Maaf saya tidak bisa menerjemahkan karena sedang dalam perjalanan. Tapi
cukukup menarik untuk diikuti. Silahkan baca.
Assalamu 'alaikum wa rahmatuLlahi wa barakatuh,
Dear friends,
Dr. Mohammad Omar Farooq posed some questions (or objections?) regarding the
Gift Economy article I sent. See below.
I'm going to let Dr Adi Setia answer the questions/objections because he is
'building' a theoretical foundation for it. I would attempt an answer once
my heavy travel schedule subsided.
With best wishes
Surya
Re: Can We Make the Gift Economy Work?
Posted by: farooqm59
Mon Dec 15, 2008 9:01 pm (PST)
In response to:
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/ibfnet/message/10077
=============================================
Salam and greetings.
Surya Darma wrote:
"Readers know I'm an advocate of the Gift (or 'Generosity') Economy
as a replacement for the Market Economy. Where the Market Economy tends to
concentrate wealth, rewards distortion and abuse by the rich and powerful,
is predicated on self-interest and scarcity, and is amoral ..."
The notion of "Gift Economy" deserves further exploration. However,
claiming that where market economy is "predicated on self-interest ..., it
is amoral," implies that the notion of self-interest itself has something to
do with being amoral. If this is implied, it is an utterly erroneous view
and understanding.
I am a Muslim because of my self-interest. The choices I make in
life should be dictated by my self-interest. Since as a Muslim I seek the
hasanah in both the worlds, my self-interest is more comprehensive. Not only
that there is nothing inherently wrong or amoral about self-interest, it is
acknowledged and validated in the Qur'an.
As Muslims we should be careful in making such overstretched remarks
and having such views that is explicitly contradicted by the Qur'an.
Fi amanillah.
========================================
Dr. Mohammad Omar Farooq
Royal University for Women
KOB
Readers know I'm an advocate of the Gift (or 'Generosity') Economy as a
replacement for the Market Economy. Where the Market Economy tends to
concentrate wealth, rewards distortion and abuse by the rich and powerful,
is predicated on self-interest and scarcity, and is amoral, the Gift Economy
(<-- this is an excellent link, BTW) distributes wealth, provides no
significant incentive for abuse, is predicated on collective interest and
abundance, and is profoundly moral. It could be argued that the Market
Economy (like genetic manufacturing, automation and most other constructs of
civilization) is very efficient, but the Gift Economy (like nature) is more
effective (nature always bats last). But some people argue that the Gift
Economy is naive, that we can't trust people to give as well as receive, and
that hence, ultimately, it will break down.
There is some evidence that this could be true. Let's take a look at some of
the major examples of the Gift Economy that are already at work at the edges
of our Market Economy, and the challenges they're facing:
* Open Source: Many articles have suggested that Open Source is not
sustainable, and use the fact that many shareware products are now sold
commercially (because too few people paid the suggested shareware
contribution) as evidence of its unsustainability. This article argues that
a better business model for Open Source is that the software itself is just
the free 'core' offering, and compensation will be received 'at the edges'
of this offering, in payment for add-ons, customization, personal service,
and hardware on which the software resides. But this is more akin to
scavenging than it is a true Gift Economy. There is a mindset today that
software, and anything that consists of bits rather than atoms, should be
free. With such thinking, how are the people who put their time and effort
into developing Open Source products supposed to make ends meet? Who 'pays
forward' to them?
* Free Libraries: The idea of libraries as a public good is ancient,
dating back to the days when few people could afford books of their own.
Before libraries were paid for by governments, they were provided by
philanthropists. Today, thanks to the Internet, anyone can be a librarian
and provide their own and others' Creative Commons content (information and
entertainment) to the world. But again, this is not an entirely free
undertaking. Google ads and PayPal donation requests can look tacky and
pathetic, but when your site becomes very large or very popular, storage and
bandwidth costs can skyrocket, and few people can subsidize that from their
own pockets. So for example, we have Rock Chicks Radio, one of my favourite
Internet radio stations, shutting down today, because its owners can no
longer spare the time to do it up right, and refuse to beg. Another tragic
Gift Economy 'failure'.
