Gift economy

There was a pot luck (sp?) at work last Friday, and it got me thinking about a gift economy. (an economy with no exchange) The pot luck being a perfect example: entry into the system requires you bring one thing, it doesn't a certain type, shape or minimum value. Once in the system, you can take as much as you want from everything that was brought.

The equivalent would be some kind of community store, and bringing in an item would give you access to the store. If the communal store were to have enough item's to satisfy people's needs, we would need many more people contributing than a simple pot luck. And what stops a handful of bad apples from abusing the system? Once you start trying to figure out this nugget things get hairy fast. Employees would be needed to monitor the community store and to make sure people weren't just bringing in garbage. Who would the employees be? Anyone in the community could volunteer, perhaps, and maybe working a shift would count as a contribution to the store. How often would a person need to contribute? Once a week? Once a month? Once in their lifetime?

Perhaps there could be a share/use ratio, like p2p sites. And anyone who's ratio is within certain bounds is trusted to use the system to it's full extent. Anyone who hasn't contributed much in a while needs to contribute x number of goods to get back in good standing. Again more regulation, more problems arise. Maybe people are good enough that no such rules would be needed at all? It's hard to say.