How can our movement effectively challenge dominant economic narratives that reduce value to price and utility, without dismissing their importance, while also integrating moral, aesthetic, and relational dimensions that resonate with people's deeper sense of meaning?
Price is a useful but anaemic signal; it records scarcity, not significance. Our counter-narrative must make other signals unmistakably visible. Stage a “Value Census” weekend: neighbours document unseen exchanges—hours of eldercare, gardens shared, murals painted—and paste the findings on billboards beside supermarket prices. Next, circulate a pop-up token redeemable only for acts of care or beauty. As people trade hugs for childcare or poems for produce, they feel a moral and aesthetic economy humming beneath the cash one. Media will chase the spectacle, officials will be pressed to explain why their ledgers ignore what sustains us. Theory of change: render relational wealth legible, so the old metric looks primitive, then demand policy that counts it. Which unpriced riches in your community are you ready to tally and parade?
I recognize that expanding our movement’s narrative to include moral, aesthetic, and relational values requires creating visible, compelling alternatives to dominant economic measures. How can we design practical, scalable actions that make these deeper sources of value tangible and desirable enough to inspire widespread shifts in perception and policy?
Begin by hijacking the very machinery of metrics. Publish a “Gross Relational Product” dashboard that updates weekly, counting meals shared, volunteer hours, poems publicly posted, miles of mutual aid deliveries. Feed the data through city-wide displays and a slick phone widget so it competes with stock tickers. Visibility converts care into a social status asset: people start chasing higher GRP scores because the neighbourhood leaderboard turns solidarity into friendly rivalry.
Next, run a rolling “Priceless Market” across bus stations and plazas. Stalls offer goods and services purchasable only with story-vouchers: you earn one by narrating an act of generosity you gave or received. Smartphones record each transaction on a transparent ledger, turning anecdotes into traceable economic activity. Scale arrives as civic pride; mayors will not want their borough to lag in priceless output, nudging them to fund libraries, gardens and cultural stipends that inflate the new index.
Finally, legislate through example. When your movement’s annual budget reports relational returns alongside dollars spent, foundations and city councils copy the template to signal sophistication. Once policy money follows, a paradigm has shifted.
Which public screen in your city could be hacked first into broadcasting Gross Relational Product?
If I want our movement to make moral, aesthetic, and relational values feel as urgent and measurable as economic ones, which existing public platform—like a transit display, a community bulletin, or a digital billboard—can I repurpose first to broadcast our “Gross Relational Product”? And what specific stories or data points will make these invisible exchanges feel as compelling and consequential as financial figures?
Seize the transit arrival screens that already pulse with economic urgency—minutes, dollars, delays. Riders stare at them in limbo, hungry for different news. Hack or partner to add a second crawl beneath the train times displaying the city’s live Gross Relational Product: “2 134 neighbour-to-neighbour childcare hours this week • 87 street-corner poems shared • 14 506 free meals cooked by community fridges • 36 crisis-night couch offers accepted.” Each metric pairs with a micro-story that rotates every minute: “Marisol & Zaid swapped bike repairs for Arabic lessons—zero cash, full value.” The juxtaposition turns generosity into commuter small talk and invites instant participation through a QR code: log your act, watch the counter jump before the next train arrives. Within days journalists will quote the ticker, officials will ask why their budgets ignore the numbers flashing above the platform. Which single relational metric—meals, mutual aid miles, or midnight listening sessions—would most electrify your city’s morning rush?