this, and in the Open Source movement as various ways to understand where we in the current day will offer our services, knowledge and in similar ways, our treasures up to the 'general good'.

1) As far as 'Gift Economies being broadly viable?', I am wondering if that label and framing itself doesn't carry it too far into the assumptions of Economics and our Industrial 'all or nothing' world, to allow for the ways that it would and does work, and in which it would simply be proportioned differently, where there might be a vast increase in such Giving, and a more limited range of monetized exchanges, but not that it is some kind of absolute Paradigm Shift, where one has gone and is replaced by the other. As with this concern about Renewables and BAU.. it seems to devolve into an argument about whether it can become a silver bullet, when that's not really how it works in the first place. It's not a Monolith or a discrete and closed system unto itself, it is softer and more interwoven.

We fall into this 'either/or' issue frequently.. which evaluates ideas in a sort of 'Pass/Fail' mode, and the shades of gray remain outcasts, it seems. Mentioning Electric Cars, and someone inevitably has to offer the math that precludes them entirely because making a couple billion batteries is wrong.. while a revised understanding of how vehicles fit into our lives might mean a few cooperating families could have a couple Vehicles between them all, for example.. (which somewhat involves the Gift Economy paradigm as well as the potential of something like EVs..)

So using a "Hard" approach to review something Soft is like asking whether a Hammer can sew your clothes for you. Time to revisit the language context as well as the literal nouns and verbs of the question.

2) In trying to understand what's behind ALTRUISM, or maybe simply GENEROSITY is a less-loaded term, I have considered the idea that the various 'Random acts of Kindness' I've witnessed seem to fit into a motivation that people have of simply 'keeping the system working', which to me fits the mode that Women in my family seem to operate under when they give what they do, and may also similarly fit how a Gift Economy is developed. Not surprisingly, it has a strong inclination towards that Socialist Saw of "To each according to need, From each according to ability', with a strong emphasis on the From Each given a clear set of social rewards that gets people to give as much or more, instead of the Market based "Spend as Little as Possible for Maximized Value!" that we employ in so much of our current approach.

From Vaughan's article..

Exchange creates adversarial relations since each of the exchangers is trying to get the most possible out of the transaction. It does not create the bonds of community but rather separation and independence.

exchange in and of itself does NOT by any means create adversarial relationships. There is, in my mind, good capitalism and exchange, and bad capitalism and exchange. The first is an accountable exchange in which both parties involved feel they have gained more through the exchange than having not made it. The second.. 'bad capital', is when there's an exchange, and EITHER party feels like they lost out, or didn't get the value they should have. This happens when there's not really a free market.. when there's a monopoly position, or one or both parties is pressured into making an exchange they don't value, either because it's at the point of a gun, or from social pressure to, or just in general whenever some party exerts authority over another (the authority could be government, for example), in order to compel an exchange that one of the participants does not like.

Just as capitalism and commodity markets have their bad actors, so do gift economies. The 'winter shakers' are mentioned. What is also not addressed in what I see in the above commentary is that in a gift economy, the giver and receivers each have an internal 'credit rating' of each other, because it is a close-knit social group. The giver has an expectation they will receive (or maintain) their high social status by giving... The receiver owes the giver a debt (yes, debt) of social status to be repayed later. If all of a sudden the receivers decide that they will give their social status to the new white-skinned fur trader bringing new and strange gifts they have never seen, the gift economy collapses.

The one defense I have of capital and exchange as practiced by the 'evil patriarchy' is that at least at it's best there is a premise of a full accounting of all the value exchanged. In gift economies, the only way to tell what the value of something is through the social context. With commodities and stock markets, we at least have number and process to derive that number that all participants in theory agree on before participating. You likely don't get to know what the terms of the deal are with a gift economy, or the terms change over time. Where capitalism definitely crosses the line into 'evil' territory is when a party to a contract deal doesn't understand the terms they are agreeing to... Then you have the worst of both the gift economy, and bad capital. This is likely the fundamental reason the mortgage system is a smoking crater right now. Even the supposedly sophisticated institutional investors didn't know what they were agreeing to with complex mortgage-backed securities derivatives and credit default swaps. To say nothing of the low-income single mother of 3 who had a slick loan salesman show up at her door and listen to her plight and have him tell her how this refinance would solve all her financial problems, while conveniently avoiding talking about the adjustable rate fine print.

Finally, if you want to see monetary exchange that builds community and social bonds, go to a farmer's market, a craft show, or join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), or do your banking at a credit union instead of a for-profit bank. I'll challenge any of you who think a gift economy would be better to start a co-op with your friends to act as a legal entity to hold what the current system considers property you wish to have in your co-op gift economy.

