I am sad I missed yesterdaybs call! But Ibm delighted this topic was discussed. Ibm a big fan of the story that Brian told - my favorite version is from David Graeber [1]. I also agree with the implications for designing an accounting scheme. I have only one point to add. To summarize the notes, there are two revelations arising from the vignette: - Money isnbt (quite) a universal medium of exchange - Exchange often involves a residual social relationship These lead to the two suggestions about how to proceed: 1. First begin with a bcreditb mechanism, with three features: a. Issuable: you can grant someone a credit/quota for some storage b. Redeemable: if you have a credit, you can use it to store some data c. Visible: a user should know whether he has a credit or not (public visibility is useful too) 2. Postpone decisions about balance and reciprocity (economic policy), as they are secondary. So thatbs my summary of what you discussed, based on the scribebs notes (but please point out if I interpreted this wrong). The point I want to add is simple in comparison to what you already covered. It follows as a corollary from the above. You should also prioritize an additional feature: d. Transferable: there should be a way to split off some of your storage quota and dedicate it to someone else. Obviously this is possible when Alice gives Bob her root cap. But finer grained delegation is preferable. [alternate story ending]b&. After dinner, Grandma does the dishes herself while the granchildren go next door to and clean all the viruses off Grandmabs neighborbs computer. Therebs ice cream for them when they return. The corollary is that exchange can act along transitive links of social relationships. bTransferableb is the only required mechanism for this to work within a credit/quota system. It doesnbt require a reciprocation policy, or even any particular explanation for the motivation behind the transfer. [1]. David Graeber. 2011. Debt: The First 5000 Years. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1933633867 -- Andrew Miller _______________________________________________ tahoe-dev mailing list tahoe-dev@tahoe-lafs.org https://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE