In a "reputation based economy" your access to society's resources is based in part on popular opinion. The book presents this as something that only hurts sociopaths who can't play nice with their fellow transhumans, but really it could prove harmful for anyone who holds unpopular views, or has traits, through no fault of their own, that the majority finds distasteful (I believe Rimward handwaves this by claiming that anarchists could never possibly be bigoted). Of course this is also a problem in traditional capitalist economies, but I don't think it's one that the "new economy" would necessarily solve. (In all honesty the Autonomists strike me as mary sues, in the same way the Jovians are the big bad authoritarian strawman faction)

The New Economy is basically just the logical conclusion of the Service Economy. What you make is less important than what you do. Everyone can do something, perform some service. This is not the subservience of individuals to a group, because most rep transactions are done on a person-to-person level. It's a mutual trade that serves to actively promote freely helping each other. The only things that get dinged would be things people find unnecessarily harmful or dangerous to them - because if people see you dinging for no good reason, you're going to get dinged right back for being a dick. The people you are accountable to are equally accountable to you! If your complaint is that it discourages douchebags, you might want to reassess your priorities. People still 'profit' from their labor because if your hard work produces something that keeps the gab oxygenated, or is a really fun game, people will give you currency. Ambition and effort is rewarded. Additionally, if you don't like how your current network pings and dings things - just join a different network! There are multiple economies running concurrently, not single domineering practices, and these different rep networks prize different values, damn different vices. This allows for a plurality of opinion, diversity of practices and freedom of beliefs. That's a main component of the rep economy - you can join or not join whatever social networks you like, even form new ones with enough like minded individuals.

Leodiensian wrote:

This is not the subservience of individuals to a group, because most rep transactions are done on a person-to-person level.

Groups, it turns out, generally consist of persons. One person liking you is good. Two persons liking you is better. A group liking you is vital.

Leodiensian wrote:

The only things that get dinged would be things people find unnecessarily harmful or dangerous to them - because if people see you dinging for no good reason, you're going to get dinged right back for being a dick.

Yes, because people are perfectly tolerant creatures who only dislike others if they are actively harming others. Of course. How could I forget that elemental fact. Racism, sexism, and other forms of intolerance do not exist, at least not outside the orbit of Mars. If people acted like the "New Economy"-enthusiasts claim, there would be little need for an economy at all - "old" or "new".

Leodiensian wrote:

The people you are accountable to are equally accountable to you!

The group, in a scenario where popular opinion creates wealth, is always stronger than the individual. Saying that "you can just ding back" is really just looking past the enormous power imbalance between the group and the individual.

Leodiensian wrote:

If your complaint is that it discourages douchebags, you might want to reassess your priorities.

Except no-one is saying that, it's an obvious straw man. My complaint is that is discourages dissent, freethinking and behavior outside the norm. Let's say that you're in a strongly heteronormative hab, and you happen to be gay. Homophobes will ding you, both when you perform actions related to your sexuality and when you perform other actions. The homophobes won't be dinged, because their dinging is in accordance with the dominant values of the hab. If A dislikes B because B is X, then A's view of B's actions will always be influenced by A's dislike of X. You don't even have to be an asshole to think that way, it's simply how humans work. Even a perfectly rational mind will still consciously act this way, in order to be able to discourage behavior it dislikes. Now, there might be two objections to this argument: 1: Autonomists would never be dicks! Because reasons! 2: The gay guy can just join another hab/rep network. The first objection is self-evidently dumb. Unless you believe that a certain portion of transhumanity has somehow managed to create the perfect end result of all sapient culture in the universe, there will be dickish social norms that harm innocents and that can only be challenged by people willing to suffer being unpopular. The second objection is very troubling in that it makes the following assumption: All individual thought and dissenting behavior is dependent on there being supportive groups able to protect you. This also means that different cultural groups will be forced to segregate in different "separate but equal" communities. Because that always works out great. In a money-based economy, people can still choose to not give you money because they dislike you. But - and this is important - no-one except the state can choose to take that money away from you. If I can just find one person willing to pay me for my services, I can live a comfortable life even if 99% of the population hates my guts. I'm not saying popularity doesn't matter in a capitalist economy, of course it does, but in the "New Economy" popularity is the only thing that matters. And that is just in a pure capitalist system, a mixed economy is even better at taking care of dissenters. I can see the "New Economy" working well in, for example, tight-knit religious communities. But any kind of diversity quickly ruins it.

I have a generally positive view on the new economy. It has issues, but some of the common criticisms can be avoided. - the rep score that is used as a game mechanic is a combination of something much more complex. To take real world examples, even if you have a youtube channel with 1.5 million followers, if you sell some stuff on ebay and cheat the buyer, your ebay rating will suck and your youtube fame is going to help very little. In the setting, people (or their muses) will be looking at significantly more detailed information and base their interaction with you on those details, dependent on the context. Your EP game mechanic rep score is based on the significant stuff you've done - actually helping or hurting people, stuff you've built, trades you've been involved in, evalution by colleagues, etc. - fame, popularity and discrimination is handled by Traits that modify your available favors, Network and Social tests, etc., rather than over your rep score. Justin Bieber does not have a high rep score (he's not widely respected by all) but he has some very special Traits that affects his relations (ranging from fans that would do anything to just get to meet him to people who would just love getting a chance to cause him grief) - the rep network monitors how much you put in and how much you take out - in that sense it is not that different from the traditional economy. However, there is a main difference in how much people can "pay". There is not the huge difference between helping someone "rich" and someone "poor", as there is in the traditional economy - and it is certainly much better to help several "poor" people than one who is "rich". This means that the new economy rewards actions that better society as a whole. - another difference is that it is much easier to punish people for harming you by dinging their rep, compared to the time and effort needed to sue someone. This makes people play nicer instead of just cruising below the "cost-efficient-to-sue" threshold. The main problem with the new economy is that it is simply not that productive. Life is good for most people, and with the high equality, there's not a huge benefit from working hard for success. Of course there are go-getters who strive for the top and do great things, but in the middle and bottom of new economy societies, people don't have an incentive to try that hard. One of the books lists a 4-hour work day iirc - compare that to the inner system with CEOs working around the clock, ambitious middle managers competing for the next promotion, poor people forced to work hard to afford basic services, and indentures who are little more than slaves. On top of that, the new economy just doesn't have an easy way of getting everyone to fall in line behind a project and stay on it without all sorts of bickering and detours, while in the inner system once a bunch of investors fund something, it's going to happen, fast and efficiently.

Alkahest wrote:

Smokeskin wrote:

- another difference is that it is much easier to punish people for harming you by dinging their rep, compared to the time and effort needed to sue someone. This makes people play nicer instead of just cruising below the "cost-efficient-to-sue" threshold.

Here's a thought about why it's hard to sue people, among other things: Not everyone you want to punish should be punished. I hope we can at least agree on that.

Of course not, but that's not what I mean by "cost-efficient-to-sue" - I mean that people are actually incurring cost on you unfairly because they know the net benefit of suing is negative. I'm not saying "you can't sue people for being gay", I'm saying "most people can't be bothered suing for a minor product defect".

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As for the rest of your post, it doesn't really address the concerns I voiced in my previous post. The New Economy doesn't "reward actions that better society as a whole", it rewards actions that the dominant cultural norms see as good. How is dissent and freethought possible in such a community?

Then I didn't make myself clear. I don't believe that the rep system is just a single tally of your net likes and dislikes. I agree that something like that would be horrible - and it wouldn't work either. The rep economy is much more complex than that. Today, if people want to buy your stuff, they'll look at your ebay seller's rating and very few will care one ounce about your number of Reddit downvotes. The rep economy works in the same way - in setting people don't actually have just one rep score. Maybe they don't even have just a set of scores, there could be an actual record of your interactions and people send an algorithm to query the record and then set back a score. Either way, the point is that few things will be just popularity contest (and having a single score reflect popularity is completely silly anyway, nobody will use that - people are different and like just as different types of people, though of course charismatic people will score higher in general). If you're going to decide if you want to help someone, you're going to be looking at how much he helped others or contributed, not if you or others agree with his opinions. Sure, that might affect your decision a bit, but if you really start to favor those you agree with, then the network will spot it and it will hurt you since those who disagree with you can tell you're not willing to reciprocate and they won't help you either.

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If I really have to choose between living in a world run by plutocrats where I can freely speak my mind without fear of poverty, and living in a world run by the hoi polloi where I can't freely speak my mind without fear of poverty, I'll choose the former. "When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick.'"