* Scientific Exchange: Some scientists work outside the Market Economy,
and they share openly with each other because they have more to gain from
collaboration than competition. They are subsidized by universities and
hospitals, which in turn are subsidized by government, just like libraries.
And these days, governments (in North America at least) are becoming
stingier about subsiding public institutions that don't repay them in
campaign contributions and politically useful collateral. As a result, more
and more scientists are becoming beholden to large corporation funding,
which is decidedly ungenerous. These corporations want to own what the
scientists produce, and they don't want what they're paying for being shared
with anyone else, including other scientists not under contract to them. If
this trend continues, this example of the Gift Economy could also dry up.
* Social Exchanges: Social exchanges also date back centuries. From barn
raisings and work bees to book exchanges, shared worktools, cultural
exchanges and the new phenomenon of couch surfing, people have been helping
each other out and sharing what they own with others, without expectation of
repayment, as long as they've had stuff to share. It worked well when our
communities were small and people stayed most of their lifetime in one
place, because everyone more or less knew who was and wasn't generous, and
those who weren't quickly found that people became hesitant to share with
them. As our society has become larger, more transient and more impersonal,
such exchanges have become proportionally rarer.
* The Internet (and Blogs in particular): The Market Economists are
still puzzling over the popularity of Creative Commons and 'how to make
money on the Web'. Even the A-list bloggers aren't making a profit, and most
of the few websites that are making money (Google being the notable
exception) are actually brokering cash transactions of hard goods (e.g. eBay
and Amazon). And while the number of bloggers and websites and the number of
users of both continue to rise despite the lack of profit, some of the best
writing and information sources are still not available online, because
their authors refuse to do what they do without getting paid for it.
* Philanthropy: With the number of public and charitable organizations
skyrocketing, and government funding for such organizations waning, more and
more philanthropy depends on either a few ultra-rich donors (who sometimes
have their own agendas and attach strings to their contributions), and
hard-sell tear-jerker appeals that play on public guilt, rather than
generosity.
* File-Sharing: Many file-sharers ungenerously turn off out-going file
transfers, and hence take from other file-sharers without giving in return,
but despite this fact there are usually enough givers online to find most of
even the most esoteric music online. But of course, file-sharing is under
siege by the music and movie industries, who can't fathom that they could
increase both the quality and quantity of their product if they embraced,
rather than fought, the Gift Economy. Their argument: The Gift Economy can't
work, it will bankrupt the industry and make us all losers. Lawrence Lessig
has eloquently argued (in a book you can download free) that innovation, not
lawsuits and anti-piracy technologies, is the way to find a balance that
will compensate artists and producers (though perhaps not to the extreme
degree some are compensated today) while still making information and
entertainment affordable (and in many cases free) to everyone.
One of the principles of the Gift Economy is that the gift must always move
(each time we receive, we must pay it forward). A second principle is that
in the Gift Economy we are agents, not (passive) consumers -- and what we
give is generally what we have some mastery over, something we do well.
Market Economy fans work hard to undermine these principles: The 'value' of
every exchange, they say (usually some product in return for money, a
surrogate for 'equivalent' goods or services) must be provided back to the
giver, rather than forward to someone else. And the act of consumption is
advertised as a pleasure in and of itself, a reward for previous personal
sacrifice (unpleasant work), which imposes no obligation or responsibility
on the consumer (or on the producer, for that matter).
It is hard to overcome the constant propaganda barrage of the Market
Economy, whose adherents invest billions of dollars in their 'commercial
messages' and take up between 10% (some radio stations) and 75% (many
magazines) of the total 'information bandwidth' of the media -- a cost we
'passive consumers' of course pay back to them in the final cost of the
product.
