Author:: Charles Eisenstein Tags: economics capitalism
- ch 1
- http://sacred-economics.com/sacred-economics-chapter-1-the-gift-world/
- separation is what causes crises
- “Money is a system of social agreements, meanings, and symbols that develops over time. It is, in a word, a story, existing in social reality along with such things as laws, nations, institutions, calendar and clock time, religion, and science.”
- “While I believe in the fundamental divinity of human beings, I also recognize that we have embarked on a long sojourn of separation from that divinity, and created a world in which ruthless sociopaths rise to wealth and power. This book doesn’t pretend such people don’t exist, nor that such tendencies don’t exist in everyone. Rather, it seeks to awaken the spirit of the gift that is latent within us, and to construct institutions that embody and encourage that spirit. Today’s economic system rewards selfishness and greed. What would an economic system look like that, like some ancient cultures, rewarded generosity instead?”
- “The gift moves toward the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns toward him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us. Social nature abhors a vacuum. (4)”
- kula system by Trobriand Islanders of circulating gifts
- The solution to this puzzle lies in the dynamics of the gift. With the rare, perhaps theoretical, exceptions that Derrida called “free gifts,” gifts are accompanied either by some token of exchange or by a moral or social obligation (or both). Unlike a modern money transaction, which is closed and leaves no obligation, a gift transaction is open-ended, creating an ongoing tie between the participants.
- transactions as an ongoing relationship not transactional
- “To exchange them for something of utilitarian value is, naively speaking, merely a way to facilitate a gift—something for nothing. They turn it into something-for-something, but that doesn’t make it any less a gift, because they are merely giving physical form to the felt sense of obligation; they are tokens of gratitude. From this perspective, the identity of buying and selling, borrowing and lending, is easy to understand. They are not opposite operations at all. All gifts circle back to the giver in another form. Buyer and seller are equal.
- ”Today there is an asymmetry in commercial transactions, which identifies the buyer as the one giving money and receiving goods and the seller as the one receiving money and giving goods. But we could equally say the “buyer” is selling money for goods, and the “seller” is buying money with goods. Linguistic and anthropological evidence indicates that this asymmetry is new, far newer than money. What has happened to money, then, to create this asymmetry? Money is different from every other commodity in the world, and, as we shall see, it is this difference that is crucial in making it profane.”
- At its core, money is a beautiful concept. Let me be very naive for a moment so as to reveal this core, this spiritual (if not historical) essence of money. I have something you need, and I wish to give it to you. So I do, and you feel grateful and desire to give something to me in return. But you don’t have anything I need right now. So instead you give me a token of your gratitude—a useless, pretty thing like a wampum necklace or a piece of silver. That token says, “I have met the needs of other people and earned their gratitude.” Later, when I receive a gift from someone else, I give them that token. Gifts can circulate across vast social distances, and I can receive from people to whom I have nothing to give while still fulfilling my desire to act from the gratitude those gifts inspire within me.
- This is the “circle of the gift,” the basis of community. In a tribe or village, the scale of society is small enough that those who give to me recognize my gifts to others. Such is not the case in a mass society like ours. If I give generously to you, the farmer in Hawaii who grew my ginger or the engineer in Japan who designed my cell phone display won’t know about it. So instead of personal recognition of gifts, we use money: the representation of gratitude. The social witnessing of gifts becomes anonymous.
- centralized systems are less personal because the network grows large
- is this always the case?
- decentralized easier to be localized?
- centralized systems are less personal because the network grows large
- The next stage of human economy will parallel what we are beginning to understand about nature. It will call forth the gifts of each of us; it will emphasize cooperation over competition; it will encourage circulation over hoarding; and it will be cyclical, not linear. Money may not disappear anytime soon, but it will serve a diminished role even as it takes on more of the properties of the gift. The economy will shrink, and our lives will grow.
- ch 5
- http://sacred-economics.com/sacred-economics-chapter-5-the-corpse-of-the-commons/
- we are monetizing everything that used to not be monetized but we’re going to run out of things for that soon
- need to remove need for constant monetization and return some sort of sacred community sense to the things we do
- ch 11: currency of the commons
- how is this different from what we do now with levying taxes?
- semantically different in that the government (and therefore the public) owns the land and is renting out the right for private people and corporations to use it, shift in power
- also different in that you can get around perverse incentives around keeping companies for the taxes? (ex: tobacco company and tax revenue)
- how is this different from what we do now with levying taxes?
- ch 15: local currencies
- time-based banking
- [[services vs. goods]]
- goods are best local but information and intangible goods are best globalized?
- how do you maintain diversity and exposure to diverse people in a world where you are mostly local?
- what happens when your local community is very homogenous? probably happy but also constrained (ex: Nordic countries)
- [[diversity vs homogeneity]]
- how does physical economy interact with internet?
- what effect do local communities have on diversity of communities
- will it become even more tribal?
- universal humanism vs. local proliferation
- how do you reconcile the conflicts between universal humanism and local communities questions
- [[purity vs. hybrid]]
- Range: generalized vs. specialized
- efficiencies with specialized but creativity with generalized
- ch 13
- “ This isn’t because we haven’t found the right monetization scheme yet. It is because innovation is leading to efficiency and not growth, and that is exerting deflationary pressure on bloated industries. Moreover, it is largely being done by us, the end user, in our free time, because we want to create and share, not just consume.”
- time-based banking