Philosophy
From Micropatronage
The Internet has created a thriving gift economy of ideas, from open source to blogs to Wikipedia, etc. Micropatronage creates a bridge between the Internet's abundance economy and the scarcity economy of the world's money systems.
This is not charity; patrons don't give out of pity or guilt. It's not investment, in the traditional sense; patrons don't expect a monetary return. Patrons give because they feel their contribution makes their world better. They realize that they benefit personally from their contributions to the greater good.
For centuries, wealthy individuals and institutions have funded work they felt to be important, expecting nothing in return but the satisfaction, and social status, of helping to create something good. Now we finally have the communication and economic infrastructure to allow regular people to gather together to support the work they feel passionate about. No longer do we have to wait for the gatekeepers to choose who gets funded and who does not. The power is in our hands!
Discussion
Please add your comments.
Commentary
Micropatronage, through a different lens; Adam Greenfield:
Why was the response so different between these two cases, when they appear on the surface to be so similar in conception? Why the evident resentment meted out to A-lister Kottke, so different from the acclaim Ellis earned with his gambit?
Related Reading
The Next Economy Of Ideas; John Perry Barlow:
It's captivating to think about how much more freedom there will be for the truly creative when the truly cynical have been dealt out of the game. Once we have all given up regarding our ideas as a form of property, the entertainment industry will no longer have anything to steal from us. Meet the new boss: no boss. We can enter into a convenient and interactive relationship with audiences, who, being human, will be far more ethically inclined to pay us than the moguls ever were. What could be a stronger incentive to create than that? We've won the revolution. It's all over but the litigation. While that drags on, it's time to start building the new economic models that will replace what came before.
The Soul of Money; Lynne Twist. Interview:
I see money as being a little bit like water. When water is moving and flowing, it cleanses, it purifies, it makes things green, it creates growth, it's beautiful. But when it slows down, starts to sludge, and is still, it becomes toxic and stagnant. I think that's true of money, too. And those of us who have a hard time letting money flow--flow through our life and have it flow to our highest commitments--sometimes get a little cloudy around the topic. It's sort of like looking through a toxic fish tank out into the world, and you can't see so clearly.
Beyond Greed and Scarcity; interview with Bernard Lietaer:
The origin of the word "community" comes from the Latin munus, which means the gift, and cum, which means together, among each other. So community literally means to give among each other. Therefore I define my community as a group of people who welcome and honor my gifts, and from whom I can reasonably expect to receive gifts in return.
Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content; Clay Shirky:
The economics of content creation are in fact fairly simple. The two critical questions are "Does the support come from the reader, or from an advertiser, patron, or the creator?" and "Is the support mandatory or voluntary?" The internet adds no new possibilities. Instead, it simply shifts both answers strongly to the right. It makes all user-supported schemes harder, and all subsidized schemes easier. It likewise makes collecting fees harder, and soliciting donations easier. And these effects are multiplicative. The internet makes collecting mandatory user fees much harder, and makes voluntarily subsidy much easier.
The Street Performer Protocol; John Kelsey & Bruce Schneier:
We introduce the Street Performer Protocol, an electronic-commerce mechanism to facilitate the private financing of public works. Using this protocol, people would place donations in escrow, to be released to an author in the event that the promised work be put in the public domain. This protocol has the potential to fund alternative or "marginal" works.
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