Peer to Peer Exchanges

overview page for different kind of exchanges that put people directly in touch with each other.

For updates, see http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/P2P-Exchanges ; http://del.icio.us/mbauwens/Sharing-Economy and our new sharing section at http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Sharing

Introduction

1. In this article on Use Communities, Alex Steffen argues that sharing infrastructures are vital for sustainability
2. A Typology of Sharing Practices

The three major categories of sharing (Rachel Botsman):

• Product Service Systems like Bikesharing and Carsharing
• Redistribution Markets like Freecycle and eBay
• Collaborative Lifestyles like Couchsurfing, and Lending Club

Typology of Exchanges

From a typology developed by Francois Rey:

1. Buy/sell, e.g. classified listings of items on sale
2. Gift, e.g. Freecycle
3. Auction, e.g. eBay
4. Barter, see Online Barter Markets such as Open Barter
5. Sharing, e.g. car-pooling/rideshare, book lending and exchange, time-share accommodations, etc.
6. Mutualization, e.g. mutual insurance Mutual Banking Clearinghouse?
7. Group Purchasing, e.g. LetsBuyIt.com (a special case of mutualization)

See also

1. P2P Finance
2. P2P Donation Finance

Typology of Markets

From Ethan Miller:

The above tools could be seen, and mapped, against the following typology of non-monetary exchange types:

Householding economies — meeting basic needs with our own skills and work at home and on or with the land: raising children, offering advice or comfort, resolving relational conflicts, teaching basic life skills (such as how to talk!), cooking, sewing, cleaning the house, building the house, balancing the checkbook, fixing the car, gardening, farming, raising animals. Many types of work that have often been rendered invisible or devalued by patriarchy as "women’s work."

Barter economies — trading services with our friends or neighbors, swapping one useful thing for another: "Returning a favor", exchanging plants or seeds, time-based local currencies.

Collective economies — in their simple form these economies are about pooling our resources together (sharing): bringing food to a potluck supper, carpooling, lending and borrowing, consumer co-ops; in their most "radical" form, collective economies are based on common ownership and/or control of resources: collective communities, health care collectives, community land trusts, and more.

Scavenging Economies — living on the abundance of Earth’s own gift economy: hunting, fishing, and foraging. Also living on the abundance of human wastefulness— "one person’s trash is another one’s treasure": salvaging from demolition sites, using old car parts, dumpster diving, the "swap-shop" at the local dump.

Gift economies — giving some of our resources to other people and to our communities: volunteer fire companies, community food banks, giving rides to hitch-hikers, having neighbors over for dinner.

Worker-controlled economies — workers deciding the terms and conditions of their own work: self-employment, family farms, worker-owned companies and cooperatives.

"Pirate" economies — various activities that might be labeled "theft" by those in power, but would be called "rightful re-appropriation" by those who have been robbed of power: re-incarnations of Robin Hood or Pretty Boy Floyd, squatters.

Subsistence market economies — thousands of very small businesses survive (and sometimes thrive) with little or no imperative to grow and accumulate wealth. These are subsistence-based businesses, created and run for the purpose of providing healthy livelihood to the owners (who are often the workers) and providing a basic service to the larger community (sometimes in the indirect form of creating a community gathering space). (http://www.geo.coop/SolidarityEconomicsEthanMiller.htm)

Directory

Other Directories

See the following compilations:

1. Global Resource Exchange Groups and Localized Exchange Communities
2. P2P Exchange Infrastructure Projects
3. Low Cost Groups
4. Freecycling Group Finder - find local groups where people are giving and getting free stuff

Tools Directory

1. Who Pools [1]is an online-tool for sharing resources.

Movements

1. Freeconomy Community - The aim is to get people together locally through the simple act of sharing services, tools, and land.

Exchange Services Directory

Amongst the types of exchanges are

1. Hospitality Exchange Networks
2. Book Swapping

See the individual entries on

Culture:

1. BarterBee, music and movies
2. Book Crossing, book exchange
3. Bookmooch
4. Lala, CD exchange
5. SwapTree, Books, CD's, DVD's

Children and Education:

1. Loanables, rent and borrow stuff, including for teachers
2. Notemesh
3. BabyKid Exchange Group - For parents who are on a tight budget. Regifting items you no longer need and want to give them to someone who can really use them.

General Products:

1. Freecycle + trash nothing! - Give and get free stuff in your local area
2. Freecycle [2]- (obsoleted by FreeShare) exchange of unwanted items.
3. Give Get Nation
4. I-Recycle is a central point for people offering items free of charge including a map location.
5. Free Economy [3]- goods and services database.
6. Trash Wiki [4] - a dumpster diving world wide guide of creating value from trash!
7. Repurposing wiki [5] - By repurposing items, find new uses for items that would otherwise end up in the trash and even find alternatives to things you would otherwise have to purchase.
8. Information & Material Exchange Index
9. Give Away Websites List[6]

Infrastructure:

1. Community Trading Software
2. Open Co-op

Seeds:

1. Plantare

Travel:

1. Couch Surfing
2. Travelers for Travelers
3. World Travel Exchange
4. Hospitality Club [7] is the world's largest hospitality exchange organization.
5. Global Freeloaders [8] is an online community, bringing people together to offer you free accommodation all over the world.
6. Hitchhikers Worldwide

Work:

1. Cucumis, translation exchange
2. Swap A Skill

Projects

Direction-less Inquiries]

More Information

1. A successful German lending and borrowing experiment, dieborger.de, at http://theage.com.au/articles/2005/03/17/1110913726676.html?oneclick=true
2. Other peer-based exchanges, are described here at http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,66800,00.html
3. The development of 'gifting technologies' is described here at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_12/mcgee/index.html

Other directory pages:

1. See also our pages on P2P Exchange Infrastructure Projects
2. Free Resources: contains a list of Global Resource Exchange Groups and Localized Exchange Communities

On Sharing [9] and Collaborative Consumption

1. Shareable magazine aims to be the voice of the new sharing culture
2. Video: The Collaborative Consumption Groundswell Video ; [10]
3. Book by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers: What's Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption