gift-economics
A Farcaster-native small-scale gift economics lab and roundtable.
The Studio Slowcore team is excited to introduce the new Gift Economics channel: a Farcaster-native small-scale gift economics lab and roundtable.
Stewarded and moderated by Danica Swanson, @trigs.eth, and @y0b, the channel was kindly gifted to us by @ted.
We plan to host thoughtful deep-dive conversations that cater to long-form readers and systems thinkers. In particular, the channel will encourage open and earnest discussions about structural factors that influence how writers, artists, and other creative professionals are (and aren't) paid. There's a lot of secrecy about compensation in the arts, for all kinds of reasons. Our stewards help facilitate more clarity about where things stand.
Gift Economics Channel FAQ
Q: What is a gift economy?
In its simplest form, a gift economy is an "arrangement for the transfer of goods or services without an agreed method of quid pro quo."*
Q: Who's behind Studio Slowcore?
- Danica Swanson (founder, co-steward, channel owner, word-slinger-in-chief)
- @trigs.eth (co-steward, channel mod, wordsmith, community call host)
- @y0b (co-steward, channel mod, wordsmith, gift economics consultant)
All of us also have other professional commitments. Our intention for phase one of our launch is to experiment with hybrid gift + market economic models to sustain our two channels (/gift-economics and /slowcore-hq) long-term — without tokenizing our community and turning it into the product. If we succeed, we will shift more of our time and attention to Studio Slowcore matters.
Q: Why is the studio launching exclusively on Farcaster?
The simplest answer: we decided to build what we wanted to see in the world, and we believe Farcaster is the best place to do that.
The slightly longer answer: it's Farcaster all the way down for us. The seeds of our studio were sown when the Farcaster community seized on the concept of "slowcore" and turned it into a movement. Since then, everything that led up to our launch has been deeply influenced by Farcaster and its unique social economy. Every studio contributor is an active daily user of the purple app who cares about its future.
Creative people have gifts, and we believe those gifts come with a responsibility to use them well. Toward that end, we need structures that facilitate the giving of gifts (and routing them to the right places) instead of defaulting to extractive economic patterns. We think Farcaster's social economy is the right place to build such structures, since it's already a type of hybrid gift + market economy of the sort we've never seen anywhere else.
We also prefer to keep the studio small. We don't need (or even want) to chase maximum reach; it would only add a tax on our valuable time and attention.
We may write an even longer deep-dive answer to this question in phase two of our launch.
Q: Why are you starting with channels?
We think channels are directionally correct as cozy corners (not hashtags), and can work well for our invite-only communities if they're well-stewarded. A new form factor may be needed if channels are to thrive long-term, but in the meantime we'll give it our best as co-stewards. It helps that we use @cura for channel maintenance!
Q: How does the Gift Economics channel work?
Anyone can follow the channel. Membership is invite-only. We don't have an application process; our mods send out invites at their discretion. The best way to increase your chances of an invite is to respond thoughtfully and kindly to casts in the channel, and make it clear (through your behavior) that you've read the rules.
Read more in our channel guidelines.
Q: I'd like to learn more about gift economics. Where should I start?
We're working on a reading list! In the meantime you could start with "Sacred Economics" by Charles Eisenstein, which is available in full online.
Q: Why aren't you launching a token?
The short answer: we're starting with gift economics experiments, so we don't need one.
The longer answer: we want to help build a social economy that can sustain creative people long-term. We think the overwhelming majority of the "creator economy" in crypto as it stands (what @abundance has called the "Tokenized Attention Creator Economy") is failing to meaningfully deliver on the value prop of rewarding creative people appropriately for their work. Tokenizing in exchange value terms risks reducing the gift value of our communities.
Our thesis is that economic models to sustain long-term creative work and community-building begin (but do not end) with gift culture.
The standard ways of monetizing creative work extract gift value, convert it into profit, and route the lion's share of it away from creative people. We want to go in the other direction: restore and preserve gift value flows, return more value to those who actually create it, and convert profit into gift.
It's a challenging systems design problem! But if there's anywhere it can be done, it's on Farcaster.
Q: How can I help with the gift economy experiment?
