Money-lite commoning

A way to reduce the need for money and markets.

Commoning means relying on sharing, dividing up, and mutualization to meet needs as much as possible, and on collaborative financing. This lets people minimize their reliance on money and markets. We call this “money-lite” — the ethic and social practice of reducing one’s need for money as much as possible through sharing, co-using, DIT (do-it-together), and other practices that minimize reliance on market exchange. This is fundamental to all commons. Commoners can improve their long-term independence by withdrawing as much as possible from dealings with the market/state system.

Money-lite commoning is how hackers helped neutralize Microsoft’s proprietary abuses of its monopolies over Windows and Office in the early 2000s (see pp. 128 and 167–168). They developed GNU/Linux, Open Office, and scores of other high-quality open source programs as practical, low-cost or no-cost alternatives to the standard programs offered by the market giants. Through shareable, peer-produced programs, people can create digital commons of their own and escape

– Free, Fair and Alive