I would recommend reading "Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom," by Corey Dochtrow. It used to be free on the net... you should see if it's still around. It deals with this exact concept. Pretty much the entire book focuses on rep-based economy. I think the element that's missing from this model is that rep economies really only work (at least on any scale above a small group) in a post-scarcity situation. Rep based economy only works in a place where someone can function without *any* rep. In other words, food and energy and the basics to have a normal, happy life, are free, and you don't need rep for them. So if I have zero rep, or really crappy rep, I can take all the time I need, hanging out, room and board and entertainment and such taken care of. I can study up on the mesh, learn new skills, plan new projects, so that if I want, I can come back stronger into the rep market. *Or* I do some crap jobs. Again, in "Down and Out..." the people with some of the best rep currency are the ones who do the unpopular jobs that can't be done by automated machines. Nobody *wants* them, so the folks that do them earn crazy rep for them. And it's not skilled labor, or even dangerous. It's just... well, gross, or boring, or something like that. So you do that for a little bit, and you've got rep coming out your ears. Anyway, just some thoughts. I recommend that book. ;)

I suspect that post scarcity is a falacy. Energy and materials are in limited supply at any particular habitat. Some habitats will have more of one or the other than another habitat wich will make trade in actual goods, (even Pareto optimal trade) necessary. 1) there would be no asteroid wranglers otherwize. 2) there would be no huge progects that involve scooping heilium3 out of the atmosphere of Saturn. 3) nano scale construction is easily destroyed by heat so you can't argue that recycleing is 100% efficient. Then there are many scarce resources that are semi-intangible (if you'll allow me to use that phrase) 4) Time on the CM it'self is limited unless you have limitless CM's wich you can't because you can't have limitless energy. 5) biomorphs are scarce 6)Personal space is scarce. And finaly the Rep ecconomy only works up to a certain threshold of complexity in cooperative efforts. The reason anarchism works out sometimes is because there's a small enough populaton atempting the practice. There are many things that can only be accomplished by large scale cooperation. Large scale cooperation makes Currency the most efficient means of remuneration. Large scale Cooperation+Currency = Corperations. So I predict that the 'new ecconomy' will eventually evolve into a 'transitional ecconomy' once the outer system reaches a certain population dencity and/or war breaks out.

standard_gravity wrote:

Given the above, a rep economy seem more oppressive. The successful, ambitious, skilled etc will naturally obtain more rep, and thereby more power. That rep is tied to you – once you are recognized as a low rep person, this is what YOU are, and you will be treated accordingly. In a “capitalistic” economy, at least you are (or rather: your credit status is) more anonymous, and you can always in any way obtain money and thereby power / freedom.

Rep can be fixed. You can put in some time polishing the bulkheads or come up with an awesome new VR game, so long as you learn to take your lumps. (Incidentally, if you're a hypercorp indenture, I'd question the idea that you're always able to obtain money. Hypercapitalism is a tool of power for the elites, remember.)

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In other words, as the core book says, a rep economy is "more stable", but clearly this is not very pleasant for the people in the economy. If you are unsuccessful, unskilled, anti-social in an autonomous hab (or perceived as such by others) you are fucked forever, to put it bluntly. The powerful will rule and there is no guarantee that they are any nicer than the powerful in the inner systems.

Yes, there is. I'll bet you credits to catgirls that total asses don't reach the high end of the rep scale. Even in places where the culture encourages a lively degree of taking the piss with each other (Something Awful or Australia, for instance), you'll find that there's still lines to cross and people who are genuinely and actively malicious will get smacked down for it, even if they are kicking on total outcasts. Particularly because a lot of people with high rep will have gotten -to- a high rep by being extremely nice and friendly to everyone, including kids, newbies and outcasts. There's truth in what you're saying, in that the rep economies are highly tribal and that outcasts and the unskilled have no place in Locus. Hypercorps provide security and stability for those individuals not fit for Locus; do your job, get your check, buy what you need, don't make waves and maybe you'll move up. If you want to live in Anarchist territory, you've got to be able to pull your weight for the community and do most of what you need yourself (with the help of more cornucopia machines and AI assistance than you know what to do with). If you can do that, of course, then in terms of material wealth and personal freedom you'll probably be far better off than in the inner system. (And, of course, Titan more or less provides the best of both worlds: an even better safety net than in hypercorp space and the freedom and wealth of the new economy. Titan is a -sweet- place to live.)

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This is not to say that I do not agree with the other parts of EP anarchism, e.g. open-source ideas (including availability of cornucopia machines), individual freedom of choice or individual freedom from coercion. To withhold technology from people, as the powers that be in the inner system do, is terrible (although it strikes me as very unrealistic development of a capitalistic society).

Trust me, it's truth in television. That said, hypercapitalism isn't free-market capitalism, it's the cartel capitalism of the Gilded Age, and markets are only free to the extent that that freedom supports the hypercorps.

Ramidel wrote:

Yes, there is. I'll bet you credits to catgirls that total asses don't reach the high end of the rep scale.

