Most gift economies require a certain amount of trust and bonds with other people, that just isn’t possible with large amounts of people. How could decommodified exchange be implemented on a larger scale?
Most gift economies require a certain amount of trust and bonds with other people, that just isn’t possible with large amounts of people. How could decommodified exchange be implemented on a larger scale?
Self sufficient rural farming or mining communities are not really a thing any more. They are dependent on manufactures from outside like tools, fuel and other equipment. Rural folk in my country like to pretend self-sufficiency but they drive trucks made elsewhere on roads built by non-local labor and paid for by municipal or state funds to buy things made in other countries at stores in other towns. When people are honest about the inputs to processes on which they depend, they are more open to cooperation.
This is an apt description of the status quo, in which these communities (voluntarily or not, aka forced via taxes) produce about hundred times of what they need themselves. Of course such highly industrialized farming needs a lot of external inputs.
That aside, I am not saying that they won’t have needs for urban goods and a desire for certain luxuries, but the relationship is inherently loopsided because contrary to the urban inhabitants they do not depend on it for every day survival, and that has an strong effect on trading behavior.