If you look at how people are today, how many are willing to boycott a business for their beliefs? How many refuse to serve people for their opinions? Not many. I don't see it becoming many in a reputation economy. Trade interactions are going to depend mostly on your reputation in trade, not on your opinions. In terms of game mechanics, look at the rep gains amd losses list on page 385 in EP: it is a very hard sell saying that you're going to get your rep tanked for speaking merely unpopular opinions.

I love how people seem to think that your reputation is just another form of currency. It isn't. Not really. First and foremost, you have to remember that the rep networks are huge. You aren't just dealing with the opinions of the inhabitants of the local habitat, but with those of the [i]entire[/i] Autonomist Alliance and beyond, or the [i]entire[/i] Planetary Consortium and beyond, etcetera. You can't piss off an entire habitat of anarchists without your @-Rep taking a hit, but unless you pissed them off by, say, trying to force someone to sign an indenture contract, your @-Rep probably isn't going to go into freefall. (Though the Extropians will still manage to catch you before you bottom out, holding you up as an example of an an-cap being unfairly persecuted by the collectivists and rallying to ping you from afar.) "Dinging" someone is [b]not[/b] the same as taking money from them, and that argument needs to cease. If you're operating on an Extropian habitat, or anywhere else that uses a transitional economy, "dinging" someone is not the same as fining someone 5 credits. Actually fining them 5 credits would be fining them 5 credits. Dinging someone - which, I need to remind everyone, is [b]anonymous[/b] unless you choose to publish a personal review - does not "take five bucks" from them. It registers an imperceptible shift in their reputation score. It would take a repeated pattern of many people dinging someone to have a notable drain, and if someone's pissing off enough people to noticeably drain their reputation, that's [i]the system working as intended.[/i] For whatever reason, they're irritating to those people, and those people are registering their dislike. If someone's worked their way into a situation where the vast majority of a hab dislikes him enough to be dinging him every time they're reminded of his existence, then I have to ask [i]why in the flying hells is he still on that hab?[/i] He could always farcast out to someplace where the locals are more his speed, or seek to redress the cause of the dings he is recieving. But let's say that's not an option for his reasons. Let's say he's on an autonomist hab, which some posts - yes, you, Steel Accord and Alkahest - have been vilifying. Let's say he [i]is[/i] on an autonomist hab, and, say, is unwelcome there because he is, I dunno, an Extropian. First off, I'd question why he's staying somewhere his economic politics are despised. Secondly, if for whatever reason he's accepted as a citizen of this habitat, even an unliked one - maybe he makes art that everybody loves, even if he's otherwise abrasive to them, or maybe he really loves mucking out waste filtration and recycling systems or whatever - and he manages to fly by without getting to the point where the collective decides to exile him or nukes his @-Rep to nothing. What, [i]exactly[/i], has he lost by having a low @-Rep? He can still nanofabricate whatever the hell he wants from the public CMs or the one in his cabin, if he has one, which he probably does. If he nanofabricates a weapon or something, some folks are probably gonna show up to ask him if he's planning to go nuts and start shooting people, but unless the entire collective is convinced he's a danger, they aren't exactly going to tell him he can't have it. That's not how the rules in an An-Collective habitat work. He can make whatever he wants, as long as he's got the blueprints for it, and guess what - he's on an An-Col habitat. He has unfettered access to all the open-source blueprints he could ever fab. There is [i]nothing[/i] he wants for, not for shelter or food, not for maintenance or repairs, not for life support or spare parts. At worst, he gets dinged when he expresses an unpopular opinion, but if he's not so odious to the other inhabitants of his habitat, he's not exactly being deprived of basic necessities. Contrast this with some poor bastard living under the Planetary Consortium. First off, his body has planned obsolescence built into it. If he's in a case, which there's a significant chance he is, his cheaply-manufactured body is falling apart. He has to work [i]like a slave[/i], quite possibly [i]literally[/i] if he's been indentured (which if he's in a case, he likely has been,) to keep his body functional. If he's in a biomorph, he's likely wearing a Ruster or an Alpiner, which means he's working like a dog to scrape up the funds to pay for his "genetic service packs," a wholly unnecessary thing that could be fixed with one intensive run in the healing vat - something which costs very little in the grand scheme of resources, but which has been inflated to cost five years' worth of unrelenting, uncompromising scrimping and saving in pursuit of the single goal of purchasing it. Otherwise, he either has to buy a GSP every season, or his body starts falling apart. But at least he can speak his mind, right? Well, sure, in that he's perfectly free to tell the asshole who cuts him off in the road to go get fucked without that asshole being able to ding him for it - oh wait, no he isn't. Because even on Mars, there is such a thing as c-Rep (also @-rep, though he might not care for it.) So if he's an assjack, douchebag tard of the anus to everyone around him, his reputation will be in the hopper. Sure, he's getting paid - assuming he wasn't indentured, of course - but for how long? This guy's an abrasive fuckwad. If he's doing anything where he might have to interact with clients or customers, he's going to be fired faster than you can say "but capitalism!" because his rep score is so low that he's an [i]actual liability to have on the job.[/i] Funnily enough, abrasive asshole on the An-Col hab didn't get fired, because nobody is making him work in the first place. He does whatever he feels like doing, and even if people think he's an asshole, they'll still ping him for his hard work as related to keeping everybody from stewing in their own shit. But hey, maybe he's the kind of guy who tinkers with machines or blueprints or design all day - [b]he[/b] doesn't have to be seen by customers/clients, you can lock that basement troll in his basement and pay him for the stuff he designs. [i]Sure[/i], I guess, that does work, if he's lucky. Though if he's a designer of important things, he'll have a high rep score on an An-Col habitat even if he's an abrasive jerkwad who torques most people of just by looking at them. But he still can't speak his mind. What was it Alkahest said?

Alkahest wrote:

If I really have to choose between living in a world run by plutocrats where I can freely speak my mind without fear of poverty, and living in a world run by the hoi polloi where I can't freely speak my mind without fear of poverty, I'll choose the former.

Except you can't speak your mind. The plutocrats fucking censor [i]everything.[/i] You criticize the PC too loudly, and your ass is in trouble. You "speak your mind" and badmouth a gerentocrat or a member of the glitterati, and you can get fired even if you're the basement-dwelling designer-of-stuff, because suddenly your blueprints are toxic to be manufacturing, and your employer would sooner let it be known that he likes to spend his nights hip-deep in neotenic morphs being worn by actual indentured minors than that he has you on his payroll. Talk too loud, and not only are you facing poverty where the only people who will hire you are criminal gangs, but they might well decide to "find" some reason to have you sentenced to indentured servitude or even thrown into cold storage. But hey, at least he's not at the whim of "Legion," right? So he must be doing a lot better in his cold, miserable, on-the-run life of desperation, destitution and deprivation than that poor abrasive unliked asshole on that Anarcho-Collectivist habitat who has a low rep score because he rubs everybody the wrong way yet still has no imaginable need unfulfilled and probably no wants, either. Unless he's a jackass who desires power over others. That want's definitely getting frustrated, but that's An-Collectivist working as intended.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

First and foremost, you have to remember that the rep networks are huge. You aren't just dealing with the opinions of the inhabitants of the local habitat, but with those of the [i]entire[/i] Autonomist Alliance and beyond, or the [i]entire[/i] Planetary Consortium and beyond, etcetera.

Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying that people I have never even met are somehow influencing my rep score, rather than just the people I interact with?

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

You can't piss off an entire habitat of anarchists without your @-Rep taking a hit, but unless you pissed them off by, say, trying to force someone to sign an indenture contract, your @-Rep probably isn't going to go into freefall.

Why? Why would people I have never even seen ping someone they have never seen based on no knowledge about my actual interactions with others? And even if your unexplained magic rep-saving collective will exists, that still leaves faction-wide norms. How am I supposed to dissent from those without being punished for it?

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

Dinging someone - which, I need to remind everyone, is [b]anonymous[/b] unless you choose to publish a personal review - does not "take five bucks" from them. It registers an imperceptible shift in their reputation score. It would take a repeated pattern of many people dinging someone to have a notable drain, and if someone's pissing off enough people to noticeably drain their reputation, that's [i]the system working as intended.[/i]

So it's not "take five bucks", it's "take fifty cents". Noted. The basic problem remains. And if the shift is "imperceptible", how can the economy function at all? How can anyone be rewarded for services rendered if the shift is "imperceptible"?

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

For whatever reason, they're irritating to those people, and those people are registering their dislike. If someone's worked their way into a situation where the vast majority of a hab dislikes him enough to be dinging him every time they're reminded of his existence, then I have to ask [i]why in the flying hells is he still on that hab?[/i] He could always farcast out to someplace where the locals are more his speed, or seek to redress the cause of the dings he is recieving.