People give anonymously, without trying to obtain credit or status but life's necessities are paid for with cash.
The real issue is the excess accumulation of wealth.

Giving is a means of discharging the surplus.

The purpose of money is keep the economy in motion.

Perhaps we need to encourage the erosion of wealth with negative interest rates like Bernanke's QE2.

xxx

Gail's article raises some very interesting issues. For example, how much of "GDP growth" over the past half-century can be attributed merely to "monetizing transactions which were previously not money-based"? Having both heads of households work for wages in order to pay a food processing company to prepare "ready-to-eat" frozen foods, or to pay a restaurant to prepare meals.

In the past, my mother and father, though specializing in growing beef cattle, also grew and preserved enough vegetables, fruits and often meats ("canned" or "cured") to provide nourishment throughout the winter, and "gifted" excesses to less fortunate neighbours. Ditto excess fish, wild game, etc. Most people not on farms did so also. We lived in a community of perhaps 10 to 12 thousand, loosely clustered around a large paper mill isolated in Northern Ontario, Canada.

They traded labour at harvest time, including the women who competed to provide the threshing crew or the firewood-cutting crew or the sawmill operating crew with the best, most complimented meals during work sessions at their homesites. All this work is now monetized (at huge increases in GDP I'm sure, but is anyone feeling better of for that?)

County clerking work, road commisioner work, school board work etc. were volunteer jobs done evenings by any of several qualified bookkeepers / organizers on one-year nominations, in return for a nice ceremonial process on investiture.

Neighbours traded skills and equipment. One didn't lend a neighbour a grain binder, one collected the kids and went over and did the grain-cutting / stooking with them, after which everyone came back with his hay baler or etc. and worked at one's own farm.

A side of beef was worth enough paint to paint a house. Excess eggs from 100 hens were sufficient to trade to the "supermarket" (locally owned) for the few items required beyond what was grown at home.

Now everything is monetized, and none of these transactions happen anymore. Are we significantly better off, either financially or in worldly goods? Perhaps the automobiles are much better, roads are certainly better, and it is now possible to use aircraft flights to visit distant relatives. Houses are larger and have granite countertops....

But really, not so much. In total, I'd guess the average Joe now (50th percentile) lives perhaps as well as a 75th percentile Joe in those days. Certainly nowhere near the difference in wages between a typical millworker then and now might indicate.

It is clear though, that now the government can tax a much larger part of the "total economy" than then.

Gail
A gift economy is only practical or possible when the community is under resource pressures. In other words, it is only a scarcity of food and other resources that makes a gift economy workable. That is why one primarily sees a gift economy at work in indigenous societies, like the Pacific Northwest Coast natives.

On this day of Thanksgiving, I think it appropriate to remind everyone that it is likely that the early Christian community likely operated under a gift economy. In Acts 4:32-35:

"All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need."

This is understandable when one considers the extreme poverty in Palestine during the first century. Ekkehard and Wolfgang Stegemann write in The Jesus Movement Augsburg Fortress 1999. the following:

"...let us look at one theoretical calculation of the per capita gross annual product in Palestine in the first century. Assuming a population of 1.25 million, Ben-David has estimated the figure to be 49.6 denarii. (136) If we subtract from this figure only 20 percent for taxes and levies--presumably a percentage that is too small--then theoretically (that is, without considering the high concentration of property) each person would have only, say 40 denarii to live on each year. This figure alone makes it clear that we must take seriously the probability that an enormously large part of the population lived below the poverty line."
(136) Ben-David, A. 1974. Talmudische Okonoimie: Die Wirtschaft des judischen Palastina zur Zeit der Mischna und des Talmud. Hildesheim: G. Olms.

Remember too that the reason for Paul's trip to Jerusalem was to bring a collection from the churches of Asia Minor for the benefit of the poor Christian community there.

In the absence of resource pressures, the economy of the early Christians proved problematic. This is why Paul writes of the Christian community of the port city of Thessalonica--a Roman capital that prospered under the capitalistic system that existed:

"In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching[a] you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”

We hear that some among you are idle and disruptive. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the food they eat. And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.

Take special note of anyone who does not obey our instruction in this letter. Do not associate with them, in order that they may feel ashamed. Yet do not regard them as an enemy, but warn them as you would a fellow believer."
-- 2 Thessalonians 3: 6-14

It is in the absence of resource pressure and availability of surplus that one is only able to take advantage of the generosity and labor of others.

word of advice. drop the whole attitude of 'women are better then men' and you might get a bigger audience for this idea. through the whole thing you pepper it with subtle points saying women are inherently kind and nice while men are mean and exploitive. both men and women can be vindictive, exploitative and down right cruel. sorry to be crude but there is nothing about having tits rather then a dick that makes a person nice to their fellow human being by default.

