Why the Gift Economy?

First, some backstory

I’m an interdisciplinary artist known for music and performance art.

I’ve performed 300+ times throughout my career, crowds of 10 - 7,000 people, performed in acting roles for 10+ theater productions of various sizes, acted in 2 movies, and written hundreds of short stories and songs. I’ve worked as a production technician for 8 years in various roles, taking part in 400+ productions in addition to my performance art business. I’m heavily invested into the nonprofit sector.

I am also disappointed in money as a tool, and have spent a lot of time experimenting with ways to translate value without using it. I’ve given away so much of my earnings that many people have questioned my intention to be wealthy.

I chase wealth like everyone else, I just define it very differently. I offer my services to most people free of charge because I want the reward to come back to me in the form of things that hold value better than money.

Things like:

Relationships
Housing
Trade / Insider Knowledge
Experiences
Access
Education

I’ve helped people:

Cesate from addiction
Find work-life-balance
Create or perform their artform
Mediate a crisis

I live this way for 3 main reasons:

I get more for my services overall. Using fiat to value my payments ever-cheapens my return on investment. When the customer is affluent enough to reward a business using a representation of the actual value of service outside of its fiat value, that payment is often more meaningful or useful to me than its dollar amount would be.

I work with non-traditional people, which is more fulfilling. Over half of all the people I have ever met struggle against an economy that tends to outpace those who are not a preferred caste, affluency, or neurotype. In the modern age, affluence is becoming more scarce, not less, and to deny this reality leaves a lot of people out of the conversation. Fiat is not an effective way to trade with many people. Understanding and working within this constraint of the modern world allows me to assist people that offer me more of what I’m looking for out of my working life.

I maintain healthy boundaries to the sale of my time. I don’t have an expensive life - my focus is on self and community reliance - I anticipate my cash needs to keep pace with the ever-degrading value of the things fiat is traded for, and not as a way to subsist against this degradation. Cash is actively becoming less valuable, and the value of my time would fall alongside the value of the dollar if I were to tie them together. To leap past this problem, my investments are made with people and projects.