So once again, we're back to "To not be poor, you have to find a like-minded group willing to protect you". How is people being forced to leave their homes due to the dominant cultural norms around them the system working as intended?

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

But let's say that's not an option for his reasons. Let's say he's on an autonomist hab, which some posts - yes, you, Steel Accord and Alkahest - have been vilifying. Let's say he [i]is[/i] on an autonomist hab, and, say, is unwelcome there because he is, I dunno, an Extropian. First off, I'd question why he's staying somewhere his economic politics are despised.

Because, in reality, people don't want to have to choose where they live based solely on the political opinions of their neighbors. If your solution to the problems of a reputation economy is forcing people to gather in insular "separate but equal" communities where they are only surrounded by people who agree with everything they say... I kind of have to question why we should even bother in the first place. And once again, this leaves out actual freethinkers, not just people who happen to live in the wrong place. Why should I be forced to live in a community where people agree with my opinions in order to avoid poverty? How is that in any way a system that respects the liberties of the individual, the fundamental right to free speech and the possibility of cultural evolution?

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

Secondly, if for whatever reason he's accepted as a citizen of this habitat, even an unliked one - maybe he makes art that everybody loves, even if he's otherwise abrasive to them, or maybe he really loves mucking out waste filtration and recycling systems or whatever - and he manages to fly by without getting to the point where the collective decides to exile him or nukes his @-Rep to nothing. What, [i]exactly[/i], has he lost by having a low @-Rep? He can still nanofabricate whatever the hell he wants from the public CMs or the one in his cabin, if he has one, which he probably does. If he nanofabricates a weapon or something, some folks are probably gonna show up to ask him if he's planning to go nuts and start shooting people, but unless the entire collective is convinced he's a danger, they aren't exactly going to tell him he can't have it. That's not how the rules in an An-Collective habitat work. He can make whatever he wants, as long as he's got the blueprints for it, and guess what - he's on an An-Col habitat. He has unfettered access to all the open-source blueprints he could ever fab. There is [i]nothing[/i] he wants for, not for shelter or food, not for maintenance or repairs, not for life support or spare parts. At worst, he gets dinged when he expresses an unpopular opinion, but if he's not so odious to the other inhabitants of his habitat, he's not exactly being deprived of basic necessities.

Ah, I see. Your argument isn't that dissenters wouldn't be forced into poverty, it's that the autonomists are so awesome that even poverty in an autonomist hab is awesome! That has nothing to do with the reputation economy, though. The writers decided that the autonomists are so amazing that the poorest among them live like kings, but they have not explained how this a) is in any way related to the reputation economy or b) how this addresses the fundamental unfairness of being forced into poverty just because of your (lack of) popularity.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

Contrast this with some poor bastard living under the Planetary Consortium. First off, his body has planned obsolescence built into it. If he's in a case, which there's a significant chance he is, his cheaply-manufactured body is falling apart. He has to work [i]like a slave[/i], quite possibly [i]literally[/i] if he's been indentured (which if he's in a case, he likely has been,) to keep his body functional. If he's in a biomorph, he's likely wearing a Ruster or an Alpiner, which means he's working like a dog to scrape up the funds to pay for his "genetic service packs," a wholly unnecessary thing that could be fixed with one intensive run in the healing vat - something which costs very little in the grand scheme of resources, but which has been inflated to cost five years' worth of unrelenting, uncompromising scrimping and saving in pursuit of the single goal of purchasing it. Otherwise, he either has to buy a GSP every season, or his body starts falling apart. But at least he can speak his mind, right? Well, sure, in that he's perfectly free to tell the asshole who cuts him off in the road to go get fucked without that asshole being able to ding him for it - oh wait, no he isn't. Because even on Mars, there is such a thing as c-Rep (also @-rep, though he might not care for it.) So if he's an assjack, douchebag tard of the anus to everyone around him, his reputation will be in the hopper. Sure, he's getting paid - assuming he wasn't indentured, of course - but for how long? This guy's an abrasive fuckwad. If he's doing anything where he might have to interact with clients or customers, he's going to be fired faster than you can say "but capitalism!" because his rep score is so low that he's an [i]actual liability to have on the job.[/i] Funnily enough, abrasive asshole on the An-Col hab didn't get fired, because nobody is making him work in the first place. He does whatever he feels like doing, and even if people think he's an asshole, they'll still ping him for his hard work as related to keeping everybody from stewing in their own shit. But hey, maybe he's the kind of guy who tinkers with machines or blueprints or design all day - [b]he[/b] doesn't have to be seen by customers/clients, you can lock that basement troll in his basement and pay him for the stuff he designs. [i]Sure[/i], I guess, that does work, if he's lucky. Though if he's a designer of important things, he'll have a high rep score on an An-Col habitat even if he's an abrasive jerkwad who torques most people of just by looking at them. But he still can't speak his mind. What was it Alkahest said?

Alkahest wrote:

If I really have to choose between living in a world run by plutocrats where I can freely speak my mind without fear of poverty, and living in a world run by the hoi polloi where I can't freely speak my mind without fear of poverty, I'll choose the former.

Except you can't speak your mind. The plutocrats fucking censor [i]everything.[/i] You criticize the PC too loudly, and your ass is in trouble. You "speak your mind" and badmouth a gerentocrat or a member of the glitterati, and you can get fired even if you're the basement-dwelling designer-of-stuff, because suddenly your blueprints are toxic to be manufacturing, and your employer would sooner let it be known that he likes to spend his nights hip-deep in neotenic morphs being worn by actual indentured minors than that he has you on his payroll. Talk too loud, and not only are you facing poverty where the only people who will hire you are criminal gangs, but they might well decide to "find" some reason to have you sentenced to indentured servitude or even thrown into cold storage. But hey, at least he's not at the whim of "Legion," right? So he must be doing a lot better in his cold, miserable, on-the-run life of desperation, destitution and deprivation than that poor abrasive unliked asshole on that Anarcho-Collectivist habitat who has a low rep score because he rubs everybody the wrong way yet still has no imaginable need unfulfilled and probably no wants, either. Unless he's a jackass who desires power over others. That want's definitely getting frustrated, but that's An-Collectivist working as intended.

Yes, we know that the PC is horrible and evul and that the poor working masses are oppressed and yada yada yada. But you know what? That has nothing to do with their economic system. The writers decided that the PC are bad guys and that the AA are good guys, and therefore people are happy in the AA and miserable in the PC. That's not an argument in favor of reputation economy, any more than elves being awesome in Tolkien's books is an argument to get plastic surgery so your ears are pointy. I'm not comparing the AA to the PC, I'm comparing a modern mixed economy in a liberal democracy with a reputation economy. The writers felt forced to present the main alternative as goddamn Mordor run by Dick Cheney because otherwise, the AA would not be the Good Guys.

Alkahest wrote:

Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying that people I have never even met are somehow influencing my rep score, rather than just the people I interact with?

If you come to their attention, absolutely. If you post something to a forum that can be seen by folks in other habs, they can ping or ding you (or at least the identity with which you posted that post.) If you get exposed as the jackass extorting favors in order to "expedite" the process of getting people sleeved into morphs, you can bet your ass everyone on the hab and likely quite a few off it will be throwing a ding your way.

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Why? Why would people I have never even seen ping someone they have never seen based on no knowledge about my actual interactions with others?

Because they [i]do[/i] have knowledge of your interactions with others. Get your mind out of the 1970s - Eclipse Phase is [i]at least[/i] the 2130s! Even today, stories propagate like wildfire, and I'm not even talking about the network news. If you get mentioned in somebody [i]else's[/i] lifelog, curious people who read it can pull up your profile, follow links to stuff you've done or been associated with, and throw a ping or a ding at you if they should feel so inclined.

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And even if your unexplained magic rep-saving collective will exists, that still leaves faction-wide norms. How am I supposed to dissent from those without being punished for it?

Join another faction? Seriously, it's [b]pretty fucking hard[/b] to piss off the [b]entirety[/b] of the Circle-@ List, and only moderately easier (due to the group of plutocrat oligarchs who control it,) to piss off the entirety of CivicNet. If your opinions are so [i]wildly divergent[/i] from those of an entire faction that your rep with them tanks, [i]you do not belong there.[/i] Do bear in mind that somehow, the Extropians manage to stay and live and work in the Autonomist Alliance and maintain good @-rep scores despite their fetish for unregulated financial feudalism, so it's [i]pretty damn hard[/i] to say that you, personally, will piss off the entire faction so much that your rep will approach the single digits. To tank your rep that badly, you pretty much have to be advocating for the opposition, in which case I question why you still give a flying damn about your rep in the rep listing of the faction you're advocating against.

