Re: [microsound] gift economics

[the.kurtz.quartet <kurtz.quartet@xxxxxxx>]

ok, I can see what you are getting at but I'm not so sure its so warm 
and fuzzy as you say. you are essentially applying social pressure to 
people. but of course its happening today (like Bill Gates giving away 
a couple of 100 million dollars to research he happen to think is 
important).

sure. it might work for the common stuff (taxes) where the receiver of 
the gifts is your immediate community. at least as long as the 
community is so small everyone know your gift-giving ability and can 
value your gift against that. you need a society with homogenous values 
so the gifts get valued correctly at least by some majority and 
everyone must cares more about their social standing than anything else.

lets take any example. lets say I get sent a microsound t-shirt or a 
parmegiani cd and gives the sender 1 dollar instead of the amount that 
I would be worthy of giving - no one would know. you couldnt really 
distribute stuff over the internet since the internet is extremely 
limited (handicapped) as a means of communication between humans. and 
you need just that kind of coomunication to even get to thet starting 
line with gift/beggar economy.

not that this necessarily is a bad thing. maybe we should stop this 
insane distribution of music over the world (or even the net). music 
needs humans. maybe everyone should perform/distribute their music only 
locally among people they can meet and talk to.

fredagen den 7 februari 2003 kl 00.33 skrev Ian Andrews:

>> are there any serious gift-economy (beggar-economy is the same thing
>> right?
>
> No its is not the same thing.
>
> In the last few years there has been a great deal of misunderstanding
> generated about the idea of gift economies.  They are not just warm 
> fuzzy
> altruistic sharing economies.  Instead their main driving force is
> "obligation." Eg. at xmas one is obligated to give. If one does not 
> give a
> worthy gift one's social standing is diminished. The system of potlatch
> (practiced by the North American Indians) goes even further. Each giver
> tries to out do one another in order to shame the other party.  
> Prodigious
> waste is also an essential part of gift economies and this was 
> traditionaly
> linked to sacrifice (cf. Attali)   The smashing of a champagne bottles 
> over
> the bow of a ship is a remnant of this practice.

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