Distribution

A flow of resources.

According to Fiske

Fiske's describes four ways of relating, which are also ways of allocating resources, more on the P2P Foundation. "According to Fiske, there are four basic types of inter-subjective dynamics, valid across time and space, in his own words: "People use just four fundamental models for organizing most aspects of sociality most of the time in all cultures. These models are:

• Communal Sharing
• Authority Ranking
• Equality Matching
• Market Pricing

We add stigmergy as yet another relational mode, more below.

Communal Sharing

Commons, in this context, individuals contribute to a group, and create a common resource, which in turn unlocks access to other resources. So commons economics are based on the relational logic of Communal Shareholding, through practices of commoning that create joint assets. Communal Sharing emerges as intersubjectivity does, with animate multi-cellular organisms. (This is why Communal Sharing carries forward a sense of an ideal past, which is perpetuated through ritual re-enactment.)

Commons-Based Peer Production

Commons-based peer production refers to collaborative efforts where individuals contribute resources and labor to create shared goods or services.

Examples:

• Wikipedia, where volunteers collaboratively create and edit articles on a wide range of topics.
• Open-source software projects like Linux or Mozilla Firefox, where developers contribute code and collaborate to create free software.
• Community gardens where people collectively cultivate and share produce.
• Open-source software development where contributors freely share code and expertise.

Non-profit organizations

Distribute goods and services without seeking to generate profits, often focusing on meeting community needs or advancing social causes.

Examples:

• Food banks and pantries that distribute food to those in need.
• Charitable organizations providing free medical services or educational programs.
• Public libraries lending books, media, and other resources to the community at no cost.

Government Distribution

Government agencies may distribute goods and services to citizens as part of public welfare or social programs.

Examples:

• Public education systems providing free or subsidized education to students.
• Public healthcare systems offering medical services and treatments regardless of ability to pay.
• Social welfare programs providing assistance such as unemployment benefits, housing support, or food assistance.

Authority Ranking

Authority Ranking is the mechanism for allocating according to status, either by birth as in the feudal mode, or through meritocratic selection. Authority Ranking emerges as organisms cope with loss of shared attention: Whose breach of shared attention is most important to follow? (This is why Authority Ranking carries forward temporal precedence; there is a serial ordering of events.)

Benefit redistribution based on merit

This is how Sensorica operates with ventures that use money as rewards. See more on Benefit redistribution algorithm.

Equality Ranking

Equality Ranking is what is known as the gift economy, whereby individuals or groups give to others, creating a need to re-gift. People keep track of the balance or difference among participants and know what would be required to restore balance. It is mainly about equal-status peer-group behaviour. Equality Matching emerges as organisms coordinate attention through meaningful gestures and dances and perceive affordances of objects in their environments. (This is why Equality Matching carries forward oscillatory movements with cycles of reciprocal exchange, turn taking, and playful pauses.)

Gift Economy

Description: In a gift economy, goods and services are given freely without an explicit exchange of value or expectation of reciprocation.

Examples:

• Freecycle networks where individuals offer items they no longer need for free.
• Community sharing events like "Free Markets" where people donate and take items without monetary exchange.

Mutual Aid Networks

Description: Mutual aid networks involve individuals or groups providing assistance and support to each other based on principles of solidarity and reciprocity.

Examples:

• Community-based mutual aid funds providing financial support to members during emergencies or crises.
• Neighborhood or community associations organizing volunteer efforts to assist vulnerable members during disasters or hardships.
• Informal networks of caregivers providing support to each other in caring for elderly or disabled family members.

Market Pricing

In capitalism, prices are the mechanism for guiding choices and behavior, this Fiske calls Market Pricing. To that we add stigmergy, as a fifth mode, which depends on signalling that can aggregate as priority or importance. Market Pricing emerges as human communities grow beyond what we are capable of tracking in informal networks of trust, allowing us to close off what would otherwise have been expectations of reciprocity. This is why Market Pricing carries forward a deliberate response to scarcity and, correspondingly, an emphasis on efficiency and proportionality: it develops—as David Graeber documented—not because barter was inefficient, but because our communities outstripped what we could cognitively track.

