Why gifting?

I've spent the first part of this project critiquing the exchange, and the second part is focused on non-reciprocal gifting. There is a basis for this: we currently live in an exchange economy, and this economy has problems that are solved by non-reciprocal gifting, which seems to work effectively. The move away from one and toward the other comes out of this analysis.

But what are the other options? Here I want to explore a range of different economic transfer types, each defined by two criteria: first, whether they are one-way or two-way, and second, whether they are voluntary or involuntary for each party involved. I've omitted transfer that involve more than two parties on the basis that these could logically be constructed out of two-party transfers, and I have omitted involuntary-involuntary transfers, because these are the ones that have no human agency associated with them, and human agency is at the core of what is meant by an economy.

In each case, I want to examine if a coherent economic model could be constructed out of them.

Two-way transfers

For a two-way transfer of resources, there are only two options defined by whether they are voluntary or not:

The first, the exchange, is voluntary by both parties. I've fleshed out a critique of the exchange, including how it cannot create a viable and sustainable economy. The other option, which I'll call compensation, occurs when one party voluntarily initiates the mutual transfer of resources, but does not require the consent of the other party.

Let's say there are two parties, and both are capable of carrying out compensation. The first party transfers some resource from the second to themselves, and pays out some money in return. One immediate issue that would be raised by market advocates is that the first party could set any price they like, so the fairness of the mutual transfer is in question. That is, the party that had their goods involuntarily transferred away would not necessarily agree to the value of the compensation that they received. This would be bad for price signalling. In fact, at its most extreme, the price of compensation would be zero, which would turn this from a two-way transfer into a one-way transfer (which I call below requisition).

The other problem is that the compensated party could simply perform the same action in reverse, and transfer the resources back and return the compensation payment. Where the transfer is reversible like this, it is ineffective, because it can be immediately rendered as if it did not occur at all. The only real way around this is if the two parties, knowing that they can mutually reverse each other's transfers, comes to some sort of agreement to breach the stalemate, at which point it becomes an exchange. So, if everyone has the power of compensation, it is likely that compensation would "decay" either into either the exchange or requisition.

This situation doesn't occur if not everyone has the power of compensation. If not, then one class of actors has the power and one does not, and one class can perform compensation to draw resources from the other. But, if compensation were the only type of transfer, then this class could not transfer goods among themselves without running into the original problem above.

One-way transfers

The transfer that is voluntary for the recipient and for the gifter I have called non-reciprocal gifting, and, of course, I will be doing a lot of talking about this.

The transfer where it is voluntary for the gifter but not for the recipient I'm going to call a burden. I'm here thinking of the white elephant that was gifted in order to burden people who had fallen out of favour. In a system where the burden was the only transfer type, people could pass resources to each other voluntarily but not receive them voluntarily, which means that there would be no chance to reject a resource transfer if it were inappropriate or a waste. However, if someone received a resource that they did not require, they could always burden it back, leading to an endless loop that would likely only be interrupted once the two parties started listening to each other. Once the parties take each other into consideration and considering the consent of the recipient, the result is a non-reciprocal gift.

Where the transfer is one-way and voluntary by the recipient but not the gifter, I am going to call this a requisition. Tax is probably the most obvious and common requisition. A world of only requisitions has the same logic as a world on only burdens - and endless back and forth broken only by the inclusion of consent, at which point it is a non-reciprocal gift. This is because if something is taken from one party without their consent, they could simply take it back. Similar to the compensation, the problem could be solved by having two classes of people, one who can requisition from the other, but this doesn't establish how the transfer of resources would occur within each of the classes.

The non-reciprocal gift doesn't have the problems of the exchange (the gaps that are usually filled by non-reciprocal gifting), it doesn't decay into another type of transfer, and it doesn't require a division into classes (which still does not solve the entire problem). Non-reciprocal gifting is the most coherent type of economic transfer, which is why it is the focus on this project.