I recently discovered this movement thru this article, there’s also a page on Wikipedia.
It seems very interesting to me since it’s basically decentralized proactive anti-capialism mutual-aid. I really think in-real-world decentralized projects like this may be the single most efficient “weapon” we have today.
Do you have any experience with this? I feel like RRFMs are more suitable in big cities and not in little ones, but happy to be wrong about it.
I have 3 anecdotal evidence from France:
Don’t mark me wrong: I am a huge proponent of the gift economy, but I think that within a capitalist society, in order to exist it has to be paired with some sort of reputations economics.
It would have to be a sort of reputation-economics with teeth, not just mere-opinion…
Parasitism, whether scalpers of event-tickets, or gunmen who appear to sell the water from the oasis, etc, who do it for their faction’s profit, instead of “this is a communal-resource: & we’re limiting the single-user exploitation, & we’re making-certain that the commons isn’t trashed by any faction” type thing…
is a rude fact of life, among humankind.
Making it systemically-illegal, with teeth is possible, but … that is far far far from the ideology of the gift-economy, isn’t it…
( like the difference between being a Healer vs being a doctor: 1 is centered in others’ healing, the other is centered in their own authority * status
( dad was a medical-researcher, doctor, & later prof of medicine, ttbomk: any doctor who wants to claim that those aren’t the motivations can go read the book by researchers Logan, King, & Fischer-Wright, on the 5 culture-levels “Tribal Leadership”, & notice that doctors are centered in the zero-sum-game of narcissism. Still reject my claim of evidence? Go walk into any normal hospital, & see what percentage of the lower-staff people have enough human-validity left in them, to meet your gaze, if you walk-in wearing a suit. It’ll be close to none, because their human-validity is already corroded by the doctors. THE most-spectacular narcissism-bodylanguage I’ve ever seen, consistently is on doctors. The difference between a Healer & a doctor is significant. They are not the same kind of thing, at all. ) )
I actually suspect that both paradigms are necessary, for any actual-world-economy…
Who would do the nastiest-jobs except for pay?
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I don’t know if I would call it teeth, but I think a sufficient incentive can simply be access. You want to participate in a gift economy? Yes? then welcome. You are partaking action that would destroy it? Then no, you’re stuck to the less efficient capitalist system then, and we are only going to sell things to you that we have would have given to other people.
Thing is it requires some sort of tracking of the people or some sort of in-group.
On that specific subject, I think that the question is biased. I think that some jobs developed to be particularly nasty because we have no shortage of people who are desperate to accept minimum wage. Otherwise, the nastiest job would be very high pay. I mean, it is more fun to be a programmer than a sewer cleaner. In theory, that would mean that the sewer cleaner’s job would have higher pay.
If on the other hand we switch the question in terms of how can we attract volunteers, things change radically. I have been to a rice harvest event that were basically the social event of the village and that ended up with a party where everyone is exhausted but happy looking at the rice dry.
Many people take pride in their work and it doesn’t take a lot to make it attractive to volunteers. Strangely, the highest paying jobs are often the most desirable and the most enjoyable to do.
There are good people who will see a need and fill it, even if it’s unpleasant. I’m thinking of all the wonderful people that showed up to provide care for aids patients during the 80’s when it was still unknown how it spread and intensely stigmatized. That was a hard job but amazing people stepped up because it was important. If someone feels like their work is valued and useful you can get help doing almost anything without money coming into it. We just need to make sure the helpers have their own needs met while they’re doing what is needful.
But i agree that most doctors are bastards lol
Elle est belle notre France… Joke aside, this might be cultural. I’ve not seen these behaviours being so widespread in other countries I lived in (the UK, Finland, Germany, Japan). Maybe thinking about putting some sort of collective monitoring in place to limit the impact of these?