Re: [ox-en] There is no such thing as "equal exchange" - respect instead of money
- From: Stefan Noack <noackstefan googlemail.com>
- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 10:05:25 +0100
Hi,
However, I have a fundamental issue: can trust really be quantified, and
once however imperfectly quantified, doesn't it then automatically generate
self-interested behavior?
No, it cannot. That's why I suggested to drop the concept of quantification.
Peer to peer money generates less selfish behaviour than classic money, but
trust metrics generate more selfish behaviour than would naturally occus. I
think this is an important dilemma, and it makes me a sceptic.
For example, when Omydiar started the O-Net network, where people could give
each other trust points, the whole environment was contaminated by people
gaming the system, so they could have more trust points (and get the honey
pot of the Omydyar Foundation)
"Trust points" is something that seems self-contradicting to me. Trust
is always relative. If person A gets trust from B the value of that
trust cannot be quantified by any of them. Of course. B could quantify
how good the trust in A is but those values can _never_ be summed up
to a value that appers as a "score" of A.
However, in the system that I described you do not get a score, just a
collection of respect. If you request something from someone else,
that person can check your "tree of respect" (whom you got respect
from, and where they got respect from and so on) and can decide to
accept or deny your request based on his personal standarts.
Note that the system does not need _any_ external or central
controlling instance. No one must control the system, you just need
some infrastructure that allows you to validate certificates.
I dreamt of another example of what this system could do. Imagine
people need something no one alone can accomplish, like: public
transport. So some of them start an organisation, they start with one
bus and transport people. Those people now can send them certificates
od respect, and all those who think public transport is good and the
new organisation is doing a good job, also do that. now the
organization is quite popular. someone who could drive a bus would
really like to work for them because doing so would get him great
respect. that the value is so high is not written down somewhere. it's
just a consequence of the fact that so many people like using the
public transport system he works for. also someone who makes cars,
trains and stuff like that would give them new ressources just because
he believes that giving vehicles to public transport gives him more
respect. again - this is not a value that is written down somewhere.
it's just the belief in the fact that if the car manufacturer goes to
the one who gives him ressources for making the cars would like to
support him because he also likes public transport. and now imagine:
if you want to use the bus, you can use it as often as you like. the
bus company even encourages to do so because it shows that they do a
good job. and the best thing is that using public transport would be
available to everyone _without_ any kind of state support that it has
now (at least in germany)
in fact we could start the respect based system right now. we just
need some little infrastructure and some software that allows us to
give away certificates of respect. A way to use templates would be
cool, so that if you serve the same thing to many people they can use
the template so that if someone looks at your certificates does not
have to read through thousands of custom certificates. so if someone
does you a favor, ask him if he wants a "certificate of respect" from
you and start going! if enough people know the system the magic should
happen: people giving because they think it's good to give and believe
that enough others think that too.
Stefan
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