[ed. This makes a lot of sense to me. I'd prefer to see an alternate Farmer's/Gardner's market each summer where people could trade excess produce, flowers, anything really. Not even trade, just put out a few boxes of something that someone might need. Not everything has to be sold or bartered.]
After picking more limes than I’ll ever eat from the tree near my apartment, I log onto Facebook and post about them on the Backyard Fruit Swap group I belong to. Someone offers me passion fruits for the limes, and someone else offers guavas. “What kind of guavas?” I reply. I don’t like pineapple guavas.
After picking more limes than I’ll ever eat from the tree near my apartment, I log onto Facebook and post about them on the Backyard Fruit Swap group I belong to. Someone offers me passion fruits for the limes, and someone else offers guavas. “What kind of guavas?” I reply. I don’t like pineapple guavas.Compared to the rest of the U.S., my home of San Diego can grow some strange types of fruit. Aside from that, my online exchange is not so odd. Sharing is now in vogue—or perhaps it always was.
In human history, the so-called sharing economy is older than money and capitalism. Before anyone came up with the clever idea of giving set values to bits of metal and paper, people figured out that everyone could benefit by bartering and sharing. Sometimes this took the form of barter. You give me some of the fish you caught and I give you some of my crops. You help me harvest my field and I help you harvest yours. Sometimes it takes the form of gifts, seemingly given altruistically, but almost always returned at some point by a reciprocal gift or favor.
Other times, it could be codified by cultural traditions, as in the case of a dowry given at the time of marriage. Or, a group of people might collaborate on a hunt and share the meat based on a specific protocol: the person who made the kill gets certain cuts of meat, the person whose arrow was used gets other cuts, and others who participated in the hunt might get other portions of the animal.
Today, this age-old system is getting a high-tech makeover, and a lot of media attention from BBC, Marketplace, NPR, the Guardian, and Fast Company. But are the sites and apps getting the attention actually sharing, or just a new way to rent or sell goods and services? (...)
The Really Really Free Market is an in-person form of sharing. Participants are invited to bring things they no longer use to give away and to help themselves to whatever they need for free.
“There's no trade,” explains Marks, “This was a little different concept for me to wrap my head about because I've been to a few different Buy Nothing Day events that were centered around a barter.” But at the Really Really Free Market, you can come and just take things. “We don't want there to be any restrictions—the main purpose is to get usable items into the hands of those that need it. That supersedes any sort of 'you must bring something to take something' ideology. We don't want restrictions placed on it.”
In addition to simply moving goods from those who don’t use them into the hands of those who will, the market wants to create community.
by Jill Richardson, Alternet | Read more:
Image: Shutterstock.com/ Ivelin Radkov