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So it's not "take five bucks", it's "take fifty cents". Noted. The basic problem remains. And if the shift is "imperceptible", how can the economy function at all? How can anyone be rewarded for services rendered if the shift is "imperceptible"?

Acknowledge your cognitive biases. You're still thinking of rep like it's money; [b]rep is not money.[/b] Rimward went over this with like, a full chapter. If you piss off one guy and he dings you, you don't notice it. If you piss him off and draw a crowd, a dozen folks notice it and ping you. You notice it, but it will not cause your 0-100 character-sheet Reputation Score to move. If you piss off his entire habitat, say, by blowing up their life support or going on a loud and public tirade in the middle of the hab against some touchstone they have made of their way of life, you will notice it. If you're generally an abrasive asshole and rub everyone you meet the wrong way, you'll get more dings than pings, and experience a steady drain on your Rep. If you do a favor for one guy, he will ping you, and you won't notice it. If you do a big favor and he tells all of his friends, they'll ping you. You'll notice it IC, but you won't notice it on your character sheet. If you do a big enough favor, say, to a large group of people or a hab or whatever, it'll go up. If you're generally speaking a nice pleasant person and you get more pings than dings, over time, your rep will go up.

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So once again, we're back to "To not be poor, you have to find a like-minded group willing to protect you". How is people being forced to leave their homes due to the dominant cultural norms around them the system working as intended?

Acknowledge your cognitive biases. People with huge Rep scores are not "rich." People with tiny Rep scores are not "Poor." If you're in a reputation-is-all-that-matters economy, you're in an Anarcho-Collectivist hab, which means that you're not in any way, shape, or form what people would recognize as "Poor." You want for little the entire community doesn't want for, unless you're someone of exceptional tastes or want something the entire community does not abide (such as having personal power,) and you [i]need[/i] for nothing. Even if you're unpopular. And now, because you can't seem to get it through, I'm going to make it large and bold. Ready? [h1]Reputation [u]is not money[/u]![/h1] To get anywhere where your rep matters more than your money takes [i]effort[/i]. Why in the [i]world[/i] would you farcast to and try to take up residence somewhere [i]you are unwelcome?[/i] That's like a Klansman trying to settle in Harlem. He's not being forced out of his home, he's actually moved somewhere he is unwelcome.

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Because, in reality, people don't want to have to choose where they live based solely on the political opinions of their neighbors. If your solution to the problems of a reputation economy is forcing people to gather in insular "separate but equal" communities where they are only surrounded by people who agree with everything they say... I kind of have to question why we should even bother in the first place.

They don't? Technically they don't. A Klansman is free to move to Harlem. A gay man is free to move to Westboro. A black guy is free to move to wherever is next door to the Imperial Wizard of the KKK. [u]It is not a good idea.[/u] And please bear in mind that An-Collective habitats tend to be very, [i]very[/i] diverse populations who have usually coalesced around a [i]single[/i] cultural touchstone. Very often that touchstone needs to be nothing more than "Fuck the Planetary Consortium, who's with me?!" If you can't get along with that one touchstone, and for some reason you happened to be aboard the hab when it was founded or whatever, you should probably head to the body bank and farcast somewhere more to your liking. If you're actually trying to move there, first off, they probably won't [i]let[/i] you stay, secondly, why in the world are you doing that in the first place?! And if things shift over time... Nothing is [i]keeping you there![/i] The only things of value you really have in EP are your ego and your data, all of which you can take with you when you farcast out. You can realize that everyone on your hab thinks you're a useless shitthief they wouldn't give the time of day to and the feeling is mutual, and be on another habitat more to your liking in time to introduce yourself to the new neighbors and fill your new body's stomach with something piping-hot out of the maker in time for dinner.

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And once again, this leaves out actual freethinkers, not just people who happen to live in the wrong place. Why should I be forced to live in a community where people agree with my opinions in order to avoid poverty? How is that in any way a system that respects the liberties of the individual, the fundamental right to free speech and the possibility of cultural evolution?

"Poverty, poverty, poverty." [i]Change the record![/i] You keep saying "Poverty," you don't understand what you're talking about. You cannot analogize the reputation system to a monetary economy! You are not "Poor" if you have a low reputation. [i]It means you are not liked.[/i] It does [i]not[/i] mean you are going to starve, it does not mean you are going to be unable to manufacture what you need, or what you want. It [i]does[/i] mean that you won't be able to find many people jumping at the chance to help you with what you want to get done (unless you make a good case for it in a public forum or something - and if you make a good case for something in a public forum, guess what? Your rep is going up!) It means you won't be able to jump the queue when trying to get something, it means you like won't be able to find someone interested in shagging your bones out. But it doesn't mean you're "Poor." And again: If you somehow manage to find yourself living in a place where your opinions are so [i]massively[/i] unpopular, or you in particular are so [i]massively[/i] unwelcome, that you're experiencing a constant reputation drain because enough of the people there can't so much as clap their eyes on you without throwing up a little in their mouths and then throwing a ding in your rep score for it, [b]why the living hell do you want to live there?![/b]

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Ah, I see. Your argument isn't that dissenters wouldn't be forced into poverty, it's that the autonomists are so awesome that even poverty in an autonomist hab is awesome!

Change. The. Record. You need to grok that rep != money. You are not "Rich" because you have a high reputation score - and if you act like you are, that's a good way to find yourself mass-pinged back down in a heartbeat. And you [b]are not poor[/b] if you have a low reputation score!

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That has nothing to do with the reputation economy, though. The writers decided that the autonomists are so amazing that the poorest among them live like kings, but they have not explained how this a) is in any way related to the reputation economy or b) how this addresses the fundamental unfairness of being forced into poverty just because of your (lack of) popularity.

Poverty, poverty, poverty! Money, money, money! That's all I'm hearing out of you! GROK THIS!: Reputation! Is! Not! Money! Those with high rep are not "Rich" individuals. Those with low reputation are not "Poor." You want an analogy? Let's think Star Trek. Let's think Deep Space 9 in particular. Quark was rich, by the standards of most of the main characters. He owned - [i]owned[/i] - a bar, and oftentimes handled quite large money out of it. What did Benjamen Sisko own? A baseball. I don't believe it was even an original, and it certainly wasn't worth any serious sum of gold-pressed Latinum. But Sisko was a well-liked, well-[i]respected[/i] officer. He had a lot of Rep, in a lot of places, and he could pull on it to get things done that Quark [i]never[/i] could have managed with his money. Hell, he could get things done that even Grand Nagus Zek couldn't have - do you remember what Zek rode around in? A shuttle. A freaking shuttle. A customized shuttle, sure, but a shuttle. And that's the Grand Nagus of the Ferengi. Remember what Sisko rode around in? Runabouts, already a step up from that shuttle the Grand Nagus had, and then he got the Defiant. They didn't give just anybody the Defiant, and that's the kind of thing that requires more pull than all the Grand Nagus's money could buy. But Sisko still wasn't "Rich." He just had a lot of Rep. And Grand Nagus Zek, on the other hand, probably wouldn't have had much rep at all, even if the Ferengi had a hybrid system, because he was on top, and everybody would quite gladly anonymously ding the guy lording it over them if they could.

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Yes, we know that the PC is horrible and evul and that the poor working masses are oppressed and yada yada yada. But you know what? That has nothing to do with their economic system.

It has [i]everything[/i] to do with their economic system! The PC are what happens when you sell government to the corporations lock, stock, and barrel. There's nearly no checks whatsoever on how flagrantly they can abuse those without the money (and hence, in their society, the power,) so they abuse them freely.

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The writers decided that the PC are bad guys and that the AA are good guys, and therefore people are happy in the AA and miserable in the PC. That's not an argument in favor of reputation economy, any more than elves being awesome in Tolkien's books is an argument to get plastic surgery so your ears are pointy. I'm not comparing the AA to the PC, I'm comparing a modern mixed economy in a liberal democracy with a reputation economy. The writers felt forced to present the main alternative as goddamn Mordor run by Dick Cheney because otherwise, the AA would not be the Good Guys.

Yes, they really would be. The Planetary Consortium is forcing scarcity economics on its people despite having all the technology they need to go as close to post-scarcity as the autonomists have, and the reason they do so is obvious - because it keeps those in power in power. Without bank accounts to size up who has more worth, the very first people whose reps would crash through the "no negative rep numbers" floor would be the gerontocrats who have been lording it over everyone. But do I think that's in any way, shape, or form, remotely what [i]wouldn't[/i] happen in the nanofabricating future when those with the money find themselves teetering on the edge of obsolescence, and yet in the position of having all the power in the most habitable planet in the solar system? No, I think that's a good representation of [i]exactly[/i] what would happen.

