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Draft Article
It was a privilege to have Mark Boyle's time for free (meal vouchers supplied) at the 2009 launch of freelender.org at the Buddhafield Festival. This is mentioned in Mark's forthcoming book, which, in case you haven't heard, is called 'The Moneyless Man'.
People get confused sometimes between money and resources, I think. Mark is one of the most resourceful people I know. Those whose main way of getting what they want is by using money are in some sense empoverished. If we do not know how to get the where-withall to live when the notes in our wallets lose all value, we are likely to be in trouble. As money is simply a (screwy) 'form of trust', why not build trust more directly by lending out as much of what we have and do as we can (currently) bear to lend out? I don't really see any stronger alternative for these transition times.
One of the most uplifting ways I know of asking for things is through the freeconomy. Even if I don't get what I want or get to give away the skills I want to give, the very idea of the freeconomy is empowering and it's time will come. One of the leading 'think tanks' wrote something similar about freelender.org:
"Local sharing schemes like Landshare, Hospitality Club and Freelender.org mean you don't need to own your allotment, car or drill, and you can sofa-surf your way around the world without ever having to book a hotel. Such schemes were predicted only two years ago in Forum for the Future's project 'Low Carbon Living 2022; but are already proliferating on the web."
(Editorial from Forum for the Future; probably the leading UK environmental think-tank).
A successful way that I've just borrowed a laminator from someone who I previously didn't know had one, was via a posting on facebook. Maybe you don't facebook and maybe you'd prefer a non-web-based way to find out who has got what you want? You might also want to find out who (near you) also wants what you want so that you can find a creative way to consume less. (The technical phrase for this is 'fractional ownership', but that's another story....one for which I'd love to be working with you on solving. NB Anything I own can be borrowed, or put into fractional ownership.)
Surely the key issue (apart from money) is whether we're all doing our best to save resources and re-build community by sharing and gifting? My aspiration is to support the creation of a widely credible way for people to share resources, build-trust and gift. Only some sharing is gifting and I reckon that, at present, many people would be more willing to share by renting out (with a deposit) stuff they don't use all the time than they would be open to freelending to strangers. Thus, I'm favouring the promotion of the website LetsAllShare.com nationally & only promoting freelender.org is a select number of local communities with which I have regular connection. LetsAllShare.com allows gifting too; from the founder (Stas) I collected a trainset with which to start a local toy-library (see picture).
What LetsAllShare.com doesn't (yet?) do that freelender.org does is to create 'trust-stats' which enable people to have more confidence in others (and has the potential to develop almost as an alternative currency which is created just by borrowing and lending). Nor does LetsAllShare.com want to be involved in dispute resolution in the way that freelender.org does. My own background is in mediation and restorative justice (including employment working at HMP Bristol) and I'm keen that communities develop more capacity to deal with disputes between them & have the capacity to work together to address the times of change that lie ahead.
So different developers in the 'sharing and gift economics' sector offer different things, or similar things in different ways (eg Freecycle UK and Freegle UK). My dearest hope is that a grouping of 'sharing and gift economics' developers in each country, called eg SAGED-UK, will help ensure the sustainability of this activity so that individuals don't burn-out, ideas are shared and a viable complementary/alternative economy grows in a way that attracts a wide cross-section of the public, without confusing them with too many disconnected websites!
It seems essential to me that even if there is competition amongst those in the sharing & gift economy, that the organisations involved also find ways to collaborate.
Personally, I like open, participative structures and thus Edmund and I at Freelending Community Interest Company offer monthly meetings (often by structured teleconferences) that look at how the 'sharing and gift economics' developers are:
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Engaging users
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Ensuring a quality experience
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Staying resourceful enough to improve the experience etc
If you'd like to add your comments into the mix about how any of the 'sharing and gift economics' websites (and off-line activities) could work better for more people then please:
If this doesn't appeal at present, thank you for reading anyway and I hope you'll want to hear some more later this year. It takes less than 2 minutes to register on freelender.org (you don't even have to think up a new password) and you'll hear more later (though not more than 3 times this year) as to how you could widen your options to “be the change you want to see”, to quote Mark/Gandhi
Rough notes of other things to include
The optimum 'Wanted' push/pull site?
Prompted by someone emailing the Bristol freeconomists to let us all know/remind us about freecycle, I wrote the following back:
"Hi Sam
I saw your message about freecycle and wondered:
a) whether you are involved enough in the local freecycle politics to know why they haven't decided to defect to Freegle UK?
b) whether you see freelender.org as a more viable way for freeconomists to list all their possessions so that it is easier to search for what people have got and therefore not have all these messages saying 'Has anyone got...?'
What's your position in relation to this?
Sustainability?
Open Source Code etc
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