User:Veralearny/sandbox

What is Kindperks?

It’s not trading and it’s not bartering. It’s getting what you want and giving something for the sake of kindness and not expecting a precise exchange. You give something back in some way shape or form. It might not be directly back to the same person, and instead it might be passed on to someone else in turn.

In recent years, a sharing economy has emerged, with concepts such as skill-sharing, open-source coding, time banks, co-working, house sharing, social shopping, peer to peer lending, crowdfunding, ride sharing and Wikipedia. When there is a surplus of something, the excess is given away to others. As more people practice this type of exchange, a web of connections is forged. Participants in such an economy give what they can and receive when they so choose. Such an economy is also referred to as a gift economy where people share their skills, time, knowledge, information or material goods with each other without any precise exchange.

Many of us participate in a gift economy in many aspects of our lives. When we cook dinner for our partners, help a friend move, care for our elderly parents, or raise our kids, we are participating in a gift economy. Money may be involved but is not primary. Value is in care and support, not in the precise exchange. This also facilitates a collaborative community that helps find more productive uses for underutilized assets (money included), and creates social reciprocity that has a transformative effect on the mind, wallet and environment.

Nature works like a gift economy as well. Charles Eisenstein explains how nitrogen fixing bacteria do not directly benefit from fixing nitrogen. The nitrogen they give to the soil grows plants. Those plants grow roots that then grow fungi, which ultimately provides nutrients to the bacteria. Pioneer species pave the way for keystone species. This provides micro-niches for other species, which feed yet more species in a web of gifts that, eventually, circle back to benefit the pioneer species. All exist in the organic flow of life, without sense of debt or credit. Humans benefit and thrive from a gift economy as well.