Friday, October 12, 2001

Scott McCloud is a cartoonist who is writing/drawing about micropayments as an alternative to our present market exchange economy. You can read/view his first cartoon article here. He followed that with a second installment. Since then he has written/drawn more and it is stirring up quite a reaction. As reported at Potlatch.

"Seems like Scott McCloud walked into a bit of a hornet's nest over his latest micropayment manifesto, exemplified by this wickedly sarcastic parody. The complaint? Apparently, he is rhapsodizing something that doesn't actually exist (yet) - and we wouldn't want our creative types advancing crazy theories and getting our hopes up now would we. Scott's rebuttal to the pitchfork-wielding villagers is here."

Thanks to Potlatch

For-Giving

Genevieve Vaughan

Nature offers her abundance free to satisfy the needs that nature and culture have created. Humans have altered this process by depleting the abundance, cornering what remains, and using it to manipulate other humans, keeping them on the edge of survival. This process derives from exchange, which is giving-in-order-to-receive, and is ego oriented, while the need satisfying process, when practiced by humans, is other oriented. Capitalism is based on exchange and socializes us into its ego oriented values of competition and domination which also often coincide with the values involved in the male gender identity. Communism places a different emphasis on the collective but has so far institutionalized patriarchal hierarchies, often promoting individual and collective tyranny.

In contrast to patriarchal economic systems, the free satisfaction of needs is still visible in the relation between mothers and children, because children cannot "give back" anything in exchange for the nurturing they receive and they have to receive free goods and services from their caregivers.

The free gifts of nature depend upon the capacity to receive of those who have the needs. The receivers' capacities can be enhanced or diminished by the presence of absence of gifts during socialization. Indigenous peoples often allowed everyone free access to the abundance of their environment, and considered themselves stewards of nature's gifts. They also often had societies in which women were respected.

Read the full article