It’s a way for SWPLs to copy the ecology of urban poor blacks with their complex networks of favors that make it very hard to get up and out (i.e. leave the ghetto and achieve the markers of whitish middle class consumption-based success) without losing their precious status points that are what they trade in preferentially to icky, icky money.
It’s also about creeping proletarianization, in which the destruction of capital and franklin-level business ownership by regulation and cronyism are glossed over by “barter economies” and “sharing systems” that are supposed to make up for the reduced resource access and economic decline.
I’ve recently discovered this in our homeschooling group. We are beginning to trade “lessons”. Someone is giving free dance lessons, so another feels inclined to bring snacks, so another offers free babysitting, and another free music lessons. It is wonderful, feels like servanthood and generosity.
Everyone has that friend who is aces at this…
But failing that, if we’re forever looking for community, perhaps this is one way people are trying to fill that hunger?
I’d agree with you from a marxist perspective, so to speak, but I don’t really see a choice for myself personally. I wouldn’t dismiss it wholehandedly either, but I’d be curious to hear a bit more from you on that topic.