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From Gig to Give: Rethinking Work in a Post-Growth, FLOSS-Based Society

Work isn't dying. It's decentralizing, decoupling, and returning to meaning.

The gig economy revealed something important: work doesn’t have to be a 9-to-5 grind. It can be modular, flexible, even joyful — if it's rooted in respect, fairness, and shared value.

But the first iteration got it wrong. It paired flexibility with precarity, outsourced responsibility, and locked value behind platforms.

What if we kept what worked — and discarded what didn’t?

In the emerging post-growth economy, we’re not chasing endless consumption. We’ve hit planetary limits. But that doesn’t mean austerity or stagnation. It means less waste, more intention. Fewer products — but better ones. Made to last. Made to repair. Made to share.

And this requires a different relationship to work.

Gig Work, Done Right

A job, in this model, becomes a mission: Identify a need. Build a solution. Document it, release it, sustain it — or hand it off to the commons. Then move on. No hoarded IP, no proprietary lock-in, no career treadmill.

In this "give economy," you don’t climb a ladder — you seed forests.

FLOSS Is the Proof

Free/Libre Open Source Software — and increasingly, Hardware — shows that this isn’t utopian. It’s already happening. Entire operating systems, microchips, even production lines are being collaboratively built and continuously improved.

And if FLOSS can produce the most sophisticated tools ever built — why not everything else?

Repairable phones. Upgradeable laptops. Community-shared agricultural tools. Local energy systems that anyone can audit and improve.

This is not the logic of capital. It’s the logic of stewardship.

Work, Reimagined

In the post-growth world, work isn’t what you sell. It’s how you contribute. Your reputation is built on what you’ve helped create, not on what you’ve withheld. Value is not something you extract — it’s something you embed and pass on.

There will still be "gigs." But they’ll be driven by purpose, not desperation. This Future Is Already Growing

We see glimpses everywhere:

This isn’t a revolution. It’s a redirection.

Let’s build toward it — one gig at a time.

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