Engineering Generosity

Collection to inspire the book

In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away. The currency in a gift economy is relationship, which is expressed as gratitude, as interdependence and the ongoing cycles

Robin Wall Kimmerer • The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance – Robin Wall Kimmerer

And more than anything, it feels particularly, uncomfortably, acutely uncertain.

Our Centaur Future - A RADAR Report

The biggest thing we can do is give people a sense of a secure present from which to explore potential abundant futures.

Ultimately, the non-transactional thing works on the basis of trust. You have to have trust first, before you can get that virtuous cycle going, because you have to start by giving and not knowing what you'll get back. It's something like an abundance mindset, trust in the community. But at the same time, if you give and you don't get meaningful... See more

Divya Siddarth • Building Capacity for Exit to Community

Trust

Generosity is not a loan to repay or a debt to settle. It's a gift to appreciate. Yes, you can reciprocate a favor by paying it back. But the best way to honor an act of kindness is by paying it forward.

No, you don't owe me a favor

Forward, not back

However, if we truly aim at discussing the economy at a level where we can start to grasp it in its broadest sense we need to add the “invisible” economy, or what is more often called the non-monetary economy. This is a system of economies typically embedded in a monetary economy yet it undertakes tasks that benefit society by means that the... See more

Jenny Grettve • economicspaces

Money is a captured subset of human value created. For people with plenty, it’s the default, because it’s easy to use. But for people without, that value is captured in ways like status, privileges, perks, etc.

a scarce system is one in which there are limited resources and one person in the system getting those resources means that everyone else can’t have those same resources. A zero-sum game.

Introduction to Abundant Systems

Kindness isn’t always easy or obvious, because the urgent race to the bottom, to easily measured metrics and to scarcity, can distract us. But bending the arc toward justice, toward dignity and toward connection is our best way forward.

Seth Godin • Three types of kindness

Seth has a lot of good ideas on this. Should tie in to his ideas more.

In practice, a startup nonprofit has several important distinctions from traditional nonprofits: 1) it begins with a large goal and works backwards to identify incremental steps to achieve that goal, 2) it has an iterative, experimental mindset, and 3) it is an internet first organization.

marklutter.com • Startup Nonprofits

interesting framing. I’d been focused on the concept of eliminating the distinction between for-profit and non-profit, but this is an alternative way to examine the same problem, looking like it could have similar outcomes.

Kindness has unlimited upside.”

James Clear • 3 Ideas, 2 Quotes, 1 Question (December 26, 2019) | James Clear

More proof of ideas