Let me say a few things in general, not only as a response to ShadowDragon8685. I don't really want to begin a discussion where I'm forced to respond to the same non-arguments over and over in a massive, branching debate tree, so I'll sum up my main (new) points: 1: If you have a situation where allocation of scarce resources (and there is no such thing as a post-scarcity society in the Eclipse Phase setting, and I doubt it is even theoretically possible) is determined based on something some people have a lot of and some people little of, you have poverty. It doesn't matter what you call it, the effects on the individual is the same. If I have less money/happy bucks/rep than someone else and that person as a result of that gains access to resources I wanted access to, I am de facto poorer than that person. 2: The success of reputation economy-based societies in Eclipse Phase is no more an argument in favor of a reputation economy than the Gor novels are an argument in favor of female subjugation. It's a fictional setting where the biases of the writers shine through. If you want to make the setting more morally gray and realistic in your game, you should start by looking at the unreasonable success and wealth of the AA as well as the pointless evil of the PC. 3: There is nothing about a reputation economy that makes it more suited for a less-scarce society than a mixed economy. An economy is concerned with the allocation of scarce resources. Any argument in favor of a reputation economy must explain not why the AA is better than the PC, but why a reputation economy is better than the best available alternative. I personally consider a mixed economy better than a reputation economy, and my arguments aim to show why a reputation economy would have problematic features absent in a mixed economy. 4: The main problem I see with a reputation economy (and this is repeating what I have argued previously in this thread) is that it restricts the liberty of the individual, in action as well as thought. My first concern is if a given system, economic or not, gives the individual more power to define hir own life, make hir own choices and make up hir own mind. In a reputation economy, you are punished more for dissent than you are in a mixed economy. That makes a reputation economy inferior to a mixed economy. Any debate about this topic would preferably discuss the issues raised in this post. Point 4 is better explained in previous posts and just restated, briefly, in this post.

I'll weigh in here, but I'm staying out of the debate; I have a policy regarding mud wrestling with pigs: don't. You get muddy and the pig enjoys it (no offense, Alkahest, but your icon makes that usual statement of mine a little too perfect to pass up at the moment ^_^ ). So, I'm just going to make my own comments rather than join in on the shouting match. (Also, nonex, you Godwin'ed. Just wanted to point that out. Not cool). So, with that in mind, some criticisms of the new economy for the OP to use: The new economy works best for extroverts or socially aware people that are most skilled at leveraging Friend-of-a-Friend connections. Introverts, loners and socially inept people will have a harder time, because they find it more difficult to get out there, meet people, and find people willing to do them favors for the things they want beyond basic sustenance. That being said, the rep economy is set up to acknowledge the efforts of people that contribute, so the quiet, socially awkward engineer who does alot of the janitorial level work? He'll have a high rep score, but he won't be able to do as much with it as someone who works as an entertainer, has a lower rep score, but really knows how to leverage their contributions and their reputation. There is no personal property, beyond your personal gear. If you decide to build something--a habitat, a kitchen, an installation art piece--you have given it to the community. If someone misuses it or damages it and other people have valued it, their reputation will be downgraded in response, but, let's say you're a grand cook, and you love to feed people. So you set up a kitchen to feed all comers (I have an NPC like this; she's an Italian Catholic grandmother whose son married a nice Jewish girl. I'll give you all a moment to pity the integrity of the stomach linings of her grandchildren) and, after a while, your kitchen is pretty impressive--the sorts of setup that induces Pavlovian responses in 5 star chefs. You have no right to block someone else from using "your" space to say, make a nice dinner for their hermfriend. Yes, they should be polite, and if they trash the place or mess things up in a way that inhibits your ability to feed people at tomorrow's breakfast rush, they're going to get a bunch of irritated dings to their rep when the regulars find out, but you don't get to put a lock on that space and make it your personal turf. The Tragedy of the Commons is not prevented, only discouraged. If someone is willing to take a hit to their rep (or, alternatively, someone else's, but more on that below), they can really abuse the communal resources in a way that might just be a setback... or could create an honest emergency. But the entire system is dependent on people taking a long view and being willing to contribute to the commons and not loot it for their own purposes. The rep economy depends on having a certain talent pool available that's onboard with the economy (then again, so does the traditional economy, but due to the size differential of the populations, I think this is worth mentioning). To operate a space station, you need people trained with ecology, chemistry, and more areas of engineering than you can shake a doctorate at. These people will rack up extensive rep scores faster than anyone else because everyone else depends on them. Now, depending on your perspective, this can be either a bug or a feature. Personally, speaking as a frustrated and unemployed educator, I'd love living in a society where my contributions are recognized in proportion with their importance to society (which is one of my major criticisms of the current US economy: to determine someone's importance to the efficient running of this society, you can generally derive it from the inverse of their income). But, at the end of the day, this will remain true: people with the extremely practical, difficult-to-learn and hard science disciplines will be the most rewarded and most lauded members of any rep economy in EP. There is still scarcity: morphs, certain rare elements, really good food, habitable volumes, spacecraft, artisanal crafts and other such things. These things are valued, and, while in most places there's still enough to go around because other people are willing to tighten their belts and share, it becomes a problem on the bleeding edge. If there are no morphs to spare, the asshole with low rep is going to be uploaded from his biomorph into a basic eidolon and the friendly infomorph with high rep downloaded in his place. Under these circumstances, where there isn't any surplus to go around, things can quickly turn into an iteration of Survivor. The rep economy depends on population control, ease of producing surplus, banking said surplus against lean times, and distribution of said surplus in an equitable manner. That being said, the technology that enables this system at all is very, very, very good at producing surpluses, and it has lowered the "cost of living" down to a very manageable degree on the levels of individuals and groups for basic subsistence level. This brings up the next point: living in the rep economy means that you, and everyone around you, has, to some degree, agreed to the subsistence level of living, and everything above that level of living is a gift--a gift from everyone else around you. Basic subsistence living--an infomorph with no perks, a basic synthmorph with just enough power to run your systems, a biomorph with 2000 tasteless calories and your own recycled urine per day--is what you get in the rep economy for "free". Everything else beyond that point--space, heat, food, sex, music, etc, ad infinitum--is a gift from someone else. And you're expected to make your own gifts to share with everyone else. If you're willing to be an utter parasite and never contribute, that subsistence level is all you get. The rep economy depends on people being willing to chip in, help others, contribute and generally fast for today with the intent of feasting in two weeks. Beyond that, the rep economy has one very glaring weakness as well: it is incredibly vulnerable to identity theft, gaming the system and griefers. Those three actions go against the very heart of the concept of the rep economy, and can be insanely damaging, above and beyond the levels that identity theft can do in a capitalist society. Someone steals an identity in a capitalist society, they can do an immense amount of damage to that person's bank accounts and their credit scores. Someone steals an identity in a rep economy and they abuse the very trust that underlies the rep economy. Identity theft and rep gaming are more akin to counterfeiting in a capitalist society--and one only needs to take a look at how that act is treated in modern day societies to get an idea of the magnitude of that act. Griefing, on the other hand, is the act of deliberately harming someone's rep score, which is more akin to the damage you can do with identity theft in a capitalist society, but even more obnoxious and damaging in the long term. That's what I've got for the moment. If I think of anything else, I'll chime in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignoratio_elenchi

*munches popcorn* *waits for Banhammer to fall on obvious troll* So, Noble Pigeon, regarding that you were looking for criticisms of the rep economy, you've got one right there in your signature: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." -Winston Churchill The trick, in the rep economy, is to use the technology, in the form of cornucopia machines and other such machines, to minimize the miseries to be shared among the populace. In habitats where they're resource rich, it will be very nice. In habitats where things are much more shoestring, everyone will be equally shoestring. It won't result in one guy and his guards hoarding most of it and leaving the crumbs for the rest to fight over (or, at least, it won't be until someone tries to do a little coup), but instead it'll be the equivalent of a common pot into which everyone adds to and draws from. One other thing, though, is that usury, and all of its attendant abuses, are essentially eliminated or at least minimized in a rep economy, although there are ways in which people can manipulate that (via griefing and gaming) but the rep economy is structured to avoid such abuses (it just replaces them with new ones). EDIT: I just realized that I failed to finish my thought: however, it is only those technological aids that enable the rep economy to function. Remove them, and the economy eventually collapses. But, on the other hand, how is that different than any other economy? Also, one other point: the rep economy works wonders on the level of the individual to small group. On larger scales, it starts to have holes, because, at those scales, there is true scarcity. There aren't enough spaceships to go around for everyone to have one, for example. So you have to make a good argument for why you should be the one to have this spaceship, and not the other guy. Or, in other words, the standard of living as enabled by the CMs allows for everyone to have their day-to-day mundane needs met without issues, but past the mundane and into the extraordinary, there truly isn't enough to go around. There is a waiting list, there are people who don't have what you have and visa versa. The rep economy is designed to moderate these issues and help match up needs with what surplus has been created, but there's still not quite enough to go around at those levels. So far, thanks to the threat of and threats by the PC, that outside enemy is acting as a social cohesion impetus, but take that away and things would get messy.

