[FM Discuss] updated IBD

[Daniel James]

Hi a.l.e,
> you have made some publicity for "free apples" and you have many people
> coming by, getting one or two apples, bringing your a pie or other
> goods. maybe just having a talk with you. they may also have been
> starting offering goods for free at their home because of your example!

Sounds good :-) Mutual aid relies on mutual respect, though.

> in the real world, in can be a very sane reaction to just accept that
> some few people are not using your "product" as you intended it -- even
> in a way that may be somehow hurting you...

That is fine, as long as you have a surplus. Projects like FM work
because of cognitive surplus (some of us are unemployed or
under-employed, others are well paid and can afford to donate our brain
time). As far as I'm concerned, that cognitive surplus doesn't mean
we're living in a post-scarcity economy, it just means the global
economy isn't functioning very well right now (duh!)

When you don't have surplus, it's not the same. I've lived in city
communities where everything that is not bolted down (and some things
that are) get stolen. It's very difficult to develop a sharing ethos
under those circumstances, because everything you build is destroyed by
selfishness.

What tends to happen when people try to fight that selfishness through
volunteering is that they do good work for a couple of years, then burn
out. We see the same thing in the Free Software community. That's why
it's really important to develop long-term sustainable models.

Cheers!

Daniel