Let's not kid ourselves: This is war. File-sharing is just the tip of the
iceberg in the battle between advocates of the Gift Economy and the Market
Economy. Believers in the Market Economy see everything as property, and the
use of any property without payment as theft. They are using absurdly
anti-innovative patent law, armies of lawyers and their control of major
political parties to try to crush every aspect of the Gift Economy. Even
philanthropy is viewed through a Market lens -- they expect a generous tax
deduction, and will spend more on self-aggrandizing commercials (for which
they also get a tax write-off) telling 'consumers' about their 'generosity'
(for which they expect consumers to give them a lot of additional full-price
business in gratitude) than they spend on the philanthropic contribution
itself. They don't like the Internet, which they see as anarchic and
uncontrolled, and once planned to set up an Alternate Internet which would
be run as a commercial operation.
So we're up against a lot: Failed Gift Economy projects, anti-Gift Economy
propaganda, and political, legal and economic measures perpetrated by the
rich and powerful to prevent 'price-less' transactions. How do we contend
with this? Are the prospects for a Gift Economy doomed by the Tragedy of the
Commons -- the sense that if something belongs to everyone, it is no one's
responsibility and has no value?
I believe we need to do three things simultaneously:
1. Use our collective ingenuity and collaborative skills to make the Gift
Economy work: The successes of the Gift Economy to date are primarily due to
a combination of human creativity and innovation, applied to create
enabling, sharing technologies. We need to apply these same skills to ensure
that we find ways that will address its failings-to-date:
* The exploitation, exhaustion and even bankruptcy of many of
those who give much more than they receive, from open source programmers to
bloggers to independent artists.
* The precarious dependence of many Gift Economy institutions
(like libraries, public broadcasters and public research programs) on
government and other public-sector largesse.
* The loss of trust essential to community sharing as communities
become larger and more impersonal.
* The degradation of the creative commons as a consequence of the
Tragedy of the Commons.
* The trend for more and more online information to require a paid
subscription or pay-per-use.
* The use of increasingly manipulative, hard-sell techniques to
coerce charity as more positive appeals to generosity prove inadequate.
* The steady loss of electronic freedom and discouragement of
innovation in the face of huge, expensive 'digital rights' campaigns and
over-reaching intellectual property law campaigns.
2. Personalize the messages and workings of the Gift Economy: If you know
the person who gives you a gift, you are far more likely to pay it forward.
That's not (primarily) because we know the donor will ask us if we've done
so, it's because we tend to value something more highly when we know, trust
and respect who it came from. We need to find ways to personalize the gifts
we receive from others, to make them more one-to-one, more human.
3. Fight the regressive forces opposed to the Gift Economy with
everything we have: It will take a long time for the Gift Economy to eat
away at and finally replace the Market Economy from the outside in. We
cannot hope to eliminate the Market Economy quickly -- in fact it would be
hugely disruptive, perhaps disastrous, to do so even if we could. We must
focus our fight on the reactionaries -- those who are so ideologically
obsessed with privatizing everything, making everything property, and
undermining public belief in public institutions, government and
self-regulation. And we must focus on those who are trying to destroy and
undermine Open Source, the Creative Commons, the Internet and our electronic
freedoms, 'price-less' sharing of assets and information, true philanthropy
and volunteerism, self-sufficient individuals and communities, collective
effort and collaborative innovation. It's a fight against doctrinaire
corporatism, against lawyers who are trying to patent and copyright
everything forever, and against ignorance that there are workable
alternatives to an untrammeled Market Economy.
These actions won't happen by themselves, and disorganization is what the
anti-Gift Economy forces are counting on. We need a concerted effort to do
these three things. But first, we need a lot more discussion, research and
education about what the Gift Economy is, and what it could be. In just a
few articles, this blog has jumped into Google's top 20 sources for
information on the Gift Economy. We need university courses on this subject,
books and conferences and collaborative studies.
What do you think? Could we make the Gift Economy work, the way that some
dreamers a few centuries ago came up with the Market Economy and then
invented money and other technologies to make it work? And if we could,
could the Gift Economy be the key, the thin edge of the wedge to change
everything, to save the world?
by Dave Pollard
environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
source: http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2005/07/31.html
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