Alkahest wrote:

It doesn't matter if the rep system is a single tally or not, the fundamental problem is the same: You will be punished economically for being unpopular. If you really believe that homophobes won't be more likely to ding a gay person performing an action than they are to ding a straight person performing the same action, I have a bridge to sell you in Happyland.

It sounds to like your basic premise is that people will be much more bigoted than they are today. Say you're a gay hairdresser. I'm sure homophobes wouldn't use your services. That's how it is today. That's probably how it is going to be in an anarchist hab (though there are probably fewer homophobes, but that's besides the point). Now, if you live somewhere where a minority is homophobic, that's not going to be a problem. If you live somewhere where nearly everyone is homophobic, that is going to be a problem. What I don't get is how you think that it is a larger problem in a rep economy.

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Smokeskin wrote:

The rep economy is much more complex than that. Today, if people want to buy your stuff, they'll look at your ebay seller's rating and very few will care one ounce about your number of Reddit downvotes. The rep economy works in the same way - in setting people don't actually have just one rep score. Maybe they don't even have just a set of scores, there could be an actual record of your interactions and people send an algorithm to query the record and then set back a score.

First question: If this wonderfully complex system is that context-sensitive, why is there even such a thing as separate rep systems for different political factions? We don't have separate ebays and reddits for Marxists, Hells Angels members and Objectivists.

The game mechanics are obviously a simplified and abstract representation of reality.

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Second question: Ebay and reddit are not entire societies where people live their entire lives with everyone knowing who they are, where they live, the gender of their spouse, etcetera. A reputation system works in that kind of very limited economy. It doesn't work in a society where your opinions, sexuality, etcetera are visible to everyone you interact with.

What you're saying is that most people would refuse to deal positively with people they didn't agree with. Almost everyone I know uses iPads or iPhones even though it is common knowledge they are produced under slavelike conditions in China. Maybe people aren't as opiniated as you think?

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Smokeskin wrote:

Either way, the point is that few things will be just popularity contest (and having a single score reflect popularity is completely silly anyway, nobody will use that - people are different and like just as different types of people, though of course charismatic people will score higher in general). If you're going to decide if you want to help someone, you're going to be looking at how much he helped others or contributed, not if you or others agree with his opinions. Sure, that might affect your decision a bit, but if you really start to favor those you agree with, then the network will spot it and it will hurt you since those who disagree with you can tell you're not willing to reciprocate and they won't help you either.

A homophobe won't be punished by a system dominated by homophobes. In the end, your argument boils down to "Hey, they can just ding back!", which brings us back to the power imbalance between the individual and the group. There is nothing in the system that prevents this kind of punishing behavior, and everything we know about both human nature and even the actions of perfectly rational actors suggests that the system will be used to punish dissent.

So you'd prefer say post WWII England, where the war hero Turing was accused of being a homosexual and was sentenced to chemical castration, which drove him to homosexuality? If you live somewhere where the majority hates your guts, you're going to have problems. If you're among anarchists who don't believe in any sort of aggression against anyone, you're likely to be MUCH better off than if you're among statist who believe that their moral outlook gives them the right to commit violence against those who differ.

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Smokeskin wrote:

If you look at how people are today, how many are willing to boycott a business for their beliefs? How many refuse to serve people for their opinions? Not many. I don't see it becoming many in a reputation economy. Trade interactions are going to depend mostly on your reputation in trade, not on your opinions.

People don't boycott a lot (and they do boycott, so your argument kind of fails already) because boycotting 1: fails to have any direct, obvious effect if only done by an individual and 2: because it involves a cost to themselves. Dinging has a direct, concrete, obvious effect, and it involves no cost to the individual. A selfish actor has no reason to boycott unless the act grants immense levels of warm glow (psychological term). A selfish actor has a reason to ding if the act gives any kind of positive psychological, economic or social effect at all, since the cost is non-existent.

Boycotts typically have zero cost (you just buy from a competitor). Dinging has practically no effect if only done by an individual. I think you're seriously overestimating the amount of grief a few people can cause in a rep economy. Nothing suggests that they'd be able to influence anything on their own.

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A better example would be to look at people joining Facebook groups like "I dislike X". Direct (semi-) effect, no cost. I don't want my economy dictated by people joining the Facebook groups "I like Alkahest!" or "Alkahest is a threat to our children who should be locked up!"

You're arguing against your own, personal version of the rep system. The rep gain and loss tables doesn't agree with what you're saying, and you totally ignore the point I made - that people looking to do serious trade with you are going to care about your reputation as it is relevant to the trade and not what some kids on facebook thinks. Of course, notoriety MIGHT matter. As it does today. I recently saw a documentary on ex porn stars, and one got fired from her job when her employer discovered her past. Being unpopular CAN fall back on your business, today as in a rep economy. But please stop making the mistake that your rep depends solely on what people on social media think of you. Both common sense and the rulebook says that rep is gained and lost by substantial actions instead.

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Sure, not everyone will experience that kind of pressure, but I happen to think that the individual's rights should always be front and center in any political discussion.

I do too. And the only political system that fully respects your individual rights is anarcho-capitalism. Anything else has a state or a collective or whatever that tells you what you can and can't do, robs you of your money and possessions, enforces a monopoly on violence, etc.

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We have systems in place to take care of those unfairly disadvantaged by a market economy. What systems exist to take care of those unfairly disadvantaged by a reputation economy?

What you're saying is - if everyone thinks so little of you that they don't want to deal with you in any way, how will you get by? Let me ask you, what do you propose? That armed men in dark uniforms force other people to like you and do business with you? Is that how you solve it in a market economy (because I can't see how the exact same problem won't crop up in a market economy)? Everyone has a right run their own business succesfully, no matter how much of a dick you are and how much your products suck?

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Right, I forgot, anarchy. If you can't find a group willing to take you in, you're screwed.

What, capitalist societies have open borders now and just welcome any immigrant?

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

If you're trying to start a new life somewhere and you wind up somewhere you are massively unpopular, [i]you have chosen poorly![/i]Fortunately, you can try again. It's not like anarchists charge you anything to egocast off. Hell, like the book says, if someone doesn't want to be on their hab that badly, they don't want you there, either (and vice versa.) So if you know of or find somewhere else that will take you, they'll gladly send you on your way.

Actually, by the book, an egocast off is a level 5 favour. So let's say our hypothetical gay programmer ends up choosing an AA hab that just happens to be homophobic (failed his research test) Then our hypothetical programmer here will see his rep either not rise (if he was formerly PC, this would also explain the difficulty in choosing the right hab... PC types don't often get all the research data for individual AA habs) Or it is going to fall fairly fast. After all, negative testimonials are listed as being able to tank your rep into the gutter at freefall speeds (Rimward p179 Testify section, para 3) So it is safe to say that by the time our programmer realizes his dilemma, his rep will be 19 or less. With egocasting as a level 5 favour, he is at a minus 40 penalty to his networking: Autonomists check. He is unlikely to have that skill above 40 by this stage, which means his chance of success is 1%. In other words, it will take an average of 25 years for him to get off the hab.

Sorry, I don't buy that. For one thing, I have a hard time buying "Homophobic" and "An-Cap habitat" in the same sentence, but let's get beyond that. [b]Nobody wants this guy here.[/b] Not only do they not want him there, [i]he[/i] doesn't want him there. And do recall that the rep system is for getting things which are out-of-the-ordinary, or for queue jumping. [i]He can just get in the queue and get access to the farcaster like anybody else,[/i] and that's assuming that the people who find him so distasteful as to actually tank his rep for his sexual orientation don't jump him to the head of the line to get him the hell off their homophobia station. Then boom, he's on his way to Titan, or wherever, he's going to share his story about the homophobic assholes, and [i]his[/i] @-rep is going to sky-rocket as people hear what he's endured - and that [i]whole hab[/i] is going to find their @-rep under assault.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

Sorry, I don't buy that. For one thing, I have a hard time buying "Homophobic" and "An-Cap habitat" in the same sentence, but let's get beyond that.

