Arin Greenwood — This Guy Stopped Charging Clients And He Has Zero Regrets

On the gift economy.

I've operated in the gift economy for years and in my view, this overemphasizes the role of that money plays in it. The gift economy is not even about exchange and compensation as such but reciprocation. It's a network effect, in which there is no expectation of tit for tat exchange. For example, in some fields eighty percent of those benefiting may be able to return little if anything in the short run. But the other twenty percent make up for that, and some of those previously benefited join the twenty percent later.

But it's really not about money. Blogging as well as the entire Internet are a good examples of the gift economy. The Internet itself can be viewed largely a gift of the inventors as in no one owns the Internet.

According to Robert Neuwrith, the global informal economy is the second largest economy in the world. Much of what is produced of value in the world is accomplished in an informal context, much of which is provided without compensation, such as child-rearing. In fact, few people attached economic value to child-rearing until it was monetized as day-care.

Humanity began with the gift economy and eventually it will return to it, once it gets over scarcity-thinking and a preoccupation with narrow self-interest.

The Huffington Post
This Guy Stopped Charging Clients And He Has Zero RegretsArin Greenwood

(Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism)