Bitcoin Forum

Although I'm sure it has arisen independently several times, my introduction to the concept of a Reputation Economy came to me from Cory Doctorow's debut novel "Down and out in the Magic Kingdom" and the concept of "Whuffie" used by the fictional utopian society for the few things that were still scarce in a world of free energy, perfect biology and "replicators"... The best seats for a show, first puff of a joint, the attention of a talented professional, the apartment with the nicest view... whatever someone wants that someone else also wants is by definition scarce, after all.
So... for those who haven't read the book and don't care to Wiki the subject, Whuffie is a lot like "likes" or "+1s" on various Social Media. It's all sliced and diced and weighted a certain way in the books but it was more about the concept than the details IMHO. If an issue ever comes up where only one person can have something then (all else being equal) the person with the high Whuffie score gets it.
We don't have replicators or free energy, 3D printers and solar panels are neat and all but we're not ready for the Vulcans (or even The Culture!) quite yet, but we do have a Digital Economy emerging alongside an Industrial Economy in decline and the realm of the Digital is inherently Post-Scarcity in most ways that matter.
What I am interested in is the use of the software and concepts behind Cryptocurrency projects like Bitcoin and Peercoin to establish useful metrics like Trustworthiness, Quality of Product, Quality of Service and others within the Digital Economy. I have some ideas but nothing really solid and coherent, and even less idea about how such a system would interface with the still relevant "Meatspace" Economy.
Any thoughts would be appreciated, as would directions towards any existing projects along these lines that may already be underway.

I don't mean to practice thread necromancy, but here I go. I don't frequent the newbie forums (probably should), but this thread happened to come up as the top hit in a Google search for "cryptocurrencies for a post-scarcity world".

I really like Doctorow's work, even though I *do* feel his writing isn't quite on par with, say, Neal Stephenson's. His work contains a lot of ideas that resonate with me, and that's enough for me to read every damn thing he releases.

I've been tossing the question of how to implement "whuffies" in the real world around in my head ever since reading Down and Out. The idea of a reputation-based currency seems to run through a few of his stories. The Rapture of the Nerds seemed to allude to a similar type of currency, IIRC. The keystone problem, as far as I'm concerned, is the necessity of tying a single, canonical, counterfeit-proof identity to each actor in the economy. Without that particular piece, you face a serious problem with fraud.

Of course, I suppose there would be much less incentive to defraud people when technology takes care of all one's fundamental needs for free, as is the case in Down and Out. Therefore we *might* be able to get away with a less stringent version of whuffies where, though it's *possible* to cheat the system, there isn't much incentive to. To further discourage fraud, there could be a system in place that ties reputations to pseudonymous economic identities, much as is currently possible using a combination of Bitcoin and Web of Trust, but with the possibility of any actor retracting their economic support of any other actor at any point in time. An identity without much of an economic history, or an identity with a long history of retracting economic support at an unusually high rate, would eventually find themselves locked out of the economy.

In this case, though, the problem becomes the easy proliferation of economic identities. I could generate thousands of them, have them all trade among each other for a time in order to build up economic histories, and then go on a fraud spree that eventually tanks their reputations and start the whole process over again. Or I could just do it slowly and spread out enough to avoid detection, effectively buying tons of luxuries without actually spending any whuffie permanently.

Alternatively, we could remove the economic incentive for fraud by only allowing people to *destroy* the whuffie they've given other people. In that case, we would have to create a mechanism whereby the destroyed whuffie re-enters the economy. And even with this scheme, there's a potential for abuse by griefers/trolls. It is, of course, a trade-off: some people would consider the ability to initiate chargebacks as a positive thing. Then again, I don't expect there to be many of that sort among this crowd. :-)

There's also the potential for whuffies to act *exactly* like "+1"s and "like"s. They could be created in the act of transaction, ex nihilo, and just as easily destroyed. But then you have a serious chance for runaway inflation and fraud. But that might be a cool way to look at things all the same, if only as an experiment.

So we might be better served in trying to create a truly post-scarcity planet than in trying to build whuffies. Building whuffies first may be a case of putting the cart before the horse. And as cool as whuffies are, I'm not sure the idea will get very far until we've got a clear list of the problems it's supposed to solve. Got any thoughts on that front, NeuralKernal?

Human wants are unlimited, resources are finite, therefore it is theoretically impossible for there to be no scarcity.

Correct, there is no such thing as a post-scarcity economy. I think a much better way to analyze Bitcoin and money generally is as a form of reciprocal altruism. The innovative thing about money as compared to the systems practiced by non-humans is that money comes in objective units. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism

The person who makes the most money is the most altruistic because he gives people real goods or services in exchange for tokens, and the tokens are only worth something because he expects more altruism from other people in the future.

I think you're taking the idea too much at face value. Yes, it's called "post-scarcity," but that doesn't imply we're talking about a place devoid of human wants, or even a place where scarcity does not exist at all. NeuralKernel hinted at this fact:


(edited for relevance)

A post-scarcity world arises when self-sustaining technology provides the world, or the vast majority of the world, with the bottom tier of Maslow's hierarchy for free. When one doesn't have to work to survive, but one may work to create a more comfortable life for oneself, or to provide meaning for one's life. That's what we're talking about when we talk about "post-scarcity."


I disagree with this. Your statement would be true of a world where consumers were perfectly informed and the only way to get money from a person is to benefit them. As it stands, though, it is entirely possible to trick a person out of funds. It is entirely possible to hold a gun to their head, both literally and metaphorically. This is a fine ideal regarding what money should be, but it does not match the reality.