My typology is inspired by Alan Page Fiske’s relational grammar, see http://p2pfoundation.net/Relational_Model_Typology_-_Fiske

I think the basic idea is fairly simple: when resources are abundant, as in the immaterial sphere where the cost of reproducing information is marginal, you do not care that your gifts are returned in any direct fashion; hence you can voluntarily contribute to a commons, and benefit from its wealth without anyone in particular returning that value directly; however, when you are dealing with limited resources, that cost you money to reproduce, it is necessary to have reciprocity, either through the market exchange of equivalent value, or throught the symmetry of the gift economy. If you give all your money away, without guarantee of a return, you risk not being able to eat. But if you give your musical or software creation away, all benefit from your gift.

I think what matters is the appropriateness of abundance thinking. In the immaterial world of marginal reproduction costs, abundance applies ‘naturally’ and we can have a system of production, i.e. non-reciprocal peer production, that expresses that. In the world of limited physical resources, i.e. scarcity, we have to recognize limits, but I would suggest replacing the culture of fear, by a culture of sufficiency, and a recognition of ‘together we have everything’. In the world of scarcity and sufficiency, we need peer-informed modes (instead of pure non-reciprocal peer to peer) based on exchange (market)or reciprociy (gift economies based on symmetry of relationships).

Where a certain kind of new age thinking can become pathological, is when it applies abundance to the limited world of material resources.

Michel