I recently discovered this movement thru this article, there’s also a page on Wikipedia.

It seems very interesting to me since it’s basically decentralized proactive anti-capialism mutial-aid. I really think in-real-world decentralized projects like this may be the single most efficient “weapon” we have today.

Do you have any experience with this? I feel like RRFMs are more suitable in big cities and not in little ones, but happy to be wrong about it.

  • keepthepace@slrpnk.net
    0·
    15 days ago

    I have 3 anecdotal evidence from France:

    • Not at this exact same type of event but there has been a trend for a few years in France to put old fridges in the street and transform them into drop-off bookshelves where people can drop and take books. They are not powered, but being watertight allows book to survive outside. Very quickly the books in a good state are removed and resold on second-hand online shops.
    • There is a gift economy group in the city I go to to work. When you join you have to promise to not resell the things you get, because they had too much of it in the past.
    • In flea markets, you will see some regulars at the opening times. They come and get all the good deals quickly in order to resell them online.

    Don’t mark me wrong: I am a huge proponent of the gift economy, but I think that within a capitalist society, in order to exist it has to be paired with some sort of reputations economics.

    • Paragone@slrpnk.net
      0·
      14 days ago

      It would have to be a sort of reputation-economics with teeth, not just mere-opinion…

      Parasitism, whether scalpers of event-tickets, or gunmen who appear to sell the water from the oasis, etc, who do it for their faction’s profit, instead of “this is a communal-resource: & we’re limiting the single-user exploitation, & we’re making-certain that the commons isn’t trashed by any faction” type thing…

      is a rude fact of life, among humankind.

      Making it systemically-illegal, with teeth is possible, but … that is far far far from the ideology of the gift-economy, isn’t it…

      ( like the difference between being a Healer vs being a doctor: 1 is centered in others’ healing, the other is centered in their own authority * status

      ( dad was a medical-researcher, doctor, & later prof of medicine, ttbomk: any doctor who wants to claim that those aren’t the motivations can go read the book by researchers Logan, King, & Fischer-Wright, on the 5 culture-levels “Tribal Leadership”, & notice that doctors are centered in the zero-sum-game of narcissism. Still reject my claim of evidence? Go walk into any normal hospital, & see what percentage of the lower-staff people have enough human-validity left in them, to meet your gaze, if you walk-in wearing a suit. It’ll be close to none, because their human-validity is already corroded by the doctors. THE most-spectacular narcissism-bodylanguage I’ve ever seen, consistently is on doctors. The difference between a Healer & a doctor is significant. They are not the same kind of thing, at all. ) )

      I actually suspect that both paradigms are necessary, for any actual-world-economy…

      Who would do the nastiest-jobs except for pay?

      _ /\ _