Note I never specified anarcho-capitalist, just anarchist of some description. Besides I would more expect to see a anti-homophobia stance in an anarcho-feminist hab than an an-cap one.

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[b]Nobody wants this guy here.[/b] Not only do they not want him there, [i]he[/i] doesn't want him there. And do recall that the rep system is for getting things which are out-of-the-ordinary, or for queue jumping. [i]He can just get in the queue and get access to the farcaster like anybody else,[/i] and that's assuming that the people who find him so distasteful as to actually tank his rep for his sexual orientation don't jump him to the head of the line to get him the hell off their homophobia station. Then boom, he's on his way to Titan, or wherever, he's going to share his story about the homophobic assholes, and [i]his[/i] @-rep is going to sky-rocket as people hear what he's endured - and that [i]whole hab[/i] is going to find their @-rep under assault.

But, and it makes me uncomfortable typing this, why waste precious comms resources helping one of those people get somewhere else when we can just put them into infolife where they can't practice their sinful ways. Who is going to give up their next holiday for this guy? Remember egocasting is one of the few scarce resources left in this setting. It is expensive, and I mean the game term. You want to get access to it, you don't just join the waiting list, you call in a favor. Only this guy can't call in a favor from anyone. Hell, even if he did join the queue, he would find that his progress up would constantly be delayed by other people using their level 5 favors to skip the queue. Remember it takes 10 times the base transmission time to do a successful egocast, and it needs techs on both ends to watch the transmission and make sure that it works. This means hours of tech work by someone in this hab to keep this guy safe. This is also why the hab can only get a few of these through a day. So, even with a waiting list, a top end luxury like this is years to decades away if he can't show he has the rep to deserve it. They may not want this guy there, but they definitely don't want to waste that kind of time getting him safely off.

part of the high cost of ego casting is presumably convincing another place to take you on (sinse there is no separate favor for that). one of the first things a destination is going to look at is your rep. your going to need to be fairly convincing (make a networking roll, with penalty for low rep) to convince anywhere to take you on. and if a gay person moved into a homophobic town in a democratic country, the country will do something to protect him, including enforce laws against assault and theft of his property. in many places businesses are not permitted to discriminate against homosexuals ether in hiring practices or refusing there custom. only a small number of hard luck cases will get the network wide profile to be rescued by pings from other habs a measure that would go a long way towards solving this would be to vary the relative value of a ping and a ding based on your current rep. there os some fluff in the book supporting this and the currying favor rules include it in the mechanics. this would mean that somebody who has an unpopular trait resulting in 1000 dings a month who works to earn 100 pings a month will have there rep stabalise at a moderately low value rather than sinking all the way to zero. the formula could be something like rep increase = V*1/R rep decrease= V*R where R is your current rep and V is a representation of the value of the adjustment (ping/ding

Smokeskin actually responds to my arguments instead of just referring to a fictional utopia, so I'll repay the favor.

Smokeskin wrote:

It sounds to like your basic premise is that people will be much more bigoted than they are today. Say you're a gay hairdresser. I'm sure homophobes wouldn't use your services. That's how it is today. That's probably how it is going to be in an anarchist hab (though there are probably fewer homophobes, but that's besides the point). Now, if you live somewhere where a minority is homophobic, that's not going to be a problem. If you live somewhere where nearly everyone is homophobic, that is going to be a problem. What I don't get is how you think that it is a larger problem in a rep economy.

I have already explained why. If I live in a market economy where 90% of the people I interact with dislike me and would like to use cost-free methods to change my (interaction-irrelevant) behavior, I can still make a decent living getting money from the 10% who do not dislike me. In addition to that, the 90% will have no cost-free method of behavior-enforcement that relates to my personal economy. (Boycotting is not cost-free. If you were going to use the services of A instead of B before you learned that A behaved in a way you wanted to change, you obviously had a reason to prefer A to B. Only if the psychological and/or social rewards of a boycott outweigh the rewards of those reasons will you switch from A to B.) If I live in a reputation economy, the 90% can completely destroy my personal economy, without any cost to themselves. No matter how much the 10% like me and want to reinforce my current pattern of behavior, they can't make up for the dislike of the 90%. That's simple mathematics, it's not a question of believing people will be more or less bigoted in the future. People will always try to change the behavior of others, as long as the rewards of attempting that change outweigh the costs. That's true now, and it will be true in the future. I can explain why unpopular people are not forced into poverty in a mixed market economy. Can you explain why they won't be forced into poverty in a reputation economy?

Smokeskin wrote:

The game mechanics are obviously a simplified and abstract representation of reality.

That's not an answer to my question. If anything, it's just another point in favor of my argument. Wouldn't introducing separate rep systems for separate ideological factions needlessly complicate a system that "actually" just involves interaction-relevant rep? If all that matters is how a reliable of a plumber I am, why would the game "simplify" that system by introducing separate systems for what people think of my plumbing skills based on the ideologies of those people?

Smokeskin wrote:

What you're saying is that most people would refuse to deal positively with people they didn't agree with.

No. What I'm saying is that people will use cost-free methods of behavior correction to influence the behavior of people they do not agree with.

Smokeskin wrote:

Almost everyone I know uses iPads or iPhones even though it is common knowledge they are produced under slavelike conditions in China. Maybe people aren't as opiniated as you think?

Not using an iPad has a cost, the absence of the rewards of using an iPad. Dinging someone (in a community where more people are on your side than on the side of the person you dinged) has no cost.

Smokeskin wrote:

Either way, the point is that few things will be just popularity contest (and having a single score reflect popularity is completely silly anyway, nobody will use that - people are different and like just as different types of people, though of course charismatic people will score higher in general). If you're going to decide if you want to help someone, you're going to be looking at how much he helped others or contributed, not if you or others agree with his opinions. Sure, that might affect your decision a bit, but if you really start to favor those you agree with, then the network will spot it and it will hurt you since those who disagree with you can tell you're not willing to reciprocate and they won't help you either.

You're assuming that the group will punish you for attempting to correct behavior the group wants corrected. That's naïve. If anything, the group will reward you for attempting to do that, and punish you for refusing to punish behavior that goes against the collective norms.

Smokeskin wrote:

So you'd prefer say post WWII England, where the war hero Turing was accused of being a homosexual and was sentenced to chemical castration, which drove him to homosexuality?

... no? When on Earth did I say that?

Smokeskin wrote:

If you live somewhere where the majority hates your guts, you're going to have problems. If you're among anarchists who don't believe in any sort of aggression against anyone, you're likely to be MUCH better off than if you're among statist who believe that their moral outlook gives them the right to commit violence against those who differ.

Every group has biases. Every group oppresses. That's why we need a system of economics and politics that minimizes the ability of the many to oppress the few. If the majority in a community hates my guts and wants to change my behavior, I can still make a decent living in a market economy. In a reputation economy, that will be almost impossible. (See above for my reasoning why.)

Smokeskin wrote:

Boycotts typically have zero cost (you just buy from a competitor). Dinging has practically no effect if only done by an individual.

Boycotts obviously involve costs to the people doing the boycotting. I don't see why I even have to explain that. As for dinging not having an effect, then why do people even ding? You can't both say that dinging will be used to punish assholes and that it's impossible to use it to punish behavior that goes against the norms of the community. Either dinging has an effect, or it doesn't. If it has an effect, it will be used to punish deviant behavior. If it has no effect, well, why would people ever ding in any situation whatsoever?

Smokeskin wrote:

I think you're seriously overestimating the amount of grief a few people can cause in a rep economy. Nothing suggests that they'd be able to influence anything on their own.

I have said several times that what worries me is the many oppressing the few. I'm not worried about homophobic Steve down the street dinging you whenever he sees you, I am worried about the homophobic community.

Smokeskin wrote:

You're arguing against your own, personal version of the rep system. The rep gain and loss tables doesn't agree with what you're saying, and you totally ignore the point I made - that people looking to do serious trade with you are going to care about your reputation as it is relevant to the trade and not what some kids on facebook thinks.

And you are ignoring that if people are handed a cost-free method of behavior correction, they will use it. Everything we know about human nature and rational behavior suggests that they will use it. Because there is not a single reason not to use it.

Smokeskin wrote:

Of course, notoriety MIGHT matter. As it does today. I recently saw a documentary on ex porn stars, and one got fired from her job when her employer discovered her past. Being unpopular CAN fall back on your business, today as in a rep economy.

But in a rep economy, the effects will be more severe, because popularity dictates your "bank account" (yes, I know you guys think happy bucks aren't real money, I don't care). See above for my explanation why the situations are different in a reputation economy and a market economy.

Smokeskin wrote:

But please stop making the mistake that your rep depends solely on what people on social media think of you. Both common sense and the rulebook says that rep is gained and lost by substantial actions instead.

