Lessons from a Monk and a Robot: Exchanges for Goods and Services

Hey y’all, Evren here :) 

We are approaching the end of our second fiscal year as Groundfire, and I while I already put together a Financial Accountability page on our website back in November I completely forgot to press ‘Publish’ on this post. Is this post a requirement? No, but that seems like an unhelpfully low bar, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the logistical side of what we do, as is often the case. 

Our values (both as Groundfire, and individually) include integrity, accessibility, sustainability, transparency, and relationality. So, it would feel rather hypocritical to not practice these values by making visible how we engage with money, especially within the context of a colonial and capitalist system where our existence as a practice was contingent on becoming a corporation. 

For a little bit of background, I started making my finances from private practice available on my website from the start in 2020, and I did so long before I had words for why I felt it was important. I am still working on words of my own, but I found that Becky Chambers wrote some excellent words on the topic into the Monk and Robot series. Rather than try to reinvent this wheel, I thought I’d honour it as an excerpt and an illustration of how I am (and we are) trying to grapple with money as the method for acknowledging the exchange of goods and services under Capitalism.

(Also as a general note: definitely encourage checking out the Monk and Robot series!)

“They’re pebs, and the accounts they’re coming from.” This elicited no response from Mosscap. “It’s a way of tracking exchanges of goods and services.”

“Oh!” Mosscap said. It looked at the paper with interest. “This is…money?”

“No,” Dex said quickly. They didn’t know a ton about money, but they knew enough about the concept from their days in school to reject the comparison. “Well… I mean, it is a sort of payment, I guess, but it’s not… what’s the word… y’know, capital.” They ran a hand through their hair. They’d never had to explain pebs before. “Okay. anytime you receive anything that involves some sort of craft or work or labor or whatever from someone else, you give them pebs in exchange. So let’s say you start out with zero pebs.”

“Which is true, for me.”

“Yes. Let’s also say you go to a farmer and get an apple, and let’s say that’s worth one peb to you.”

”What would I do with an apple?”

”Just pretend you can eat apples.”

”All right.”

”Okay. You take the apple, and you give the farmer one peb.”

”How?” Mosscap asked.

”I’ll explain later,” Dex said. “Stick with the farmer for now.”

”If you say so.” Mosscap’s eyes shifted in thought. “I currently have one hypothetical apple and negative-one hypothetical pebs.”

“Right. The farmer’s work has benefited you, so now you need to provide something to benefit someone else.”

“To the farmer, you mean.”

“No.” Dex tried to explain. “It can be to the farmer, if you provide something the farmer wants. But exchanging pebs isn’t about bartering. It’s about benefit. You are a part of the community, and the farmer doing something for you means that they are, effectively, doing something for the group. So you’ve got your negative-one-peb balance now. You’ve got to fill that up. Let’s say you’re… I don’t know. A musician. You go play some music in a town square, and five people come to listen. They now give you some pebs. If they each give you two pebs, now you’ve got nine pebs, which you can exchange for other things. Make sense?”

“I believe so,” Mosscap said. “You’re saying that instead of a system of currency that tracks individual trade, you have one that facilitates exchange through the community. Because… all exchange benefits the community as a whole?”

“Exactly.”

“Do people give you pebs for tea?”

“Yes.”

“And then you give them pebs for…”

“Food, or supplies, or whatever.”

Mosscap’s head whirred softly. “The farmer feeds the musician, who brings music to the village.” It paused, whirring growing louder. “The technician who took a break to enjoy the music now has the energy to go fix the communications tower. The communications tower enables the meteorologist to deliver the weather report, which helps the farmer grow more apples. I see.” The robot nodded. “And I’m not penalized for the debt I incurred at the start?”

“Absolutely not,” Dex said firmly. “We don’t… we don’t do that. Or we don’t do that anymore, I guess.” Gods around, history class was a long time ago. “Nobody should be barred from necessities or comforts just because they don’t have the right number next to their name.” As they said this, they thought of their unease back at the hot spring—the feeling that had arisen at the thought they hadn’t earned this. The mismatch between these sentiments itched at them. They nudged it aside to deal with later.

Mosscap nodded again at their explanation. “But if there’s no penalty for debt, what’s to stop you from taking without giving back?”

“It’s a bad feeling,” Dex said. “Everybody has a negative balance from time to time, for lots of reasons. That’s fine. That’s part of the ebb and flow. But if someone had a huge negative… well, that says they need help. Maybe they’re sick. Or stuck. Maybe they’ve got something going on at home. Or maybe it’s just one of those times when they need other people to carry them for a while. That’s okay. Everybody ends up there sometimes. If I saw a friend’s balance that it was way in the red, I’d make a point of checking in.”

“You can see other people’s balances?”

“Yeah, of course. It’s all public.”

“Does that not get competitive?”

Dex squinted. “Why would it?”

Mosscap stared at Dex in silence for a moment, seemingly surprised at this but not elaborating as to why. It shrugged, then pointed at the paper in Dex’s hands. “So, these…”

“Are the pebs people gave you for helping them out.” Dex handed the paper back.

…

“Because the point of a peb exchange is to acknowledge someone’s labor and thank them for what they bring to the community. They didn’t give you thirty-eight pebs because they want you to go out and spend them. They gave you thirty-eight pebs because your work is as important as anybody else’s….”

…

Mosscap absorbed that. ”Just to be clear,” it said after a moment. “Pebs are a way to acknowledge mutual benefit within your society. Is that a fair way to put it?”

“Yeah, that works.”

“So… by giving me pebs, are they saying I’m part of your society as well?”

Dex smiled. “Yeah, in essence.”

—Monk & Robot (2025, pp. 183-189)

I hope Dex and Mosscap’s exchange offers you a welcome alternative to thinking and talking about what the exchange of money for goods and services might look like and mean. It may not be a perfect one-to-one—we do live in a capitalist and colonial society—but it’s far more aligned than many I have come across.

So, in the interest of making our balances and processes public, it may take me some time to finalize our visible balance, but I will update them as updates become available (our fiscal year ends May 31st, but I usually don’t get the finalized numbers until November). If you have questions or are curious about what we’ve been trying out, how, and what we’ve noticed, you are welcome to ask via our contact form and I’ll do my best to respond as quickly and accurately as I can.

In solidarity,

Ev (and the Groundfire team)