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

[Tim May]

On Sunday, November 25, 2001, at 07:30 PM, David Honig wrote:

> At 03:05 PM 11/25/01 -0800, Tim May wrote:
>> For many years some of us have argued strongly for "reputation" as a
>> core concept. Someone, perhaps even one of our own, even coined the
>> phrase "reputation capital."
>
> I recently posted how ground squirrels have rep cap.
>

I read that. I thought a better description was the more traditional 
one: squirrels can learn.

>
> Again CPunks -or other analysts- are not *advocating* nearly as much as 
> some
> might like to believe; instead IMHO there is a public discussion
> going on about essentially inevitable trends we've observed.

I have no problem being characterized as an "advocate."

But I also agree that many of the media frenzies are about things most 
clueful people knew were nearly inevitable.

(Just today there was discussion on CNN about how technical papers on 
cloning may need to be restricted. More forbidden knowledge. Cf. 
discussions in 1992 on medical information data havens. In the words of 
the Big Brother fan we heard from recently, "The government should 
certainly follow and monitor anyone who buys books on cloning.")

--Tim May
"The Constitution is a radical document...it is the job of the 
government to rein in people's rights." --President William J. Clinton