Common sense, in that case, goes against everything we know about psychology and economics, as does the rulebook. I'll restate my main argument in this post: If given a cost-free method of behavior correction, people will use it.

Smokeskin wrote:

What you're saying is - if everyone thinks so little of you that they don't want to deal with you in any way, how will you get by? Let me ask you, what do you propose? That armed men in dark uniforms force other people to like you and do business with you? Is that how you solve it in a market economy (because I can't see how the exact same problem won't crop up in a market economy)? Everyone has a right run their own business succesfully, no matter how much of a dick you are and how much your products suck?

In a market economy, Alice can't remove the five bucks Bob put in my bank account. Hence the superiority of a market economy.

Smokeskin wrote:

What, capitalist societies have open borders now and just welcome any immigrant?

Immigration politics is really outside the scope of this thread. But I can say that I at least won't be exiled from my country of birth for holding unpopular opinions.

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

If you're trying to start a new life somewhere and you wind up somewhere you are massively unpopular, [i]you have chosen poorly![/i]Fortunately, you can try again. It's not like anarchists charge you anything to egocast off. Hell, like the book says, if someone doesn't want to be on their hab that badly, they don't want you there, either (and vice versa.) So if you know of or find somewhere else that will take you, they'll gladly send you on your way.

Actually, by the book, an egocast off is a level 5 favour. So let's say our hypothetical gay programmer ends up choosing an AA hab that just happens to be homophobic (failed his research test) Then our hypothetical programmer here will see his rep either not rise (if he was formerly PC, this would also explain the difficulty in choosing the right hab... PC types don't often get all the research data for individual AA habs) Or it is going to fall fairly fast. After all, negative testimonials are listed as being able to tank your rep into the gutter at freefall speeds (Rimward p179 Testify section, para 3) So it is safe to say that by the time our programmer realizes his dilemma, his rep will be 19 or less. With egocasting as a level 5 favour, he is at a minus 40 penalty to his networking: Autonomists check. He is unlikely to have that skill above 40 by this stage, which means his chance of success is 1%. In other words, it will take an average of 25 years for him to get off the hab.

i will also point out that the EP books do include people in this type of situation. the titanian commonwealth policy of "a body for every mind" has resulted in a significant number of re-instanced fall infuges living on titan while holding capitalist ideologies. they are unable to adapt well to the new economy and hate both the job they are doing and the fact that they will never likely earn the rep to get a better job. in the book one goes so fare as to say indenture on mars would be preferable because it has an end after witch he could earn property to improve his lifestyle. trying to emigrate because you disagree with local politics or social norms just isn't practical for those without the ability to obtain high value non essential services,

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

[b]Nobody wants this guy here.[/b] Not only do they not want him there, [i]he[/i] doesn't want him there. And do recall that the rep system is for getting things which are out-of-the-ordinary, or for queue jumping. [i]He can just get in the queue and get access to the farcaster like anybody else,[/i] and that's assuming that the people who find him so distasteful as to actually tank his rep for his sexual orientation don't jump him to the head of the line to get him the hell off their homophobia station. Then boom, he's on his way to Titan, or wherever, he's going to share his story about the homophobic assholes, and [i]his[/i] @-rep is going to sky-rocket as people hear what he's endured - and that [i]whole hab[/i] is going to find their @-rep under assault.

Once again, you're ignoring the problem of faction-wide biases (apart from the many, many problems I have already explained that follow from an economic system being based on Facebook chain letters and successful whiners being rewarded financially). You're just assuming that the vast majority of autonomists will be perfectly tolerant individuals that have somehow reached the inevitable cultural and moral end-point of all social evolution. Every group, now, in the past and in the future, will propagate bigotry. That's a fact as certain as scarcity, and any utopian movement that claims to have moved beyond bigotry is moronic as well as dangerous. You don't even have to be a bigot to use a cost-free method of behavior correction. Any group where the consensus is that a certain behavior should be avoided will use said cost-free method of behavior correction as a way of diminishing dissent from the consensus. That's simply rational. Any economic or political system unable to deal these fundamental facts of psychology and logic is inferior to an economic or political system able to deal with them. Despite what Smokeskin says, a mixed market economy has shown itself (relatively) able to allow unpopular individuals to prosper.

Smokeskin wrote:

And let us not forget, how would this gay person be doing if he egocasted to a homophobic democratic habitat? Going by current and past democracies' track records on it, he'd have to keep his sexuality hidden or risk jail, death or forced behavorial adjustment. Democracies typically have no qualms with oppression - it is in their very ideological nature that the majority has a moral right to oppress the rest. Something that is not the case in anarchism.

Anarchism, as described in the Eclipse Phase setting, is the very essence of democracy. It's mob rule. You can't uphold fundamental human rights in a community where the only force worth considering is the strength of the majority.

Smokeskin wrote:

If the whole anti-anarchism case rests on an argument along the lines of "what if someone finds themselves among people who utterly hates their guts", then there is no case. Nothing indicates that anarchism would be worse - and the basic principles of anarchism are in conflict with both homophobism or any other sort of bias (which people of course won't live fully up to, but it is still in stark contrast to modern democracies where many political parties run on a minority hate platform) and actually harming them in anyway (again in stark contrast to democracies).

There is no such thing as a bigotry-free community. I hope we can both accept that. And I have explained why an unpopular individual is able to prosper in a market economy. You have yet to explain how that person could prosper in a reputation economy.

Kremlin K.O.A. wrote:

Not necessarily. One could have a bigotry and hatred free society... It would be exhuman or posthuman, however.

My avatar's face perfectly conveys my response.

Alkahest wrote:

If I live in a market economy where 90% of the people I interact with dislike me and would like to use cost-free methods to change my (interaction-irrelevant) behavior, I can still make a decent living getting money from the 10% who do not dislike me. In addition to that, the 90% will have no cost-free method of behavior-enforcement that relates to my personal economy. (Boycotting is not cost-free. If you were going to use the services of A instead of B before you learned that A behaved in a way you wanted to change, you obviously had a reason to prefer A to B. Only if the psychological and/or social rewards of a boycott outweigh the rewards of those reasons will you switch from A to B.) If I live in a reputation economy, the 90% can completely destroy my personal economy, without any cost to themselves. No matter how much the 10% like me and want to reinforce my current pattern of behavior, they can't make up for the dislike of the 90%. That's simple mathematics, it's not a question of believing people will be more or less bigoted in the future. People will always try to change the behavior of others, as long as the rewards of attempting that change outweigh the costs. That's true now, and it will be true in the future. I can explain why unpopular people are not forced into poverty in a mixed market economy. Can you explain why they won't be forced into poverty in a reputation economy?

Yes, I can explain that. I've done so several times, and I've quoted the rep and gain losses on page 384 and 385. Your popularity DOES NOT equate to your rep score. Your rep score is mostly based on meaningful contributions or actual harm you've done. Look at page 384 and 385, it is right there in the book. I'll quote the rep losses intro: Rep losses are suffered by characters who fail to render aid when needed, lose professional credibility, make major or public blunders, doublecross their friends, and so on. Where does it say "hold controversial opinions" or whatever it is that you're worried about? And are you never going to do any of the things that gets you rep gains? You can keep on railing about the rep economy being a popularity contest, but that doesn't make it true. The books says it is not, common sense says it is not.

But abusing the rep system is something that lowers YOUR rep. So if you go around dinging people who you disagree with over something petty, it damages your rep. It isn't zero-cost. Petty gossip isn't zero-cost nor limited to rep economies. Market economies have gossip and being known as a gossip is harmful. If I slander someone or act petty, than people don't do business with me. Not zero-cost.

uwtartarus wrote:

But abusing the rep system is something that lowers YOUR rep. So if you go around dinging people who you disagree with over something petty, it damages your rep. It isn't zero-cost. Petty gossip isn't zero-cost nor limited to rep economies. Market economies have gossip and being known as a gossip is harmful. If I slander someone or act petty, than people don't do business with me. Not zero-cost.

I am not worried about the biases of an individual. I am worried about the biases of the group. The group has no reason to punish you for enforcing norms held by the group. If anything, it has a reason to punish you for not enforcing the norms. Why would a community go through the trouble of punishing those who punish those who deviate from the norms of the community? That makes no sense whatsoever. The community wants its norms to be upheld, it would be acting against its own collective self-interest by dinging those who ding dissenters.

Why should the size of my bank account depend on if I "do things that line up with an entire ideology" or not? That's a very dumb system. And yes, rep is equivalent to money. Having a low rep score is the same as being poor. You can't ideology your way out of scarcity.