Highschool and every thing that comes after it in human experience tells us that this is [i]absolutely[/i] oposite of the truth. I had to fight all the time, just to be left-the-fuck-alone, having any reputation aside from that was not even an option. The truth is that REP in any system is heavily influenced by Popularity. My experience is that the high reputation that gives you access has very little to do with your skills or success but rather other's perceptions of your skills and success. The Very Purpose of benevolent anarchism is to accept and hold dear the dissposessed. If it turns out that the success of Locus is based entirely on 'cool' people who all have above average SAV and COG I will instantly make a character who's sole purpose in life is to NUKE That FUCKER. :D I'm certain that that's not the claim here but it kinda sounds like that.

OneTrikPony wrote:

Highschool and every thing that comes after it in human experience tells us that this is [i]absolutely[/i] oposite of the truth. I had to fight all the time, just to be left-the-fuck-alone, having any reputation aside from that was not even an option. The truth is that REP in any system is heavily influenced by Popularity. My experience is that the high reputation that gives you access has very little to do with your skills or success but rather other's perceptions of your skills and success.

To an extent, except that the question becomes "access to what?" High rep individuals aren't in a position to exert significant force on anyone without the will of the community behind them. Locus' version of Obama isn't going to be able to go into a neighboring part of Locus and shoot someone without the guy's personal friends and family, if nobody else (and there will be "somebody else"es), saying "hey, back the hell off, loser." And the majority of Locus' community leaders of high reputation are very strongly against anything beyond pistols at dawn, because if Locus were overrun by tribal conflict we'd know that and Locus would have melted apart by now. (Yes, the setting assumes that New Economy transhumanity is mostly composed of responsible adults. Cynical as we might like to be, there it is.)

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The Very Purpose of benevolent anarchism is to accept and hold dear the dissposessed. If it turns out that the success of Locus is based entirely on 'cool' people who all have above average SAV and COG I will instantly make a character who's sole purpose in life is to NUKE That FUCKER. :D I'm certain that that's not the claim here but it kinda sounds like that.

Can I give you a discount on WMDs? They're pointed at Mars and several hypercorp habitats. You'll need to get quite far down the list before Locus hits your sights. ^^ Seriously, it is the case that people who -nobody- will protect have no rights. The followers of Locus' majority community memes may disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. Similarly, serious harassment -will- lead to a "hey, knock it off" from someone important. Now, I realize that they're going to be looser on this than, say, modern high school; Locus will probably have an Internet-level tolerance for jackassery. But actual use of force will lead to consequences.

standard_gravity wrote:

Let’s take another example. Imagine that I am a great morph sculptor and you would like my services. Imagine you are a pleasure pod :). We could both trade our skill sets with each other, but _only_ provided I want pleasure from you. If I don’t, the rep system assumes that I would provide my services to you for free simply because you provide pleasure to others. I see this working in a small, close-knit society, but it would be impossible in a large habitat. At the very least, in any society over say 1,000 habitants it would be so impractical that I cannot see this system being used when there’s free competition with alternative systems, e.g. monetary ones

I'm not so sure that it's a direct trade so much as trading through the network itself. So rather than my asking you for a favor/services, I'm asking you as a 'friend of a friend of a friend' with the exchange of services occurring all along the chain. The rep system abstracts that chain by providing a way of assessing how helpful someone has been in the past to others in the network, thus given an indication of the number of favors that can be called in. Does this scale beyond a tribe? Hard to say, but certainly more so than the assumption of a 1:1 exchange of services (i.e. barter). Does this work for large scale projects? Again difficult but what you more likely have is a group of people in effect pooling their rep to gain access to the resources necessary to achieve the goal. In this case, they might not be trading direct goods or services for resources so much as the promise of future value (staked by their reputation for delivery of past goods or services) or overall benefit to the community. Will there be a leader or leaders? Yes. Will they be the most charismatic or able to get a coalition to work together for more than individual good? Yes. Does that mean that they'll be more cutthroat? I don't think so. The rep economy is based on trust. Someone who fails to deliver (whether through incompetence, bad luck or intent) on their promises gets their rep dinged. Get dinged too much and you're blacklisted - might as well emigrate to another habitat or the Inner System and start over, though bad rep will travel before you even faster than good. Rep isn't fungible in the way that currency is, true enough. It is personal and requires the individual to be accountable for their actions. If the pinnacle of society in the rep economy is a high rep, it can only be achieved by actively eschewing the wealth (material and otherwise) that people think you're worthy of (read the first couple of sections of Accelerando by Charles Stross for a pretty clear example. Manfred has such a high rep because he gives everything away). Once you've acquired it, however, you can't simply hand it over to someone else. So you can't fund that starship project with your accumulated wealth, but you can call in all of those favors to mobilize the resources and personnel necessary to make it happen. I'm not sure how that's oppressive?