Kaiser;
Since I expect your comment may well be removed, I thought I'd ask you whether you think that the way you concluded your question with Anatomical references might not work against your point about how men are nice and sweet and generous, just like women?

I am a man, and I'm generous and pretty good-natured, but I don't disagree with the way the genders were reflected in the keypost under 'Matriarchal and Patriarchal' societies. Men do get slammed with stereotypes all the time, as do women.. but my wife, sister and mom have left me with no small sense of how much the basic function of females in society has (whether from nature or nurture) such an intrinsic tendency to feed, to teach, to care for their families. I do it, but I have to kind of force myself, or be talked into much of what my wife does without pause or question..

Bob

Gift economies work on the assumption that everyone knows everyone else, and so everyone has a reputation. In a truly large civilization, this is impractical. It could be *made* to work, by quantifying reputation as some sort of score -- like a credit score -- but then, your reputation score itself becomes just another kind of money.

As long as the orgy of greed is extolled as virtue and touted as the one and only way to live, we can expect to see on the far horizon fairly soon the first slouching trillionaire lumbering toward Bethlehem to be born. As for the Earth, perhaps we will witness its desecration.

We cannot keep holding on to bad ideas and applauding outrageous overconsumption/excessive hoarding lifestyles simply because such unsustainable behavior serves the selfish interests of many too many leaders and their many minions here and now. At some point we have to begin taking hold of what is good, what is right, what is sustainable, I suppose.

Otherwise, what is to become of the children's future?

The last time I spent a long period of time in the US was in the 90s. I refused to help organized charities other than local food banks. Instead I developed my own plan.

Each year I would select one man to help. Typical man would have lost his job, family, be behind on rent, driving a wrecked car and be strung out on drugs. I would get them a job, fix the car, move in with them for two weeks, get them back on a steady course and stand back. After six months they were back on their own, rent paid, better car, money in the bank. Out of six men, three fell back into the hole and the other three put their lives together and are thriving with their families.

All it took was about $500 and one month of baby sitting. If you want to know how you can change the world, you do it one person at a time. Same way I cross an ocean; one wave at a time.

I see a gift type like economy as a necessity if a sustainable human society is going to emerge.

The failing of a monetary economy is that it lacks inherent honesty. Money is not inherently "evil" but its lack of source/projection (make/spend) accountability when mixed with humankind’s lack of developmental maturity is a major causative factor creating the win/lose mindset that is destroying us.

I suspect that the level of “maturity” needed to overcome the structural pitfalls of a monetary system is greater than what would be required for a gift type economy to function. By maturity, I mean getting beyond the juvenile self-centered ego gratification thru self-grandiosity mindset meme.

The working group size limits has more to do with our lack of understanding/acceptance of the interconnectedness of everything.

Bartering is a step forward since its accountability and transparentness is much better. However, it still lacks the honesty and structural efficiently of a gift economy.

Whatever you do comes back to you threefold.

NAOM

Very nice post, Gail.

I don't see any contradiction at all between gift economies and a large civilization. As PJEvans said, we human beings naturally tend to interact with small groups: our family, our neighborhood, our workplace, etc. We practice the gift economies within those groups.

The problem is that over the last 40 years, our lives have changed so that these small groups are less stable, less interconnected than previously (see "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam). Whereas before we were able to meet our needs cheaply or free through these groups, we now try to meet them through consumerism.

Since I've retired, I've been able to seek out congenial groups and be an enthusiastic member of the gift economy. It's a much better way to live: relaxed, non-competitive, warm, fun. Just as with anything new, there are bumps to be overcome. But I would never go back to the old way.

Bart / EB

Thanks Gail for provoking this revealing discussion. What is revealed, IMO, is a deep shallowness. We know very little about what really matters in the human condition, and it shows. Each syllogistic argument builds on unexamined ideas in a grand rubble of seemingly meaningful words.

Great topic. I can't believe that in this long discussion there has been no mention of The Venus Project. Jacque Fresco terms his vision a Resource Based Economy, but it could also be called a gifting economy or even a love based economy. It is fully fleshed out at his website and at the Zeitgeist Movement site.

We easily have the technology to make this work, all we need is the will and the maturity. An exchange based economy has served well enough for these past centuries but seems to be coming to its natural conclusion of monopoly and must surely end. Mechanisation and technology have replaced so much labour that there is no longer sufficient work to go around despite efforts to 'create' jobs - most of which now seem petty and even ludicrous.

Let's step up and move on.

