Once again, I say, I can't sell the items back to the economy at $100, but if I used cash, I would need to pay $100 for maybe a printer and a pair of cigars... but I can't really turn it into cash easily, but I have the value...
So this is where the freegan community is supposed to come in... Let's say everyone's earn rate is around $100 per hour... that's an assumption for the purpose of this article. Some might be better some might be worse, but probably can do better with some training.
Now IF everyone "works" for 3 hours contributes $300 worth of value into the pool, and the resources are passed around, everyone gets an average of $300 value back.
Meaning... I have no use for cigars and 4 printers. So I add it into the community pool. Someone who loves cigars, takes the cigars, and another 4 people get printers. That's great right? I have contributed $300 into the community. Then I also take from the community, so maybe I get some food, a DVD player, an oven, whatever... and so I also get an estimated $300 worth of value back as well... more or less...
And this system works great right? Like how many people make $100 per hour? Essentially, I work like 3 hours and I can consume $300 worth of products. Cos what I find is useful for someone else, and what they find may be useful for me.
So the goods and perceived value flows around and everyone should be happy IF the resources are efficiently allocated, meaning the guy who loves cigars should get the cigars, or maybe someone who is interested to try it out.
Since all the stuff is free, except for a little bit of sweat and pride, most of the people in the community don't care how much each person contributes... like someone may be less efficient, maybe moves slower, whatever and makes $50 per hour worth of value, or some young chap might be getting $200 worth per hour... but no one really cares cos they get what they need and want from the system. And most of the time we get stuff to pass to our family and friends and it's usually all ok.
(Although once, I wanted to get free beer to cook, and the person said "NO", cos he felt that cooking the beer is a waste of the beer and he told me unless I drank it he's not going to give it to me. I'm pretty close with him so it was quite a humourous discussion.)
The system can even support some leechers, meaning, a couple of folks who don't contribute but take some of the stuff that they really want/need. Like in the community, there are the more active people, and there are the lurkers, who just keep quiet, until something they want comes along, then they request for it. But more often than not, they don't talk or discuss anything, neither do they post stuff for people to take.
That's still fine, cos there is really a lot of resources in the community. And if these folk just take a bit of this and that which they really need, no one really bothers...
Then come along the hardcore leechers... I don't know what they do with the stuff, but they clear out large volumes of stuff. So when someone posts their loot, the hardcore leechers wipe out the loot from the system, furthermore, the leechers might not contribute any or not as much as they wipe out.
This becomes a problem cos this results in an inefficient allocation of resources, it's highly unlikely that they are "consuming" all the products, there's probably someone else who can make better use of the items. I/We may give people the benefit of the doubt if they wipe out the loot once, but if the same person keeps clearing the system of resources, then it gets pretty obvious and these are the kind of folks who will break the system.
Cos everyone in this system is expected to be gracious. Take freely, give freely (as best as you can, the folks recognize that people still need money to pay for utilities and stuff), don't complain about free stuff. If someone's going to give you something for free, have the courtesy to collect the item at the giver's convenience and to be on time, and do not suddenly not show up.
Of course in any community, there's credibility as well. So if someone's known to be inconsiderate or leeching too much off the system, they just get ostracized, that's how life works... duhz...
This whole story is something like the Tragedy of the Commons...
The tragedy of the commons is an economic theory of a situation within a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action.
--Wikipedia
Here's a short explanation of this economic theory.
Here's a longer explanation. You don't need to watch both if you understand the first one.
And in the real world, we can't really stop this from happening... Cos either we aren't able to determine who is overloading the system or we are unable to remove the person from society.
So in the end, in the real world, everyone plays for themselves and join the leechers and messes up the shared resource. It becomes a situation where if you don't join them, then you're going to be losing out.
But in a smaller community, it is possible to remove the person from the group.
The thing about this group is that... we can choose who to give our stuff to. It's not like whoever bids the highest or whoever requests for it first.
So the owners of the resource, which usually they get for free and gift it for free, they can just stop passing resources to the few culprits who are messing up the system.
Cos it's still a privately own resource but the owners USUALLY allow it for everyone to consume as long as everyone is generally nice about it.
Duhz... it's a group of people, there's bound to be good and nice people who are considerate and give more than they take, or folks who take more than they give. It happens in every group of people in any society. People change, people talk more, people offend each other... that's all normal part of hanging out in any group.
The thing is beyond all the nonsense, people are happy in this community cos they all enjoy free stuff, some people want to help the environment, some people want to save their pockets, etc etc...
Would you like to join such a community???
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