Our womens committee for our local started a Tool Library for apprentices. Everything from our required tool list items to boots to PPE. It’s been very successful. As apprentices “grow up” they tend to become contributors themselves. It’s been great to watch in action. It’s also become a sort of central hub for our retirees and other committees as well as the general membership. It may not be an economy, but it’s definitely a very doable and positive community building endeavor.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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Something like this should be highly localized. As much as I'm in on the practice, I've seen way too many videos of consumers rushing into Walmart stacking up everything they can on Black Friday. We need to be able to create a culture where people share a responsibility of not just sharing, but returning.
Great to see Andrewism out here making a solid case though.
Once communities realize scarcity isn’t an issue, the initial rush tends to subside and it becomes sustainable. That’s generally just the initial capitalist trauma panic. People become way more relaxed and selective and in turn start to donate and engage when they can.
There is a series of podcast episodes by SrslyWrong about Library Socialism. It is highly recommended!
one of the problem with this is I havent see one that is well functioning.
The usual problem is that trying that usually makes capitalists attack (more than usual), which forces it to waste resources on defense.
The biggest issue is maintenance on tools for sustainability of the project. In a perfect world, the library economy would be combined with communal ownership of resources to be able to readily provide what is needed to repair or replace tools and keep things running efficiently.
The issue currently is that capitalist hegemony is predicted on restricting ready access to resources through private ownership. They are fundamentally opposed. Having things be reparable and the access to parts doesn't align with the profit incentive. This forces isolated cases of a library economy trying to form will always be disadvantaged by the overarching system by operating at a permanent loss unless they can maintain control of a substantial supply chain to supplement costs.
So, not even considering capitalist political retaliation, it would be starting off on the back foot right out of the gate from an economic position.
unless they can maintain control of a substantial supply chain to supplement costs.
Yes, the library economy concept is focused on the demand-side aspects. It can work in many contexts, even today, with obvious limitations. It works best when the means of production are controlled by the masses.