I've seen very apolitical people do a buy nothing for kids stuff. I called it the great chain of baby stuff. Just last week a coworker dropped off some diapers that their kid grew out of at another coworkers desk who could use them. Cribs, toys, clothes, handed from one family to another. I've seen a crib go to three different families.
> The Buy Nothing Project is about setting the scarcity model of our cash economy aside in favor of creatively and collaboratively sharing the abundance around us
Somehow this feels less like anarchy and more like a free market solution, where the market finally realizes that monetary value is not the only factor in rational decision making.
This is absolutely anarchist and can be placed as part of a long tradition of mutual aid that can be traced back through Kropotkin.
I don't think it's possible to view this as a free market solution unless you want the term "free market" to lose all meaning. The free market does not have a monopoly on rational decision making. Any market is based around exchange, which this project expressedly rejects.
Not all markets are based around exchange. Kidney exchange markets, for instance, have a component based on a donor giving a kidney for nothing in exchange, starting a chain of kidney donations that could otherwise not occur.
Matching markets are another example that is not based around exchange
It can be traced back to hunter-gatherer populations honestly. So what?
Mutual aid is pretty far away from abolishing the state or abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, which were the bigger ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin.
The entirety of modern economics is based on the presupposition that monetary value is the only factor in rational decision making.
A "free market" is literally defined as - "a system in which the *prices* for goods and services are self-regulated by the open market and by consumers" - all goods and services have a monetary price in such a system.
It is both inappropriate and in bad taste to call this a free market solution when it is clearly not.
Wikipedia on Free Market Theory: In economics, a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are self-regulated by the open market and by consumers. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority, and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities.
Anarchism.. in my definition, is the lack of a singular authority. Not to be confused with "chaos".
I see this example (Buy Nothing Project) breaking the linear-ness of economy. Harvest, Build, Sell, Consume/Use, Discard. No re-use, no re-cycle. This is not sustainable, especially with population growing. We need to re-use. I don't think that anyone is doing (donating/giving away) to hurt the profits of XYZ company, I strongly believe that we all got so much 'garbage' in our home, things that we haven't touched/used for a looooong time, that as the Minimalists said (the first 120 podcast episodes - after Patreon I dropped them) "find this thing a new home".
Circular economy is what we should be working towards, to get the most possible utility out of any given resource, rather than squandering them in the mistaken belief that there's always going to be plenty more where it came from.
> "I don't think that anyone is doing (donating/giving away) to hurt the profits of XYZ company, I strongly believe that we all got so much 'garbage' in our home, things that we haven't touched/used for a looooong time"
Both motivations are true for my girlfriend and me. We both want to make sure we don't get bogged down with superfluous stuff, so we give them to people who will appreciate and use them, but we also see it as an opportunity to not support corporations that do not have our (societal) best interests in mind.
The less stuff we buy, the less our money is used for purposes we disagree with or even abhor, in many cases. By buying the few things we do buy from small companies with responsible profiles, that's another step towards our money going to better purposes.
I don't really believe in the "power of the consumer" or "voting with your wallet" (both of which just lead to unnecessary consumption), hence why we try to buy as little new stuff as possible and prefer buying second hand whenever possible, but at least the little money we do spend won't be going (directly) to the exploiter's pockets.
I buy a lot of pre-owned stuff, and sell or give away stuff I'm done with whenever possible, for the same reasons. I especially can't stand IKEA, because they embody throwaway culture so much, with their cheaply made furniture. And, if it prevents other peoples' stuff from being thrown out, while I get to save a little money at the same time, so much the better.
The thing with Ikea is that they're known for cheap/disposable furniture, but they also carry furniture made from proper wood, rather than cardboard. My dining table is made from solid wood and you wouldn't think twice about standing on it. Obviously it's more utilitarian than pretty, but it feels like it's made to last. However it also cost a lot more than the flimsy cardboard alternatives right next to it, so it's obvious what people end up going home with.
I will also say that their kitchen cabinets are significantly higher quality than their other lines of shelves and cabinets. Better fasteners, hinges and so on. Yet again, they are significantly more expensive than most of the other furniture they carry.
Still, the amount of proper hardwood furniture in second hand stores is baffling to me, when you see people lugging home glorified cardboard disguised as furniture.
Once you see cash as a broad p2p communication method it’s hard to imagine an Anarchist seeking to undo it as it allows people to collaborate over space and time in so many more ways than barter or physical gift economies.
