Five Feminine Economies

subsistence, reciprocity, edu-travel, hospitality and gift

Sara Campbell of Tiny Revolutions, in a beautiful tribute to her mom, quotes writer and Zen priest Norman Fischer, who said that "Meaning comes not so much from what you understand as from the way you do whatever it is you are doing."

Tiny Revolutions №100: In Memoriam

For Mother's Day, I am giving myself the gift of talking about my hopes and dreams for five feminine economies. In this video, I develop:

• a subsistence economy for food.

• a reciprocal economy for local goods and services.

• an edu-travel economy for a lifetime of learning around the world.

• a hosting economy with travel vouchers and sibling cities.

• and a gift economy for all things infinitely replicable.

What is a feminine economy? It’s a system of exchange that places the happiness, resilience and security of families at its center, without taking that away from anyone else. A feminine economy can only exist through community economies that have been empowered to support the sovereignty of families, and that measure their success in that way.

Where else to start but with the purpose of Life? At its most elemental, I believe this is to care for the people and the places that have been entrusted to us.

I could devote volumes (or the first section of my book, titled Pieces of Slave) to show your inability to get through one day without taking the labor and resources of people to whom your labor and resources give nothing back. But this post is positive! Let’s look at how we could restore our ability to produce most of what we need and want.

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a subsistence economy for food production

I’ve been talking about a responsibility movement in terms of health and happiness. The most important thing we need, multiple times a day, is food. Everyone who eats should share in the work of producing food. But for a food responsibility movement, everyone needs to be part of a community with access to land. This is, I believe, the only affirmative human right (rather than just ‘freedom from’). We’re born onto the earth and we deserve a place on the earth, within a community, where we belong.

The way I envision this could be fun. I see cities divided into thin slivers of pie, with a crust of agricultural land. Neighborhoods would have their own plots for cultivation, under the direction of people who knew what they were doing. A couple days a week they would take a shuttle. Some might do farming or animal husbandry, perhaps while listening to a podcast. Some would be cooking to feed everyone lunch, perhaps while discussing the podcast, after the work is over. Neighbors would form bonds while doing something productive.

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a reciprocal economy for local goods & services

This is the solution developed in my book, How to Dismantle an Empire. Called the Caret System, it sees the mortgage as the intergenerational transfer of wealth that conveys a debt, but not to the bankers. The opportunity to live in a house and receive an education from another generation incurs the obligation of thanking them by making sure they can live out their lives in comfort and dignity. And we owe it to the next generation to pass on the gift in a better form.

The system change required is that commonwealths, not bankers, issue mortgage debt and the credit to repay it, controlling its taxation and determining its exchange rate. The credit is to be distributed equally as targeted monthly dividends for the exclusive and measurable goal of increasing the exchange of local goods and services.

Other than that, the commonwealth decides how much to distribute and what to target. For my own commonwealth, I’d like to incentivize locally produced food, wellcare (including childcare and eldercare), education and home improvement. I’d set the exchange rate of $2 to ^1 so that people can live where they work and have a 2:1 advantage over hedge funds buying up real estate. And I’d tax carets exchanged for dollars at 50% so people can work where they live and producers have a 2:1 advantage over foreign-made goods.

Instead of mortgages extracted from the community and given to the bankers, these dividends would continue to circulate, making the town more functional, beautiful and resilient with every turn.

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an edu-travel economy for a lifetime of learning around the world

If you’ve seen my episode on Reinventing Education (linked below) you know that I think education is wasted on the young. It should be a lifelong endeavor that includes month-long retreats in exotic places with people with whom you share a passion. You should earn your right to argue with your heroes in person (is that only my fantasy?) by learning and teaching the pre-reqs in your hometown.

Instead of civilizing a new crop of college sophomores every year, as I do with the (currently partying) student house next door, families could move in who would be an asset to the neighborhood and teach us what’s happening in their corner of the world. Your town may be a hub for a particular interest or specialized field of knowledge.

The 2:1 exchange rate along with the education subsidy would keep classes inexpensive for locals. But you could adopt sibling cities that accept each other’s carets at equal value. So you could study archeology in Guatemala or the Zapatista revolution in Chiapas or knitting patterns in Paris or flamenco dance in Valencia. The world is your oyster and conviviality your sauce.

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a hosting economy with travel vouchers and sibling cities

As I’ve mentioned, I spent big chunks of the last seven years restoring and re-inventing my childhood home in Appalachia. This was after my dad’s death left my mom alone for the first time in 90 years, and when she moved into assisted living and later, a skilled nursing facility. It gave me a project so I could spend time near her. I just launched it as an AirBnB called The Art House, so you can see my hard work!

I think it would be such a joy if we could earn travel vouchers through peer-to-peer hosting, car rentals, ride shares, home restaurants, tours and adventures. All of these programs, of course, would be owned by a network of communities and not corporations. Sibling cities could accept travel vouchers at full value, without an exchange rate or taxes. But instead of corporate fees, maybe 10% goes to the town for something that makes it a more captivating place to live or visit.

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a gift economy for all things infinitely replicable

The best way to ruin a hobby is to make it into a job. Many obsessions are a pleasure in stolen moments but become a chore when pressured into being a livelihood. Under my system, anyone can make a living equal to the cost of housing by doing relatively mundane activities for their neighbors. This leaves us free to give the best of ourselves away—our ideas, our music, our writing, our software modules …

Instead of faux-local behemoths like Nextdoor or Facebook, every neighborhood should have its own network and be able to plug in open-source software for added functions. Maybe you want to have a communal tool shed or a distributed library in people’s homes. Maybe you want to share sewing patterns or architectural designs.

In this way, we can give the best of ourselves to be shared freely. But there should also be a way of showing thanks, some tokens of appreciation that have a tangible trade value. Maybe, like ideas, they can be both kept and given away. They can be redeemable in the gifter’s community, to lure the inventor to visit, but can also be regifted as infinitely as the creation.

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Those are my hopes and dreams, and I hope that you will dream with me. If the genie in the system change bottle gives us one wish and we use it to reclaim our lives, our land and our economic system, what do we want to do with it?

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For more, here is Reinventing Education:

There’s been much talk about Biden’s $10K student loan forgiveness but student loans are just one symptom of the dysfunctional education system. This episode examines how to reinvent K-12 through university with self-driven curricula, edu-tourism, edu-travel and no debt. It uses the economic system of anarchy and federalism described in my book, How to Dismantle an Empire. It references The Student Loan Scam by Alan Michael Collinge, a TEDtalk by Sir Ken Robinson, a NY Times article by Nick Burns, and The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto.

and this explains further The Caret System:

I describe the crisis in parenting that led me to develop something I called the point system when my daughters were young. I compare this to the system of community carets in my book, How to Dismantle an Empire. Both encourage 'adulting' and taking responsibility for homes, businesses and each other.