How a giftmoot economy works

I've spent a lot of time discussing the theory of non-reciprocal gifting and giftmoot economies. Here I want to explore a few examples of how a giftmoot economy would work with a few simple scenarios, from getting a loaf of bread to building a house. Once again, I'm not trying to describe the best or the only way that these could be achieved, but I do want to try and illustrate that each of these things is simple and possible.

Getting a loaf of bread

In an exchange economy, you can get a loaf of bread from a bakery. You go in, check the price, see if you have enough money, decide whether it is worth it, and then purchase the bread.

In a giftmoot economy, you can also get a loaf of bread from a bakery. You go in, they check if they have enough bread, and they give you some.

Could you get two loaves of bread? Again, if they have enough, that would be no problem. What about ten loaves for sandwiches for a party? Possibly you could walk in and just get them, but the bakery might ask that you place an order in advance. What if you need ten loaves every week? A standing order would make a lot of sense. What about if everyone needs ten loaves every day? Quite probably the bakery could not keep up with demand, and either they would have to find a way to expand, or they would have to limit the amount that a person could get. But it seems unlikely that everyone would want ten loaves a day, or even a week.

Getting ingredients for dinner

Similar to getting a loaf of bread, someone could pop down to the giftmoot equivalent of a supermarket to browse for ingredients for dinner. The giftmoot might have all the things they want, or only some of the things they want, and so they might go elsewhere to get the rest - different giftmoots would stock different things.

Giftmoots might only provide goods to those people who have memberships. The point here isn't to limit who can become a member (I'll talk about this soon, but generally there should be no limits), but instead to more effectively assess the flow of stock. If one member keeps raising enormous orders in comparison to everyone else, it might be worth checking in with them.

Getting a car

A big "purchase" might have a little more paperwork involved, depending upon how constrained the resources were. For example, a person might have to fill out paperwork to register for a car, and that might come with a waiting period. Scarcer cars might need to be bid on. But even if the car were ready right away, there might be another factor: that someone who successfully obtains a car might then have a waiting period before they can obtain another one, unless they fall into special circumstances. That could ensure that people are not simply hopping from car to car to car as their fancy changes, given that a car costs as much as a coffee, and that they treat the car with care, knowing that if they break it or crash it they could be without a car for a while.

For something like a car, it might also be the case that you need to show you have a license or that you meet some other type of pre-requisite. This is one of the ways to ensure that scarce resources are going to relevant use cases or that there is some level of trust the resource will not be mishandled or wasted. It might be too much to require that a person say what they are going to do with their care as a pre-requisite, but probably not too much to ensure that they know how to safely operate it.

Starting a bakery

Starting a bakery is likely more complicated. To start a bakery in any economy, a person first has to get a lot of information together. For example, they need to know if people in the area want bakery food. They also need to scout out if there is a suitable location in the area. They need to know how to bake, and/or how to find people with the relevant skills. They need to know that the required resources - ovens, flour, electricity - are available. All this information needs to be collected, regardless of whether the economy is an exchange economy or a giftmoot economy. In an exchange economy, the potential baker needs to know if there is a customer base that can sustain the bakery, and if the right resources are available in the right amounts - but they also have to deal with the different exchange requirements, such as the price of flour and the amount someone is willing to pay for a loaf of bread.

In either case, the potential baker would then submit their business plan to a group that has access to capital, such as a bank or a giftmoot. The bank in an exchange economy will crunch the numbers and evaluate potential profit and if a loan could be paid back (or some other capital investor would determine whether they would get a good return on their invsetment). In a giftmoot economy, the giftmoot would evaluate whether the business seems viable in terms of community need and logistics.

If there is a resource constraint (possibly expressed in the exchange economy as a very high price), the baker will need to find out and consider their options. In a giftmoot economy, they would likely contact a giftmoot that i an industry body for bakers, or for flour, or so on, and put in their intended request, and in turn be told what is available. Then they could consider if an alternative would work instead, checking what other resources are available. The two economies handle this in much the same way: in the exchange economy, the baker needs to know they need flour and, if the price of flour is too high, survey viable lower-priced alternatives. But regardless of price, they do need to know the utility of flour and the possible alternatives, and this is something price will never tell them. So the two are handling roughly the same information most of the time.

If the giftmoot doesn't approve the project, the potential baker can go from giftmoot to giftmoot and continue to refine their plan and ask. They could also convince all of the individual producers to gift them the required resources one by one. There is no single point of rejection, but that doesn't mean that success is guaranteed either, especially if it is a poor business plan.

Building a house

When building a house a giftmoot could act like a sort of economic travel agent. The person would approach the giftmoot and request a house - they have their own plans, perhaps, or choose from some existing viable plans - and the giftmoot would consider the request. There are a few things that might make them say no, such as if the person already has a house while others are still waiting, or the request is resource-intensive or non-viable in its current form. But, generally, people will want people to have houses to live in if it is possible to get them one.

Once approved, the giftmoot would like connect with an industry giftmoot that focuses on building houses, and that giftmoot would connect with a carpentry giftmoot and bricklayers' giftmoot and electricians' giftmoot, and so on. The bricklayers' giftmoot would connect with producers of bricks, and with bricklayers, and they could communicate the options - based on resource surpluses and shortages - to the house-building giftmoot, so that they can make a decision about the best use of resources for the house. They would communicate with the person who put in the request, and work together to produce something viable with the resources available.

The main point is that things wouldn't necessarily be all that much different. Resources would still come from the same sorts of places, and the same sorts of knowledge and consideration would generally be required. Businesses and professionals and financial institutions would still network with each other in order to get things done - though, in the giftmoot case, they would likely not exhibit the tension of each group trying to gain the most for themselves out of it.