A Declaration of Interdependence

Via Hour World

VIDEO: “We think of this as a love currency.”

This video from a time banking conference is so inspiring – go California! Via Swidjit

Click here to learn about local trade networks.

Video: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption

“Technology is enabling trust between strangers.”

An Interesting Example of Sharing/Bartering from Craigslist TV

New resources: Free books & video games, neighborhood borrowing groups, and a parents’ swap network

We’ve added a lot of new sharing, bartering, and free stuff networks to the ever-growing Resources Guide. Here’s a peek at the new ones – has anyone participated in any of these networks? Tell us about your experience in the comments!

• Sharing Is Giving – a directory of sharing/freecycling mailing lists, seed exchanges, and garage sale finders; several Finger Lakes groups are listed
• FreeUse Network – local message boards to facilitate sharing (none listed for this area as of Sept. 2009)
• BookMooch – earn borrowing points for giving away your books to folks in the network (by mail, not local-oriented)
• Swaptree – list your books, CDs, DVDs, and video games, and get a list of things you can trade for them; choose your items and print postage (usually less than $2.50) directly from the website to ship the ones you’re exchanging; you can also choose to swap only with local people, coworkers, or friends to avoid shipping
• Zwaggle – a points-based trading network for parents and children – “You receive Zwaggle points (or Zoints) by giving your gently used things to other families, then use those Zoints to obtain “new” things for your family.”
• BorrowingCircle – small local networks of neighbors who share with each other; you can borrow three items at a time
• neighBORROW – “The site provides members of local networks access to a collective online catalog of the items they each own individually.”
• BookCrossing – 804,645 people in over 130 countries giving books to strangers by leaving them in public places. “What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel. Track the book’s journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.”
• PaperBackSwap – “We help members Swap, Trade & Exchange Books with each other for Free… Every time you mail a book to another member, you can request one for yourself. Choose from 3,941,266 available books!” (not just paperbacks)

“What kind of company declares itself uninterested in maximizing profit?”

I really enjoyed reading Gary Wolf’s Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess in WIRED, which comes to the conclusion that part of why CL is a mess is that it’s “uninterested in maximizing profit.” Why?

“People are good and trustworthy and generally just concerned with getting through the day,” [Craig] Newmark says. If most people are good and their needs are simple, all you have to do to serve them well is build a minimal infrastructure allowing them to get together and work things out for themselves. (Read more)

Newmark views providing and maintaining this infrastructure as a public service, and gives away the profits of the enormously successful site.

Craig’s List is one of many trade networks listed in the Share Tompkins Resource Guide. What successes have you had using Craig’s List? Any challenges? Are there other networks you prefer to use?