Your Quantified Prestige concept is definitely the most deeply thought-out model for a social credit system I’ve seen so far. This would be very interesting to experiment with, but, given the relative complexity of the mathematics (that is to say, being a bit above mainstream comprehension) I think there would need to be a strategy for isolating systemic phenomenon from social phenomenon in testing to see whether effects in practice are phenomenon of the mathematics or of the human participants. Are you familiar with Sensorica and their Open Value Network development? OVNs are the current popular strategy for social credit in modest scale groups in today’s P2P and Commons Transition community.
[from an earlier Reddit conversation]
Your concept of Prestige as a basis of digital goods economy could also apply to physical goods given the trends in production and their impact on the resource value of goods. While certain kinds of resources remain relatively scarce, the value of materials in the general spectrum used in mainstream goods is in a general decline as their acquisition become more automated and their potential recyclability increases. And so the market value of goods decreasingly depends on materials value–which is slowly trending towards nil–and increasingly on the value of design and brand. And this is reflected in the trend of divestment in the means of production among manufacturers, larger companies increasingly relying on contract production. As Bruce Sterling anticipates, the typical manufacture of the near future will not make anything but only manage on-line ‘spimes’ (the digital package of software defining the iterative design, production ‘recipe’, and use/performance history of goods) leaving production to local automated systems increasingly embedded and distributed in the infrastructure of built habitat as a public utility. And so all goods save materials and food commodities become, essentially, digital goods whose economics could be based on the same prestige-based (or as it’s more often called, social credit/capital) strategy you propose for digital goods.
Thanks for your very insightful comment on my Quantified Prestige system, Eric!
Thank you very much! What other social credit systems have you seen and evaluated already?
The complexity of the mathematics is probably necessary to make the system work. In reality, most end users won’t be exposed to the full complexity of it, but rather a minimal interface comparable to the Facebook “like” button. Full interaction with the mathematics would be an opt-in feature for advanced users.
Isolating systemic phenomena from social phenomena could be done by testing different versions of QP in one and the same community.
I haven’t heard about Open Value Networks, yet, but they are pretty much in line with my concept of Collective Intelligence Networks in my latest sci-fi world Netec:
What you said about applying QP to physical goods is perfectly in line with what I’ve already had in mind. Indeed, it may be the main driver of universal abundance in a QP-driven economy. Do you think this should be one of the main selling points of QP? I think it is! In the end, digital abundance also implies material abundance, at least to some degree.
