But people still have to buy computers and mp3 players and musical instruments and they have to have the internet, which requires electricity and infra srtucture.

So… I don’t get where you’re going with all of this. And I guess I just don’t understand what the big giant problem is that you have with gifts and giving away music for free.

I just bought a mandolin today, in fact. I didn’t run out expecting anyone to give it to me for free, though I do plan on using it to give away more music for free…

So you believe in a gift giving economy, which I don’t.

You give away your ideas and opinions for free here and elsewhere!

Here is a good line:

There is a more interesting possibility here. I suspect academia and the hacker culture share adaptive patterns not because they’re genetically related, but because they’ve both evolved the one most optimal social organization for what they’re trying to do, given the laws of nature and the instinctive wiring of human beings. The verdict of history seems to be that free-market capitalism is the globally optimal way to cooperate for economic efficiency; perhaps, in a similar way, the reputation-game gift culture is the globally optimal way to cooperate for generating (and checking!) high-quality creative work.

I think its useful to note that the author isn’t stating that a gift culture or gift economy works the best for everything.

Maybe there is a good application to music and writing on the internet and programming since they are creative endeavors and because of the internet and technology these industries are rapidly changing.

Still though people have to eat and programers can always join a start up and make a shit load of money. And then work on what ever open source project they believe in for free, once they are comfortable.

If the whole music industry became a way that no musician could make money at it, I don’t see that as being good. Same for writers.

One way they got past killing each other so much is by trading with them.

The technology (which by the way was not produced in a gift economy) creates an abundance of music. This music can be copied millions of times without a reduction in quality.

But people still have to buy computers and mp3 players and musical instruments and they have to have the internet, which requires electricity and infra srtucture.

So there is an abundance of wealth that has been created and persists over time, due to the positive feedback loop activity of the time binding semantc curcuit of consciousness, which a lot of these oral pre-literate gift giving cultures don’t have, or didn’t have as well developed.

I guess I see a plac for gift giving, just like in the case of the millionaire philanthropy you mentioned. But I don’t see a gift giving economy working. “Economy” implies that its the main structure.

I also don’t see how a class of musicians could survive in a gift giving economy. They need to eat and wear clothes and what not. It seems like a gift giving economy is not good for specialization.

In an entirely gift-less economy, the emphasis is only on consuming, on people being/having an emptiness inside. Only in giving are we reminded that we are already whole.

And in connection with Ted’s other comment elsewhere on you looking like a preacher, well, that’s what preachers do. They put us back in touch with the source within.

I told you before, that if you were to make your carnival culure stuff into a book, I would pay you 100 dollars for one. They are that good.

Awesome, but it’s in the Public Domain, so you or anyone else could make it into a book, and *you* could make $100 a pop on it, instead of giving me $100!

But if you give everything away for free how can you tell which of your endavors is most valuable and more worth the investment of time and energy?

Oh, that’s an easy one: I listen to my heart and do whatever the spirit moves me to do!

So you believe in a gift giving economy, which I don’t. I mjean gifts are great, but I don’t think you could base an economy on it in a complex society. So here is a thought expiriment for you:

You are a multi-talented person, so don’t take this hard. You give away everything for free. You make music and also write.

I told you before, that if you were to make your carnival culure stuff into a book, I would pay you 100 dollars for one. They are that good.

While I think you are a talented lyricist, I wouldn’t buy music from you.

But if you give everything away for free how can you tell which of your endavors is most valuable and more worth the investment of time and energy?

I think a money economy is way more efficient than a gift giving economy would be in giving people what they want and also in producing higher quality things.

Now this is a small sample composed of me. I tend to buyt more books than music anyway. But extrapolated onto a large scale I think it would mean a lot.

Baltimore a music scene?!? How spiffy is that???

I highly recommend you and others check out Seattle’s Fleet Foxes … some unique sublime Folk there …

A gift economy is an economic system in which goods and services are given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future quid pro quo. Typically, a gift economy occurs in a culture or subculture that emphasizes social or intangible rewards for generosity: karma, honor, loyalty or other forms of gratitude. In some cases, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within a community. This can be considered a form of reciprocal altruism. Sometimes there is an implicit expectation of the return of comparable goods or services, political support, or the gift being later passed on to a third party. However, in what is considered to be in the true spirit of gift economics, many times giving is done without any expectation of reciprocity.

The Hacker Milieu as Gift Culture

Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods. We can observe gift cultures in action among aboriginal cultures living in ecozones with mild climates and abundant food. We can also observe them in certain strata of our own society, especially in show business and among the very wealthy.

Abundance makes command relationships difficult to sustain and exchange relationships an almost pointless game. In gift cultures, social status is determined not by what you control but by what you give away.

Thus the Kwakiutl chieftain’s potlach party. Thus the multi-millionaire’s elaborate and usually public acts of philanthropy. And thus the hacker’s long hours of effort to produce high-quality open-source code.