Will Ruddick

Econo-optimist - ❤️ Common Pooled Resources & Regenerative Agriculture🌱 - Founder: @grassecon (a/yeye)

[Will Ruddick @wor]

🌱 Grassroots Economics - Book Published!🌱

After years of learning, listening, and working alongside incredible communities, I’m thrilled to share Grassroots Economics: Reflection and Practice—a book exploring how we can rebuild trust, pool commitments, and create resilient economies from the ground up.

This journey has been made possible by the generosity of countless teachers, communities, and supporters. Special thanks to Kevin Owocki (https://t.co/tOB2eGuo6y & Gitcoin) and Béla & Ellen Hatvany (Mustardseed Trust) for believing in this work.

📖 Read more and download the book here: https://t.co/niNlq14BM5

[Will Ruddick @wor]

Who is in Your Camembert d’Attention?
Lately I’ve been thinking about the limits of my own attention.

How many people can I truly care for? How many collaborations can I nurture deeply? How many commitments can I steward well?

Herbert Simon wrote that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” I feel it.

My limit is not only how much information I can receive, but how much care, response, and meaning I can actually give.

So I’ve been imagining my social world as a round of Camembert.

I am not the whole wheel of cheese. I occupy a small wedge.

At the heart of that wedge, le cœur du camembert, is family. Then close friends. Then deep collaborators. Then trusted partners. Then community members. Then acquaintances. The further out the wedge expands, the more people it can hold, but the less attention each person can realistically receive.

The layers are not walls. Family, friendship, work, and collaboration overlap. And everyone else has their own wedge too. Where our wedges overlap, relationships form. Where many wedges overlap, communities and organizations emerge.

This helps me think about @grassEcon , partnerships, and Commitment Pools. Stewardship is not infinite attention. It is choosing what to recognize, what to value, what to limit, and what can safely flow.

Abundance, for me, is not infinite individual attention, but what becomes possible when our limited wedges overlap and our pooled attention can care, notice, remember, and build more than any one of us could alone.

My task is not to become the whole Camembert (phew).

It is to steward my little wedge with care, humility, love, gratitude, and attention.

[Will Ruddick @wor]

@0xl3th3 @devanshmehta Sounds like the aid industry.

[Will Ruddick @wor]

I recently discovered that I am a Yui Otaku.

Yui (結) is an old Japanese word for mutual aid and cooperation. The character itself means "tying threads together."

Otaku means a geek, nerd, or someone joyfully obsessed with a subject.

So a Yui Otaku is someone who geeks out on cooperation.

We get excited about things like village labor circles, fungal networks, community currencies, cooperative games, commons governance, rotating savings groups, commitment pools, coral reefs, open source projects, and all the strange ways living systems learn to coordinate.

Most people see transactions.

We see relationships.

Most people see competition.

We see symbiosis.

Most people see economics.

We see promises moving through networks.

Some people collect anime figurines.

I collect examples of multilateral settlement in forests.

If any of this sounds familiar, you might be a Yui Otaku too.

Let's compare notes and geek out together. 🌱🍄🕸️🤓

[Will Ruddick @wor]

@evaninsky Money=Currency=National Currency=$

As far as most folks are concerned

[Will Ruddick @wor]

@evaninsky Don't worry. There are many other cute metaphors for resource coordination that don’t evoke currencies.

I bet you can find some.

Lemme know if you need help.

[Will Ruddick @wor]

@elonmusk Best

[Will Ruddick @wor]

🥳🥳🥳

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Interesting

[Will Ruddick @wor]

@f1ypa2rn substack works for longer messages if you want them public. Or DM me here

[Will Ruddick @wor]

What is a gift? I have been rereading Robin Wall Kimmerer with gratitude, especially The Serviceberry, and I keep returning to one question: What is a gift?

Part of me still hears “gift” as a wrapped package under a tree. No invoice. No repayment schedule. Nothing owed. Santa does not usually ask you to weed the neighbor’s maize field in March.

But that kind of “free gift” is very different from the gift economies Kimmerer, Mauss, and many living traditions point toward.

A free gift, a one-off barter, and a spot cash payment can all do the same thing structurally: they can settle the relationship. I give. You receive. Or I pay. You deliver. Nothing remains owed.

That is not necessarily bad. It just does not, by itself, build ongoing trust.

The reciprocal commons are different. In traditions like Mweria in Kenya, a household may receive help from the circle, and later that household helps others in the circle. The return does not always go back to the original giver. It returns to the living relationship.

@DamarisNjambiN2 recently shared another image with me from Kikuyu: kiheo, the gift carried in a kiondo basket when visiting someone’s home. When you leave, the host fills the basket with another kiheo. The basket does not go home empty.

That helped me see the distinction more clearly.

Some gifts end with “thank you.”
Other gifts begin a cycle.

So I am no longer asking only, “What is a gift economy?”

I am asking:
When does the basket come back full?

N.B. Commitment pooling was inspired by the top-right quadrant (reciprocal commons). But it is a protocol, not a virtue. Depending on governance and use, it can support any quadrant.

[Will Ruddick @wor]

interested to see it, especially how you’ve used them in practice or expect to.

I find commitments of reputation fascinating because they sit in an awkward place. They can look like certificates, soulbound NFTs, attestations, reports, references, CVs, credit scores, access passes, or proof of past care. But the moment they move out of the context where the act was understood, something can get lost.

So my main questions are practical: What did the proof help someone do? Who trusted it? Who refused it? Did it open access to resources? Did it create weird incentives? Did people actually know how to use it?

I’m less interested in whether the category is theoretically clean, and more interested in the pattern: when does proof of a past act become useful memory, and when does it become a brittle badge?

[Will Ruddick @wor]

Thank you. Though I'd say I haven't built anything so much as tried to describe patterns that seem to already exist.

The image that comes to mind is a river valley. I didn't create the valley. The water flows where it does because of contours shaped by ancient rains, glaciers, geology, and time. At best, I'm trying to notice and describe those contours.

In that sense, commitment pools are not a solution I invented but a way of seeing recurring patterns of coordination, obligation, exchange, reputation, and care that appear across many contexts.

I share your concern about monetary framing. One of the things I'm exploring is whether commitments can help us see beyond what money can measure, toward the broader landscape of gifts, reputation, reciprocity, trust, and relationships that have always existed but are often rendered invisible by monetary systems.

[Will Ruddick @wor]

The smell of semen....

🚨A Note to the Reader. Before proceeding, I owe an apology to a portion of humanity. This essay assumes familiarity with a particular odor commonly associated with human semen. If you have never encountered this smell, cannot recall it, or belong to the substantial minority of people whose olfactory receptors do not readily detect it, parts of this article may seem oddly specific or entirely fictional.

Please be assured that neither the title nor the central premise is metaphorical.

Many plants, fungi, and biological materials genuinely produce scents that numerous people describe as remarkably similar to the smell of semen. This observation has generated confusion, embarrassment, horticultural debates, and countless awkward walks beneath flowering trees.

Should this be your first exposure to the phenomenon, I apologize in advance.

Should you already know exactly what I am talking about, I apologize for reminding you.

...
This strange biological fact sent me down an unexpected path involving chemistry, language, signaling, evolution, and eventually why I became more interested in commitment pooling than currency.

Full article: The Smell of Semen: The Language of Life (on will ruddick dot substack dot com)

[Will Ruddick @wor]

Subscription as Commitment: To subscribe originally meant to write one’s name underneath something, to assent, to bind oneself, to promise a contribution.

I love that. A subscription is a name placed beneath the work so it can keep standing.

When someone subscribes to my writing, especially as a paid subscriber, something happens. A little trust enters the room.

It says: I have received something from this work. I want it to continue. I am willing to help carry it.

Much of what I make is shared openly: books, software, games, field notes, protocols, papers, tools, experiments, mistakes, revisions, and the occasional sentence that should probably have been a diagram.

But open does not mean weightless.

Open work still needs food, rent, servers, legal care, community visits, translation, listening, maintenance, writing, debugging, and courage.

Out of the thousands of people who subscribe, read the books, play the games, and use the materials, only a handful become paid subscribers. That is okay. Truly. I want the work to stay open enough that people can use it even when money is scarce.

