-- georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
For reputation to have a single well defined value it is necessary but not sufficient that there be a market in reputations; it must be a COMMODITIZED market.
James A. Donald:
Something has a single well defined value to its possessor without any need for it to be commoditized.
georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
We're not disagreeing. By a "single" value I meant a universally agreed upon value.
Strictly speaking, nothing has a single universally agreed value, not even a single universally agreed exchange value, though commodity goods come close. Exchange value is a discovery process, which can never be entirely completed. Our main interest in reputations is that the value of someone's reputation will stop them from doing bad things. For example an auctioneer with a reasonable nym on ebay will get about six percent better prices in auctions than someone with a crappy nym. If one regularly auctions stuff, that is worth serious money. Now reflect that if someone has a good established name on ebay he can sell it, which is why most sellers do not use true names. Of course the buyer, having paid serious money for the name, will usually continue to behave as well as the person who earned the reputation. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG YpkuiCiQKlQNtG6KCw8TrfRj0dRYxgS6RmoIHl44 45BtPAvKM5c1B3GhThLZN0NSLAVL5uag5zYdRmrw3