Me and Grace woofing in Norway. Photo by Per-Arne Ytterman.

The other day a friend emailed me to tell me about Mark Boyle. His big message is that we need to reconnect…with each other, with the Earth, with ourselves.

He comes at this message from the perspective of money and he’s become known as the Moneyless Man…he even wrote a book about his year-long experiment of living without money.

He coined the term freeconomy, meaning giving away things for free for the love of it. He started a web site, Just for the Love of It, which is the center of the freeconomy community. There people list the skills, tools, and offerings they’re willing to share for free and search for things they’re looking for.

For instance, do you need a skill saw for that home improvement project you started weeks ago? Log on, search for a skill saw, and find someone in your neighborhood with a saw to lend. Or maybe you’ve wanted a massage for months and haven’t had the cash to pay for one? Search for a masseuse.

So does this really work? It did for Boyle…that’s how he lived without money for a year. But even within that experiment, he didn’t have everything given to him. He traded his skills for accommodation, for one thing. However, money didn’t change hands

I lurked in the forums to see what the community is saying. Some argue that trading or bartering for things counts as an exchange and that means it isn’t really free. Others say if it doesn’t involve exchanging money, it counts. It’s an interesting debate.

I’ve dabbled in this world a bit…on my trip to Europe I stayed for free for all but two weeks of my trip. At several places I traded skills like cooking, painting, and gardening for my accommodation. At a few places I stayed without any kind of trade.

Now that I’m back, I’ve traded intuitive readings for haircuts and a house-sit for accommodation. People have gifted me items I need. It’s great when it’s a win-win situation and I think moving in this direction is part of reconceiving the dream.

Boyle is onto something by encouraging us to move away from money. How that will work in the grand sceme, I’m not so sure; but capitalism certainly isn’t going to get us there.

Boyle says, “Money is a symptom and a perpetrator of the illusion of separation.” I agree.

We don’t know the farmer who grew our food. Even if we shop at farmer’s markets, it’s often not the actual farmer who sells us our produce (although I did have the pleasure of establishing relationships with farmers like Penny of Rose Lane Farm and Erica of Nunez Farm when I lived in Concord). When we shop at a grocery store, we don’t know the person who pulled our carrots out of the ground or baked our bread.

Taking it a step further, think about buying shoes, computers, or appliances. Hundreds of people worked to bring our iPhones, Doc Martens, and Maytags to us. Factory workers, truck drivers, stockers, salespeople, vice presidents, administrative assistants, and managers of all kinds were involved. We’re so far removed from contact with these people we have no idea how our purchases affect their lives. And that means we don’t really know how these purchases affect our lives.

I found a lot to like in Boyle’s recent talk at the Bank of Idea in London.

Here you can see part two and three, the ones I found most interesting. See what you think of Boyle’s ideas.

And answer me this: have you ever tried living without money? Do you do regular trades or bartering? Do you think this could work as a new economy?