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

[georgemw at speakeasy.net]

On 3 Dec 2001, at 13:44, Ken Brown wrote:

> All the discussion about certificates of speaking Navajo or whatever are
> slightly beside the point. If personal reputation, as such, has a market
> value it isn't the money you'd get by selling the reputation, because as
> everyone else already pointed out, if you could sell it, it wouldn't
> really be a reputation. 

Well, I thought so, but apparently not everyone does, since there's
been a certain amount of discussion as to whether a nym might be
sold (with associated reputation) and if so how it might be 
accomplished. 

>The market value of a personal reputation is the
> extra money you could get by selling something else, backed by that
> reputation.
> 

OK, I like this as the basis of the value of a repuation  in the 
specific context of an entity that sells goods and services.
I think the concept of reputation in the sense of, say, something
that helps you identify posts worth reading is sufficiently
different as to merit separate discussion. But back to your
above statement. Obviously the value of the rep isn't the
extra you get from a single transaction.  Does it seem reasonable 
to say that  the total value of the rep should be the total
annual extra you get from having the rep times some constant?
I think technically it should be the discounted future value stream,
but I think that works out to be pretty much the same thing.  

George