We believe that the act of giving (participatory contribution) is the fundamental key to flourishing at the personal, economic, and societal levels.

On the personal level, we find meaning and dignity as individuals in the act of giving — it is what humanizes us. An individual forms bonds of community only when they give of their time, their attention, their resources, or their labor. When we give, we both assert our own dignity (see what I have to give!) and our interdependence — our desire to be in community, our capacity to love.

A community (and a society) is healthy when its members can engage in mutual giving; it falls apart when their relations become instead transactional — characterized by mutual taking.

The act of giving is the core driver of productivity. Adam Smith famously recognized this, calling the collaborative effort of laborers — their mutual giving — the “division of labor,” and showing that it is the source of all economic growth. The collaboration of differently talented laborers is the engine of productivity — it is what takes capital and multiplies it manifold. For this reason, we believe that a good society is one that invests in human capital; that is, it focuses on getting resources into the hands of givers of all kinds, training them effectively, and motivating them to give.

When we reward participatory contribution and disincentivize hoarding, we not only boost productivity — we also naturally redistribute wealth. Excess, sprawl, and waste are all byproducts of a culture oriented towards taking. The act of giving is inherently redistributive and anti-waste — it is relinquishing what you don’t need, to be repurposed into value for the receiver. Giving is also inherently oriented inwards towards community rather than out and away from it, so it naturally drives robustness rather than excess, density rather than sprawl. If we want fundamental solutions to issues like climate change, income inequality, or housing shortages, we have to re-orient our thinking away from taking and towards giving.

Because mutual giving is both generative and redistributive, a society which has mastered giving is one which constantly rebalances and replenishes itself — it naturally thrives.

Not all acts of giving are equal. For example, giving is better when it is free, and worse when it is coerced. Or, if you’re good at math and bad at cooking, it’s probably better that you give to your community as an accountant than as a chef.

We see four fundamental metrics by which giving can be measured: free, active, valued, and effective. An action or policy is more contributist if it is better on one of these metrics, and it is less contributist if it is worse. The better an act of giving is by any of these metrics, the better it is both for the individual and for society.

Of course, no person, organization, or policy is ever perfect. And sometimes we have to weigh an improvement in one area against a sacrifice in another. We strongly believe in rich debate and passionate disagreement about what makes for better action or policy. The competition of ideas is at the root of reflection and improvement. What’s important is not that we agree on everything, but that we are aligned on our goals and our metrics — that we are working towards the same ideal.

Contributism centers around the belief that the right to give is a core human right. This is because, when a person is enabled to become a contributing member of their community, they not only actualize themselves — they also improve the well-being of their entire human network.

But the inverse is also true — one of the greatest dangers to any social system is when it cannot properly integrate its members, when it does not adequately provide everyone with the right to give.

If we want to curtail extremism and polarization,
If we want to reduce substance abuse and property crime,
If we want immigrants to integrate effectively into our communities,
If we want to reduce social media use and revitalize in-person connection,
If we want to empower people to find jobs, communities to raise children, creatives to enrich us,
We have to target root causes by providing individuals with the resources, opportunity, training, and incentives to integrate into their communities — we have to give them the right to give.

Hoarding is the act of locking resources out of productive use, to bolster one’s own wealth and security at the detriment of the community. Hoarding is harmful economically because it freezes productivity, and it is harmful socially because it isolates us from one another — it makes us less dependent on one another, and it dehumanizes us. Perversely, the more isolated we get, the more necessary hoarding feels, because we don’t have a society that we trust to support our needs.

Leeching is the act of taking from a community with no effort to give to it in return. To be clear, there are many ways to give, and not all giving can be understood in terms of capital. But all giving is generative, which is the secret to how communities and societies replenish themselves. Leeching is not generative; it simply drains resources, until the community ultimately runs dry. And though the leech can make temporary material gains, they can’t flourish. Leeching actually makes us feel worse inside, because it makes us distrustful of others and more emotionally isolated.

There is hoarding and leeching on both the left and on the right, and they cause harm wherever they show up. Billionaires are perhaps the greatest hoarders and leeches, but these tendencies are not limited to any one group: we condemn them when we see them in both landlords and squatters, in NIMBYs and technoliberals, in police unions and teacher’s unions, in petty and white collar criminals, in capitalists and socialists.

We believe that good culture and policy not only incentivizes giving, but also actively disincentivizes both hoarding and leeching.