'Tis Better to Give Than to... Sell

On our minds

At their most basic level, economies are systems we have created in order to meet our human needs. We are most familiar with market economies—when someone provides a good or service in exchange for a uniform currency. Market economies are based on transactions, rather than relationships. There is no ongoing social contract or link between the two parties; once the exchange has been made, the relationship is over.

But there are other, more personal types of economies that we still participate in: gift economies and barter (or in-kind) economies. Gift economies date back at least 10,000 years among humans, and exist in some form among many species. Male penguins woo females with pebbles; bats share food with others, including non-related bats; crows, dolphins, and domesticated pets are known for bringing gifts to human friends. Gift economies can best be summed up as “pay it forward, to pay it back.” Someone makes a sacrifice right now, with the expectation (or rather, faith) that this sacrifice will be rewarded in some way, someday. In our contemporary culture, it’s often tied into social rituals, like bringing a birthday gift to a party, picking up a restaurant check for the group, funding a scholarship—perhaps because a scholarship got you through school.

Gift economies are at the root of New Orleans’ social aid and pleasure clubs, which are, these days, best-known for staging Second Line parades every Sunday. However, these clubs started around the turn of the 19th century—inspired by earlier Italian benevolent societies—because Black people weren’t able to access health, burial, or life insurance. These clubs weren’t charity organizations; rather, they were mutual aid groups. Club members pooled their resources to help each other in a time of crisis and in return, received help when they needed it.

Gift economies are about accumulating social wealth rather than material wealth. They’re a way of tangibly linking us to others, so that a relationship continues beyond a single interaction. If someone invites you to dinner, you’re more likely to return the favor—and doing so with two dinners is a great start towards building a lasting relationship. Gift economies play an essential role in building community, something that we’ve collectively struggled with in recent years. They also set an example for how we might treat each other differently in work environments. Adam Grant offered a wide range of thoughts on these benefits in his book Give and Take, (a perfect holiday read for our fellow non-fiction fans).

In 2023, the U.S. surgeon general warned that Gen Z is averaging about 1,000 fewer hours of face-to-face time with friends each year than previous generations. It’s easy to blame this lack of community on Covid, but Americans were increasingly lonely even before the pandemic. In fact, with the onset of Covid, we saw a boost of grassroots mutual aid, (a boost in the gift economy).

Part of this newfound isolation has to do with the loss of third spaces—coffee shops (where people aren’t all buried in their laptops), bars, churches, mosques, synagogues—the places that we go, that aren't work or school or home, to relax and reset. (Think of the show Cheers, where “everyone knows your name,” or Central Perk in Friends, or Luke’s Diner in Gilmore Girls; you’ve got the idea.) These places are so familiar, you can show up alone and know you’ll see a friendly face. They’re places that feel comfortable and easy, places where acquaintances turn into friends and into professional and creative collaborators.

Coworking spaces that include lifestyle amenities, such as cafes and gyms, can be one sort of third space. These types of spaces foster a third kind of economy, a type that has likely been suppressed with the massive move to remote work. The in-kind economy is somewhere between the gift and market economies. This is where you trade goods or services for other goods or services; both sides of the exchange may be completed immediately, or one side may be completed down the road, but it differs from the gift economy in that the expectation of return-on-investment is clearly there.

In-kind trades ensure at least two interactions, so they’re more intimate than a market transaction, and they often happen between friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. This is when the attorney down the hall writes your business contract, so you design their website homepage, or when you run into the writer at your coworking space and randomly ask them to proof the marketing copy for your photography business, in exchange for free headshots. These exchanges may also happen between folks who work for the same company, on different teams or projects. They are often born of spontaneous encounters, which we are experiencing less of these days.

So what’s the solution to all of this isolation and loneliness, which comes with a silver-lining of more flexibility and personal control over our jobs and lives? Intentionality, and, though it seems contradictory, “planned” spontaneity. We’ve said before that going into the office should be purposeful rather than routine. Mixed team meetings, brainstorming sessions, and “hands-on” projects, such as building models, are all great times to work from the office.

Simultaneously, we all have to be diligent about our own mental health, and find ways to support those around us. We each need different amounts of social time. Americans used to get about 6.5 social hours a week, but around 2014, that dropped to 4 hours. Keep track of your social time for a few weeks and note how you feel. (Think of it as a social self-quant exercise.) Experiment with going out—and to the office or a coworking space or a third space—more often. At what point do you hit the quota that makes you feel healthiest? Being a part of and contributing to a community isn’t passive. It’s a creative act. It’s a generous act. It’s, to a degree, an economic act—but not in the market economy sense. This holiday season, as you gather with your friends, family, and acquaintances, take stock of your need for socializing, collaborating, and community building; if it’s not being met, resolve to take an active role in changing that in the year ahead.

From the archives

As 2023 drew to a close, we were talking about using data to forge a path forward and thinking about the merits of multigenerational workplaces. At the end of 2022, we explored the power of arguing. Many of us were returning to work as 2021 ended, so we were thinking about how to redirect Covid-birthed safety-tech to gather data that would enhance employee experience. In the midst of quarantine, we highlighted a few of the upsides to lockdown and better ways to connect online. Finally, just before Covid hit, we were thinking about how to create physical spaces that work for people with very different sensory needs.

Amidst all this talk about the gift economy, we’ll leave you with a recent episode of Hidden Brain, “The Secret to Gift-Giving.” It helps us understand which types of gifts are fun to get and which are fun to give and seeks some middle ground, to help us become more gracious on both ends.