What would you give a busker if you didn’t have any money?
Prompted by Mathew Taylor’s recent blog on the cultural life of the London Underground, I remembered an aspiring musician who told me that she always gave money to good buskers, because as a matter of principle we should support what we value, and because she feared she might be in the same position some day (she is now a vet).
But what do you do when you really like a busker’s music, want to support their endeavour, but find that you are genuinely out of change? A quick ask around the office led to ‘a kiss’ and ‘a smile’ as the main suggestions, while many spiritual traditions would suggest offering a prayer, or simply a heartfelt positive thought for the person’s wellbeing, which is surely worthwhile. But man cannot live on smiles, kisses and good vibes alone. There ought to be a more tangible non-monetary expression of regard.
What if you were to offer some nourishing thoughts or advice? You could write them your favourite quotation on a piece of paper and drop it in alongside the twenty pence pieces, or perhaps advise them on where to have lunch (Mooli’s would be my suggestion).
Sounds wildly unrealistic and impractical? Perhaps. But now imagine you walk past the same musician every day for several weeks so that you effectively enjoy hours of the fruits of their skill and time. How could you pay that back in kind? Perhaps you could help them improve their second language, fix a leaky tap, or cook some lemon rice.
Maybe. But at the end of the day, surely people want money – universal vouchers that give you the freedom to get whatever you want, rather than relying on the relatively limited set of whatever skills or products people around you can give?
Certainly money is the preferred form of exchanging value, but many argue that something vital about human meaning-making and social connectivity has been lost in the process. By mediating human contact, money lubricates the free exchange of skills and products, but also contaminates it.
A few years ago a friend hired a van and helped me to move flat in london, and in return I gave him some chess tuition. We didn’t haggle too much about the relative time, skill or value of what we exchanged, and seemed to sense it implicitly. On a large scale, you cannot build an economy on this sort of model, but at a local level, especially when money is tight, we need to consider ways of reviving this form of exchange.
Some communities are already doing so with the idea of time banking, and the classic expression of related forms of exchange is Avner Offer’s paper Between the Gift and the Market: The Economy of Regard, which is far too rich a tapeastry of ideas to summarise here, but one signature quotation of Offer’s might whet your appetite:
“Affluence breeds impatience, and impatience undermines wellbeing.”
So the next time you pass a busker doing their job well but don’t feel like reaching for your wallet, be patient, and consider what you might be able to offer each other.
Comments
4 Comments on What would you give a busker if you didn’t have any money?
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Michelle on
Tue, 17th Nov 2009 11:34 pm
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Jonathan Rowson on
Wed, 18th Nov 2009 10:56 am
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Adrian Short on
Wed, 18th Nov 2009 11:56 am
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Jonathan Rowson on
Wed, 18th Nov 2009 5:29 pm
A subway musician in NYC has a whole list of what people gave her that wasn’t money: http://www.sawlady.com/sawmemo.htm#Unusual things
She says she really likes the notes of appreciation people write and put in her donations box.
Thanks Michelle, scrolling down at that link the following jumped out at me:
“A lot of people feel sorry for buskers, thinking we perform on the street because we can’t get gigs elsewhere, but they’ve got it all wrong. We love the street. I have played with orchestras in big concert halls such as Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. But the subway is my preferred venue.”
I find it hard to believe that is the whole truth, but it makes me wonder how many street musicians are buskers by chance/necessity and how many by choice?
Jonathan,
There are numerous opportunities to enable richer social interactions around busking while also making it more economically rewarding for buskers.
I agree that while money is the default form of value exchange it isn’t the only one. That said, in-person financial transactions have a social component as well as an economic one. Dropping a coin into the busker’s box is socially different from buying a book online, or, for that matter, making an online donation to a charity. The act of paying the busker is visible both to the busker and to other passengers present. It may elicit a look, smile or verbal acknowledgement from the busker and may also encourage other passengers to pay through the subtle pressure of social proof.
Negotiating a barter exchange with a busker may be welcome but may also take more time than the transaction is worth when you include the opportunity cost of lost donations while the busker is chatting rather than performing.
Given that the London Underground buskers are already registered and regulated the best solution seems to be to issue them with Oyster card readers. With a single swipe of their card, passengers could pay a fixed amount (say, 50p) and have the option to pay more using multiple swipes. Without having to spend the time hunting around for change or suffer the cognitive load of deciding how much to pay, I would expect to see more payments with a higher total value. Such a system would also retain the visible social component of the transaction, giving evident proof that passengers value the busker’s performance and are prepared to pay for it to continue.
Given that all the buskers are registered and their pitches allocated in advance, it’d be fairly easy for LU to set up a “Who’s your busker?” website to allow passengers to buy MP3s, book private performances and leave comments/ratings/appreciations. Give passengers an easy QR Code to swipe on their mobile phone and they could jump straight to the web page for that busker — 3G/Wifi access in the tunnels permitting.
Many thanks Adrian. This is such a thought-provoking suggestion that I need to go and…think.
I will try to get back to you on this idea next week.
(esepcially like the idea that giving change produces a cognitive load problem).
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