I like to give people stuff. Sometimes things I've collected, sometimes my time, sometimes my analysis, sometimes just cash, when I think I have a little extra. Sometimes just telling them that I FUCKING LOVE THEM!
I enjoy doing this, immensely. I enjoy thinking about it, saving things for when I want to do gifting. It's a rush, the whole process.
Giving to people so often gets so complicated, though. People think they will owe you something back, or that you are somehow trying to buy them.
That's a drag.
One idea about gifting that I've heard about lately is "giving forward," the idea of which is you do something for someone who is having a hard time, and the implicit contract is that when things are going better for that person, and the time is right; he or she then helps out someone else who is having a hard time. The recipient owes the gifter nothing. He or she only owes the future something, somewhere, in a time or place of his or her own choosing.
I love this concept because it is so revolutionary. Try to tax "giving forward," you government. Try to tax something that is entirely based on trust and faith in the human contract, you broken trashed rich sellouts.
This is, of course, a chain that can easily be broken, or at least perceived to be so. You give forward to someone who then screws you over, betrays you, stabs you in the back.
"Oh Noes!" you think. "The Giving Foward was just a lie!"
Nay, I say. Don't give the broken people that much credit. When you give forward, you set something in motion. The broken people don't have all that much power, and it's all turned inward, like a sucking black hole.
They just LOOK like they have power.
A break in the chain of the giving forward just slows it down and diffuses it some. But it is STILL THERE, that giving forward thing you created. Sooner or later, it will escape again and go on its merry happy giving way.
And still tax-free.
Fuck the government. Fuck money. Create your own economy. Start today. Get inventive.
(crossposted from The Free Speech Zone)