Moving beyond "Reputation"--the Market View of Reality

[jamesd at echeque.com]

    --
georgemw at 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 at 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