gift economy

gift economy (plural gift economies)

1. A traditional economy where valuable goods are not traded or sold, but rather given away, sometimes with the expectation that they (or goods of equivalent or higher value) will later be given back.
   • 1995 September, Richard Barbrook, Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology”, in Mute‎, volume 1, number 3, →ISSN:

     Community activists will increasingly use hypermedia to replace corporate capitalism and big government with a hi-tech ‘gift economy’ in which information is freely exchanged between participants.

• sharing economy