I think the gift economy has too much vagueness about it with regard to some critical issues. I've put a great deal of thought about this problem. This set of basic principles for society has some similarities to the idea of a gift economy, but is attempting to remove that vagueness with objective measures.

Principles for Society

1. Science. Behavior should be based on objective evidence of repeatable patterns.

2. Interdependence. People cannot live independently, they must live as a team to survive. The energy efficiency of getting resources and distributing them to all members of the team is vitally important. The interdependence of people can be scientifically verified. Everyone has the naked body to experiment with this observation, if so desired.

3. Money has many inefficiencies for measuring things and the value of behavior. People are pushed to behave as independent agents with their money, yet people are biologically social creatures. This creates confusion and inefficiency. Monetary systems tend to end up with a few rich and many poor, which also causes problems with efficiency. Market values in a monetary society push people to unsustainable behavior, since those that do not conserve resources can produce more abundantly and cheaply than those that conserve, in the short term. In the short term- which can be many generations- people who conserve are put out of business and end up working for those who do not care about conservation. People who have common talents are abundant and “cheap”, as measured by market values, and must buy the “cheap” products that are produced without care for conservation. People make individual decisions to have children on “cheap” resources, and get into overpopulation traps. Making the money itself is an energy cost. There are problems with counterfeiting to deal with.
However, this method of putting much of society on a treadmill of work, can produce a great deal in the short term, and so it is a system that conservative systems, whether consciously conservative or not, cannot stand up to. They must do the same or be crushed. But this unsustainable behavior will fail in the end, though. It is much like the man who comes out of the start of a marathon sprinting. He passes everyone, but in the end, his sprinting is unsustainable, and he collapses and is passed by those that conserved and used their bodily resources at slower, more efficient rates.

And how might the values of such a slower, more efficient, conservative system be measured? Instead of using money, with all of these serious problems and inefficiencies, there is a biological, scientific system of value that defines life and death and is of fundamental concern to all living things. All living creatures must eat, and they must all use the energy in the food to move, do work, to get more food. Lets call this relationship, food EROEI. Food energy invested, eaten, divided into food energy returned. Shelter, by reducing energy loss, also works into this relationship. Food EROEI defines life and death, and is an excellent scientific way to measure the value of actions. An organism with a food EROEI of less than one, is on the path to death. Going above a ratio of one, the organism has increasing amounts of time to rest, think, explore and experiment.

It is also fundamentally important to maintain a good food EROEI. It is possible to have an excellent food EROEI because you are using resources faster than they can be regrown or replaced. That is also something that a rational society would not do for long, though many organisms successfully use resources at unsustainable rates for emergencies. That is quite common and useful behavior. But doing it as a everyday way of life is not rational. Expecting technological breakthroughs to be able to maintain such a way of life, is an unscientific faith that such such technological solutions exist. No one can say with any surety what might be found in the future. Betting that things will be found to maintain currently unsustainable behavior is not reasonable, it is little different from religious beliefs that a mystical power may intervene to prevent catastrophes. Religious people are apt to say that “God will provide”, while many who think of themselves as scientific, reasonable types, merely replace the word “God”, with “science”. Which only shows they do not understand science.

4. The most efficient structure of society I am aware of, would be based on the workings of individual bodies. In an individual body, there is a complex exchange system between specialized organs. The basic pattern of exchange is that each specialized organ trades its particular good or service to the whole rest of the body, in exchange for the complex variety of resources it needs to live. This general pattern of bartering between a specialized organ and a team of specialized organs, could be done with a social group, and it does away with the cumbersome problems of trading between individuals, where needs and goods often do not match, and obviously also does away with the problems of money. Conscious decisions about food EROEI and sustainability of that, for both individuals and the group, can be made and followed. The human social team has the potential to work as smoothly and efficiently as a healthy individual body can work. It is a pattern that also has the potential to grow much larger, with groups becoming specialized and having groups of groups all exchanging things with each other on this same basic pattern.

5. Reproduction is a vital need, and it can fit into the whole thing the same way all other behaviors fit. People of reproductive age barter reproduction to the group, which wants new children to keep itself going.

It takes extra food resources and shelter to reliably reproduce. In times of scarcity caused by a society ignoring sustainable use of resources and growing huge on this unsustainable resource use, groups that broke off from the rest of society, and put much less energy into reproduction and instead use resources simply to survive the dangerous dieoff conditions of less efficient social systems, will have greater odds to survive, take over, and not overpopulate again.

