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ArcHub: Economy

Gift Economy

Gift economy is the practice of freely giving what you dont need to those who do. It promotes cooperation and inclusivity, aiming to meet everyone's basic needs while reducing waste and overproduction. Some examples:

  • Swap Shops [article] - also known as free stores, freeshops, and give-away stores, swap shops are places for things to be freely given and taken
  • FoodNotBombs.net [website] - collecting and redistributing unsold food
  • Sirum.org - Supporting Initiatives to Redistribute Unused Medicine
  • TrashNothing.com - Want free stuff? Got stuff to give away?
  • FreeCycle.org [website] - Giving and getting stuff for free in our own Towns
  • BuyNothingApp.com [website] - GIVE what you no longer need, ASK for what you want
  • Freeya.com - takes the headache out of giving and getting free stuff in your neighborhood
  • CouchSurfing.com - Stay with Locals and Meet Travelers
  • BeWelcome.org - BeWelcome the largest free hospitality community
  • HospitalityClub.org - Hospitality Club aims to bring people together - hosts and guests, travelers and locals. Thousands of Hospitality Club members around the world help each other when they are traveling - be it with a roof for the night or a guided tour through town.
  • Librivox.org - Free public domain audiobooks read by volunteers from around the world.
  • Gutenberg.org - Project Gutenberg is a library of over 75,000 free eBooks
  • CharityNavigator.org - Explore charities, view their ratings
  • Annas-Archive.org - The largest truly open library in human history

Library Economy

Library economy is a system that emphasizes shared access to resources and goods within a community, allowing individuals to borrow items instead of owning them. It promotes cooperation and inclusivity, aiming to meet everyone's basic needs while reducing waste and overproduction. Here is a video introduction:

We Need a Library Economy [video] - by Andrew Sage

And here are some examples:

Ethical Exchange

Alternative Currency

  • TimeBanks.org - TimeBanks track the hours members earn by helping others and the hours they spend receiving help.
  • Community-Exchange.org - exchange and share using a variety of exchange methods: record keeping, time exchange, direct exchange, barter, swapping, gifting and sharing

Vote With Your Dollars

  • Divestment Guide [article] - Simple first steps toward corporate divestment
  • EthicalConsumer.org - how to use your spending power to help change the world for the better.
  • ICEout - NOT WITH MY DOLLARS: ICE OUT OF MY WALLET is a nationwide boycott campaign against the corporations that profit the most from ICE's surveillance and abduction network. We refuse to let our dollars fund raids, surveillance, family separation, or the criminalization of immigrant communities. Black Friday was only the start.
  • BookShop.org [website] - connecting readers with independent booksellers

Education and Organization

  • Economics4Emancipation.net - A Course on Capitalism, Solidarity and How We Get Free
  • GEO.coop - decentralized collective of educators, researchers and grassroots activists working to promote solidarity economy
  • NewEconomy.net - coalition of organizations building the solidarity economy in the U.S.
  • USSEN.org - US Solidarity Economy Network
  • USWorker.coop - Grassroots membership organization for worker cooperatives and democratic workplaces
  • WeAreOpen.coop - worker co-op of strategists, innovators, and facilitators designing and delivering strategies and tactics for organisations
  • WorkingClassHistory.com - To help record and popularise our grassroots people’s history, as opposed to the top-down accounts of most history books

Workers' Unions

Salvage Economy

Other