Consider following and contributing to our roundtable discussions in the comments on our casts in the channel, or just talk about gift economics on Farcaster in general.
Gifts of crypto sent to the studio's multisig (slowcore.eth) will be gratefully accepted. We will route them toward retro-rewards for the gift labor done to bootstrap our channels. Gifts can also help free up more time for us to steward the channels responsibly in the future. Please do not gift any funds that are needed for your own support.
We'd also love to see more Farcasters start their own gift circles and micro-gift-economy experiments.
NOTE: We will NOT be launching a coin.
Not for our studio.
Not for ourselves as individuals.
Not for our channels.
*(Thanks to ServiceSpace for the gift economy definition). 9 replies
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Great questions from @chriscocreated.
My reading of what @trigs.eth wrote ("gift-giving is the necessary precursor to market activity when it comes to creative content") is that if we begin with investment or speculative dynamics when funding creative work, this decision then closes off the paths for a potential increase in GIFT value...
...and that increase in gift value is THE big unlock we need if we really want to sustainably support creative work over time.
If we don't *begin* with direct gift-giving to the artists, we'll always end up with business as usual: markets will continue on with extracting most of the value generated by their gifts and turning it into private profit. Just as they do right now.
When trying to develop social norms of gifting amongst artists, for example, we quickly run into the structural problem @abundance recently mentioned: "creators benefit the community (or network) but are expected to be rewarded by members of the community."
I call this the "artists passing a crumpled $5 bill back and forth amongst ourselves" problem.
If we want that increase in gift value to do its thing, then most of the early gifts to fund creative work will probably need to come from entities *outside* artist circles (e.g., philanthropy).
In this context I think it's a good idea to consider the many layers of challenges (social, psychological, economic, cultural) involved in getting creative work funded. These are thorny and deeply rooted problems. Gift-giving is an oft-overlooked key, but there's more to the story.
Tom Beck's latest piece "Why Artists Can't Get Paid" is my go-to for thinking through the true depth of this problem space; it will be frequently quoted in this channel.
(See the comments for further reading). 2 replies
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so I was looking into this a bit and curious what you guys think:
when we think of gift economies we generally think of, well.. humans
but humans are not the only species on earth that needs to figure out resource distribution (the purpose of "economics")
so how do other species - particularly social species - do it
turns out there are some common themes
but in many species access to resources (mating, feeding priority, etc.) is mediated by a member's contribution to the group - which can be viewed as a gift economy
since such contributions are valuable to the group, they are rewarded
two points here:
social animals (elephants, dolphins, wolves, chimps, etc.) usually live in small groups (could range from 5-6 to 80-100, depending on the species), which allows group members to track each other's contributions over time
in more hierarchical species, with a dominant alpha, gifting is generally rewarded, but more "excessive" gifting could be punished, since its viewed as a threat to the hierarchical order
in less hierarchical species contributions are rewarded on more meritocratic basis
one of the reasons I look at other species is that you can see evolutionary game theory at work more clearly - what types of behaviors, group dynamics, and mechanisms can work over, in some cases, many millions of years.. and what we can learn from that 2 replies
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Great question from @adam-. A few sketches toward an economic model that may help our cozy-corner channels to become sustainable long-term:
- hybrid gift + market enterprise
- begins with a gift circle (~ 15-20 members max)
- allows Studio Slowcore to stay small and lean
- customized to suit the specific needs/capacities of the communities involved (i.e., no one-size-fits-all)
- reciprocity-based (i.e., receivers are also contributors)
- members decide what's valuable and how to reward value creation
- avoids tokenizing the community itself and making it into a product
- diversified revenue streams (e.g., paid membership options, network rewards, market-rate services for clients, grants, gifts, tips, etc.)
I've written more on these topics, but those writings won't be ready until phase three of our launch (late September) and there's still plenty to be hashed out amongst myself and @trigs.eth and @y0b, so I'll leave it at that for now.
My go-to exemplar of designing value flows in gift economics terms is DisCO Coop (link in comments). While I wouldn't replicate every aspect of their model, their work has been a major influence on my thinking about possibilities for building non-extractive economic models.
No doubt there are community-based economic models outside of web3 we can learn from too. 1 reply
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