6. Like reproduction, agriculture is a matter that fits into the general principles, but deserves a special brief look. Annual crops have inherent sustainability problems that most people deny or look the other way or simply are unaware of. An annual plant has no root system to begin, obviously, and at the peak of its growth has a very small root system in comparison to perennial plants. Since the size of the root system defines how well the plant takes up nutrients, and also is a big factor in holding soil against erosion, and nutrients are water soluable, annual plants are obviously inherently bad at recycling nutrients. Erosion and soil depletion generally become serious problems to social groups depending on it, as is generally the case right now. Annual crops are attractive to human instincts and taste buds, but instincts do not trump reality. Living off of a perennial based food system involves milk, meat, and blood from grazing-browsing animals, both domestic and from hunting, as well as food production from perennial plants, like tree, vine, and bush production of fruit and nuts.

7. It does not matter that most people may not be able to change their value system to behave in economically radically different ways, eat radically different diets, and have sufficient self control of their reproductive urges, to make such efficient, surviving groups. It only matters that there are enough to form viable groups. People able to understand and be rational enough to temper their instincts and change cultural training sufficiently to do this, could be as few as one in ten thousand, or even less. Natural selection can be extremely ruthless about selecting what works.

People who have brain structure that compels them to view their cultural-instinctive values as reasonable and useful in maintaining their life, are apt to be upset by simple observations that show that their understandings and expectations are not reasonable. There is a large amount of potential cognitive dissonance in such observations. Currently, the cultural training and instinctive attractions and repulsions keep such observations out of mainstream view. The people who might bring them into view, do not like them. However, growing fear of the future has the potential to change such behavior. If such observations as given here get out in the open, the angry denial of some may turn fanatical and more quickly self destructive than it might otherwise have been, though they were on a path of self destruction to begin with. It is quite important to realize though, that this needs to be *self *destruction. It is generally not efficient to try and force behavior, especially not to try and force behavior in the long term. If people do not volunteer to join with groups attempting to work on scientific values, taking the argument to physical levels would almost certainly be quickly and dangerously counterproductive. The best defense when one belongs to a physically tiny group, potentially threatened by a much, much larger group that is behaving irrationally, is to only make verbal arguments, concede you do not know everything but you are going to bet on what you see as logical, others can do what they see as logical, and you find out who is still standing at the end. Some make such arguments, find the scattered people who might make the new groups work, and those groups get well out of its way as the majority continues to follows leadership that takes fanatic actions and self destructs. Bringing things out in the open, can both find the scattered individuals that might make things work, and simultaneously drive the rest to take insane steps to try and demonstrate that in fact they are sane. Very efficient. Wars started on the basis of irrational hopes, a very ancient response to scarcity, has in the current situation, the potential to destroy or cripple world trade enough to bring an instant crisis to huge numbers of people dependent on that trade. Only the most efficient groups , able to manage on local resources, will survive. Bad assumptions of what works, will kill.

This is not Marxism or Capitalism or Socialism. It is biology and physics, and quite basic biology and physics at that. In spite of the simplicity and the inability of anyone to give a rational rebuttal to it, the evidence looks strong to me that most people will not be able to handle it. Their emotional drives will not let them be rational. It is not their fault, they did not make themselves. Their genetics gave them a brain structure that operates primarily on these emotional drives around money, sex, technology, food, social status. The rational abilities of many tend to be weak, they take living for granted if they satisfy these other emotional drives.

It is not purely a triumph of reason I am looking at here. There is no logical reason that it is better to be alive than dead, that I know of. It is an emotion to want to live. Rationality can serve the emotions around money, sex, technology, food, social status, but following such desires without rational tempering threatens life itself. It is a conflict that looks like it dooms most, unable to do this rational tempering in the name of living. Life without unbridled behavior in one or more of these other drives, will not look worth living to many. And so they will die, leaving those to whom a rationally tempered life is still well worth living.
Or of course, perhaps “God” will help believers, or perhaps the path to a “Star Trek” future will be found. You place your bets and at a certain point, you live or die on them.

This is not meant to be a complete guide, but is merely basic principles. A great deal more could be said about applying them. But it is enough, I think, for the moment.

Arthur Noll

I'll make the requisite post about the Burning Man festival (in the US every September). The festival participants become a city of 50,000 people for one week every year. Commerce and barter is prohibited but gifting is encouraged. Having gone 3 times now, my feeling is that the gift economy works there at that scale because:

1. Everyone brings what they need to survive, and they only give away surplus. Many bring a lot of surplus on purpose to give away.

2. There is a shared ideology. Not a religion per se, but there are definitely principles expressed which participants are informed of early and often.

Adherence to (1) is not 100% of course, but it is close enough that the "gift economy" seems to work fine.

This seems to me quite different from a gift economy where the gifts really supply basic needs which would otherwise not have been met.