this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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The mechanism of markets is that the price of goods follows the law of supply and demand. Prices are a universal signal to producers that they should produce more/less of a good.
Without currency you need a mechanism to replace this. Given your previous posts in favour of anarchism, I’m guessing you don’t favour central planning. So what mechanism for determining how much and of what kinds of goods should be produced, do you prefer?
Given I’m an anarchist, I value a gift economy where we stop assigning value to goods and focus on providing for wellbeing.
How much a person should have is as much as they need.
But that's not what a gift economy inherently results in.
Yes it is.
Unless you have something concrete to prove all societies (even the current ones still existing) that engage in such practices inevitably must change away from such a system, that isn’t just a “this happened a few times historically so it must always be true even though there are still gift economies operating today” I don’t want to hear it.
I interpreted your statement as "I value a gift economy, which is where we stop assigning value to goods and focus on providing for wellbeing", since it was contrasted with economies of exchange, rather than "I value a gift economy of the kind where we will stop assigning value to goods and focus on providing for wellbeing."
Sorry, you know I'm pedantic and tend to interpret things a bit narrowly in that light. Since the former is not what you meant, I do apologize for the interruption.
I didn't mean to say that a gift economy can't be what you want it to be, or that it can't sustain itself in that position of altruism. I just am always wary of treating alternate systems as innate cure-alls. Like liberals who think that democracy is the cure for social ills, instead of just one component of the cure. A gift economy is a legitimate and arguably important proposal, just like democracy is, just not inherently exclusive of the issues that it is sometimes proposed to fix.
EDIT: Put another way, it would be like someone said "I value democracy where we will stop embracing hierarchy and focus on equal power redistribution." Valuing a democracy in which that happens is laudable, but there are definitely people who think "The more democratic the system, the more egalitarian it becomes", which any number of democratic systems will show... that democracy alone is insufficient for egalitarianism. I interpreted your statement more like the latter and less like the former. Again, I apologize.
But how does that work in terms of manufacturing in a global economy? Or are you calling for a return to villages with cottage industries?
I’m calling for an extreme reduction in global manufacturing, because what we do is excessive due to capitalism. But that’s unrelated to general anarchism and follows other branches.
And it works by people organising and planning together for their mutual benefit instead of accumulation of currency.
You do understand that people can coordinate and cooperate internationally out of their choosing right? We don’t need a person up top to tell us what to do and what to send where.