Comments, field stories, translations, testing, careful disagreement, and quiet practice also feed the work.

And because paid subscriptions are few, each one carries a lot. They help keep the door open for many others.

So to everyone who subscribes, comments, restacks, sends personal messages, tests tools, shares stories, or tells me exactly where this work touched your life: thank you.

This is not just me writing into the glowing cave of the internet. There is a community of practice here.

My prayer is that one day we can all subscribe to each other more beautifully: artists, farmers, coders, caregivers, teachers, healers, stewards, and communities supporting the people whose work supports life.

Until then, this little subscription is already a beginning.

A small promise. A small basket.
A small flash of mutual recognition.

And when I see your names, comments, messages, and subscriptions arrive, the basket comes back full.

Please subscribe if you can.

(X won't like me sharing this but you can subscribe at ...

will ruddick at sub stack dot com)

[Will Ruddick @wor]

Yes, agreed. I think this is why I’m trying to move away from the word “gift” doing so much work.

I’m less interested in settling the perfect definition, and more interested in what can be observed: what was offered, what was remembered, what traveled, what got repaired, and what pattern repeated.

I’d also be careful saying reputation can’t travel. It can be said to 'travels' through stories, kinship, witnesses, referrals, institutions, and now protocols. It just doesn’t travel cleanly or universally.

That’s why commitment pooling is useful to me. It doesn’t require “gift” or “reputation” to be pure concepts. It gives me a way to work with the actual patterns as they move between trust, settlement, credit, and reciprocity.

[Will Ruddick @wor]

Borrowing Aude Peronne 's desk … sur le sol la cuisine

[Will Ruddick @wor]

@mbauwens Of Kimmerer's book " Bud finds her gift" is a lovely children's book.l the Serviceberry has a bit more to it, and Braiding Sweetgrass is best.

Albeit the English term "gift" is too overused and under nuanced for me.

[Will Ruddick @wor]

I think this is where the word “gift” keeps slipping between meanings.

A gift held in memory can absolutely exist outside a formal accounting system. I agree with that. But it is still not the same as a “free gift” with no expectation, no return path, and no continuing relationship.

So I’m trying to let go of maxims like “a real gift is never accounted for” or “if it is accounted for, it is no longer a gift.” Those feel too clean for what actually happens.

Sometimes the “accounting” is not a unit. It is memory. It is reputation. It is whether people show up again. It is whether the basket comes back full. It is whether the giver is still well.

The ambiguity is the whole issue for me. A gift can be a free release, a gesture of grace, a reciprocal obligation, a commons practice, or a living cycle of return. I don’t want to force all of those into one definition. I want to continue to ask what kind of gift we are talking about, and what relationship remains afterward.

[Will Ruddick @wor]

@2ctv Specifically?

[Will Ruddick @wor]

🌱 Grassroots Economics - Book Published!🌱

After years of learning, listening, and working alongside incredible communities, I’m thrilled to share Grassroots Economics: Reflection and Practice—a book exploring how we can rebuild trust, pool commitments, and create resilient economies from the ground up.

This journey has been made possible by the generosity of countless teachers, communities, and supporters. Special thanks to Kevin Owocki (https://t.co/tOB2eGuo6y & Gitcoin) and Béla & Ellen Hatvany (Mustardseed Trust) for believing in this work.

📖 Read more and download the book here: https://t.co/niNlq14BM5

[Will Ruddick @wor]

@2ctv @grassEcon What level have you reached?

[Will Ruddick @wor]

I’m excited to share Cellular, a new open-source puzzle and arcade game from @grassEcon .

Cellular is a game about building living circuits of resource flow.

Each cell has something it produces, something it needs, and limits on what it can hold. Place cells near the right neighbors, and resources begin to move. Needs are met. Cells glow. Circuits come alive.

Can you create trustworthy circulation?

Can flow meet real needs? Can pressure be reduced? Can strained parts of the network be repaired?

For me, Cellular is a small playable model of commitment pooling: what can enter, how it is valued, how much can safely move, and how exchange settles.

It is an experiment in learning economic coordination through play.

Please play it, break it, and help improve it!