Predominant flow of resources in market capitalism.

It assumes entities like producer and consumer. Intermediaries can take place in the transfer, such as commerce agent, someone who buys from the producer and sells to another commerce agent or directly to the consumer.

The transaction is an exchange, in most cases mediated by monetary currency / money.

Sharing Economy

The sharing economy involves individuals sharing access to resources, goods, or services, often facilitated by technology platforms.

Examples:

• Ride-sharing services like Uber or Lyft where individuals share their vehicles for a fee.
• Accommodation-sharing platforms like Airbnb where people rent out their homes or rooms to travelers.
• Peer-to-peer lending platforms where individuals lend money to others without involving traditional financial institutions.

More on Sharing economy

Stigmergy

Stigmergy in gregarious beings is efficient coordination and organization without the need for direct communication. This indirect form of communication allows individuals to respond to changes in their environment and the actions of others, leading to emergent collective behaviors. Stigmergy facilitates efficient, decentralized coordination and organization in gregarious beings, enabling them to achieve collective goals that would be difficult or impossible to accomplish through centralized control or direct communication alone. There are various advantages:

• Efficient Task Allocation based on the cues left by others. For instance, in ant colonies, pheromone trails left by foragers guide others to food sources, optimizing resource gathering without the need for explicit instruction.
• Self-Organization: Through stigmergic interactions, complex structures and behaviors emerge without centralized control. For example, termite colonies build intricate nests by responding to local cues such as the presence of building materials or the layout of existing structures.
• Adaptability: Stigmergy allows for flexible responses to changing environmental conditions. Individuals can adjust their behaviors based on the cues left by others, facilitating rapid adaptation to new challenges or opportunities.
• Scalability: Stigmergy enables coordination and cooperation among large groups of individuals without the need for direct communication channels. This scalability is particularly advantageous in large social groups where direct communication might be impractical.
• Robustness: Stigmergic systems often exhibit robustness to disturbances or failures of individual components. Since behaviors emerge from the interactions of many individuals, the system can often recover from disruptions without catastrophic failure.

Economic anthropology

Economic anthropology correlates economic conditions to the emergence of these relational modes:

from the P2P Foundation, ...it’s clear that it’s crucial to distinguish between two types of ‘tribal’ societies: First there are subsistence hunting and gathering societies, which have little or no stored surplus. Although it’s a big generalization, the dominant principle for production and exchange in these foraging communities is usually CS; they are often strongly anti-AR. Second, there are a few hunting and gathering societies with stored surpluses and there are agriculture-based societies, in which AR is prominent (institutionalized and more or less hereditary chiefs and then kings) and there are varying degrees of EM. In societies based predominantly on pastoralism, communities are much more fluid, but AR is also prominent. MP also very gradually emerges in agricultural societies, but pastoral societies are often resistant and opposed to MP. EM seems to become more dominant at a much later stage, with the rise of manufacturing, perhaps. Meanwhile, MP continues to expand right up to the present, but the mix gets complex! The best overview of these stages (although it doesn’t use RMT) is Allen Johnson and Timothy Earle, 2000, The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State, Second Edition. It’s not elegantly written or tightly reasoned, but I believe they’ve got the facts right." (email, January 2009)

Non-market distribution

Non-market distribution refers to the allocation and exchange of goods and services through means other than traditional market transactions involving monetary payment. These methods are often used to distribute goods and services based on principles such as need, equity, or social responsibility. Here are some categories and examples of non-market distribution of goods:

Airdrops

Recently, in the web3 realm, we've seen the gain in popularity of airdrops, which are in essence gifts of tokens to a segment of the population. Usually, there are measures in place for the selection of individuals who can benefit and rules of access associated with the process. That is because airdrops are designed to bring a new network or application to critical mass.

See also

Dissemination.