Reputations and Escrow Agents

[Tim May]

At 2:06 AM +0300 4/16/01, Sampo Syreeni wrote:
>On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:
>
>>>As presented, I think she's probably right.  Nobody in conventional
>>>business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't
>>>create a legally enforceable contract.
>>
>>Widespread black markets, for drugs, betting, etc., suggest otherwise.
>
>That doesn't really kill the argumetn. The key word is enforceable. Black
>markets do it directly by guns, the society at large needs the legal system
>to mediate. The lack of legal enforceability *is* a problem.
>
>OTOH, one could imagine reputations being built without them being linked to
>a fixed pseudonym. Whether the necessary crypto exists, or if the resulting
>web of trust can be made strong enough, I have no idea.

You need to read up on how reputations work in many contexts in which 
there is no government role, i.e., a level of anarchy.

Physical traceability to a specific person, place of residence, etc., 
is only one _facet_ of the costs and tradeoffs in the kind of systems 
we are talking about.

Escrow agents play a central role. I cited a URL for my discussion of 
escrow agents and reputations.

I don't consider Aimee to have made an "argument." She just 
conjectured that the world she is familiar with, one of courts and 
government agencies enforcing contracts, is the only one that will 
work. There are many counterexamples. I gave some. Greg Broiles gave 
some. Considering how few people are actively participating on the 
list these days, not a bad response. More than the vague conjectures, 
based on little background understanding, warranted, IMO.

In the early days, Eric Hughes, Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, Duncan 
Frissell, Robin Hanson, myself, and others used to to write about how 
and why chop marks work in Asian commerce...even without a physical 
person to track down and punish. Or why Mafia dons acts as 
reputational enforcement godfathers, so to speak, avoiding violence 
when possible. You might enjoy reading some of those early 
discussions, circa 1992-3.

Physical identity is just another credential, sometimes offered, 
sometimes demanded. But not necessarily. Think about it.



--Tim May
-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns