Costnix: A Translation

(Kostnix is a tiny “shop” not unlike a thrift store, except for the unusually easy question of price! I have gotten a tea pot, book ends, a guide to flora and fauna of the alps, and a candle stick from its friendly, dusty little room. I have a hat, a book, and a busted (but probably still rescue-able) computer to drop off. The only rule is no more than three things per day to be taken. Here is my translation of their flyer. It might be comically communist, but it is a noble effort to think harder about what worth means. Here it is, for your enjoyment.)

A free shop is a space from which everyone may take along any object that they could use. To be able to use the objects is the single requirement to be allowed to take them along. “Use” can also be meant aesthetically, of course. Neither money nor any other sort of payment is asked, that is to say there is no exchange in any form whatsoever.

Conversely, everyone can bring by anything that they no longer need, but which could conceivably be of use to someone else. Thereby the objects perhaps lose their monetary worth (price), but not their utility. This is an attempt to question the capitalistic “worth” system and the logic of the market—and to circumvent it in some small way. A free shop should work against the consumptive, throw away society and further a more conscious interaction with our resources. It should cause less production, less throwing away, and less toil. Namely, those who take something from the free shop save themselves the money they would have otherwise spent for the object, and therefore they have saved themselves and the producer a piece of capitalistic labor. The long term goal is to imagine a basically different form of living together, whose principles are not profit and exploitation, but solidarity and neighborliness. The free shop can also be a communication point, for example through discussions, lectures, theater, bicycle repair help, storytelling…

http://umsonstladen.lnxnt.org/innsbruck/index.php