Wow, interesting discussion. I was heavily involved in designing the rep system, so I'll throw in my .02TKroners on this. I hope I won't disappoint anyone by not actively joining the debate, but time is limited. So I'm just gonna throw some chum in the shark tank and then go back to working on Project Hotfix. :) 1. Is the rep system better than using currency? Is it better than market capitalism? As someone rightly pointed out, these are two different questions, as money is just a tool for trying to measure someone's wealth and purchasing power. In some respects, yeah, rep is just money. It's easy to forget, though, that in the real world, people are -really- irrational about their money. It has symbolic value that ties in to a persons sense of self worth, their willingness to take risks, and all of the other stuff that behavioral economics tries to study. So for the mass of humanity (who don't see life as a point-buy system the way some of us gamers do... heh), rep is a huge symbolic shift. I'm not an anarchist; I'm more of a social democrat (blame me if you don't like Titan). I don't have any fixed assumptions that a rep economy is better, but I definitely think it's worth experimenting with in the context of a game. Just look at Kronos Cluster; it's like the anti-Locus -- a fairly crappy place to live where anarchist ideals have not worked out and the rep economy serves people poorly. Finally, remember that the Titanians have their own monetary system; they just don't use it for day-to-day transactions. It's for big stuff like investing in infrastructure. For an example of this at work in another fictional setting, see Bruce Sterling's _Holy Fire_, which was one inspiration for the Titanian social money system. 2. Rep economies are not a lefty idea. You don't have to be a starry-eyed anarchist to see a rep economy as a likely eventuality. If any of you follow our Facebook page, I posted a video on there from a talk I did to Social Media Club Boston about augmented reality: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.vimeo.com%252F765... My part on AR is going to be kind of a snore to EP fans; what's more interesting is the second guy who talked. He's a banker here in Boston, not a sci-fi geek as far as I know, and [b]he's talking about rep economies.[/b] His way of looking at it is much different from ours, but when I asked him whether he thought rep could ever simply replace money, he didn't blink. He thinks they're likely to become so closely tied that sitting on a huge pile of currency will be of little use if you're not in the rep game, too. 3. Have you guys played with the system, and if so, how's it working out for you? I've been running an EP campaign since 2007, and I think it's pretty playable (but I'm obviously biased). We had to make some trade-offs in the interest of game balance, though. In a real rep economy, everything you get with rep wouldn't convert neatly to a fixed cost in credits the way it does in EP. 4. The macroeconomics of the game and how rep plays out are broadly subject to GM interpretation. First off, let me admit to a flaw in the game -- and then try to put a positive spin on it. :) You guys have already put your collective fingers on it in this thread: The underlying macroeconomic assumptions of the game are inconsistent in some respects. Fortunately, I think they're inconsistent in a way that will only drive the economic thinkers among us nuts; most gamers can just go on with their day, because it doesn't screw up things like gear costs and game balance. Part of it was a design problem. I wrote the solar system gazetteer, which probably contains the most description within the Core book materials of where the solar system's resources are, how H+ is going about exploiting them, and how this has played out in terms of where people live and how dense populations are. John Snead wrote up most of the gear and space ships. He and I never really agreed on how important Helium 3 would be to future macroeconomics. At the time we wrote the core book, I was taking kind of a Zubrinist "Saturn is the Persian Gulf of the Solar System" position, while Snead was assuming other forms of fusion were more plausible for wide adoption. Rob never really came down on either side (which I don't fault him for -- on a busy production schedule, it was kind of a small detail relative to putting out a playable game), so the inconsistency stands for now. It'll probably get patched up some in forthcoming books. Either way, scarcity isn't defeated, but it's on the run in this setting. How this plays out on the micro level, when you're dealing with individual tribes and habitats, is totally up to the GM. I think it's good that it's kind of chaotic, because it gives GMs a lot of potential story hooks. Trade between the inner and outer systems, with the Extropians in the middle, provides some dramatic tension in the game. The outer system needs nickel-iron asteroids; the inner system needs water and ammonia ice comets for their terraforming efforts. What will they exchange when they don't have a common currency? New product designs? Alien artifacts? Recovered TITAN technology? Likewise, the tensions between different economic blocks create a battleground on which Firewall agents may frequently find themselves picking up the pieces. Anyhoo, I'm glad this has spawned so much discussion, and if people have examples of how rep has worked out for them in play, I'd love to hear them.

So, if I want to be a lazy douche-bag and do nothing but eat and sleep, I should go to a faction that supports me in spite of whatever rep I may have? On the other hand, if I want to be a pure individualist, and provide strictly for myself and build my own economy and my own property, that means my rep might not be so good, so I might want to go somewhere where what I trade is more important than whatever social rep I might have, provided I'm honest enough.

standard_gravity wrote:

So removing money from the new economies give rise to a lot of problems. For example, there are no prices as such in a rep economy. But as established in the posts above, certain things cannot be produced for free in cornucopia machines, even if all blueprints are free and open source. Examples are very large objects (e.g. starships) or things that require unusual raw materials. Also important/secret information and services can be added to the list. (Briefly discussed here: http://www.eclipsephase.com/new-economy-and-item-cost). In such cases, the person (consumer) must use Rep to hopefully achieve his ends. (And burn a lot of rep, judging by the core book.) The problem with Rep is that is focuses only on the consumer, not the producer. It only tells us who “deserves” goods and services the most, not what people want (i.e. not what should be produced or provided). Prices in a monetary economy are invaluable sources of information: they tell producers what to produce and in what quantity (economics 101). How does an anarchist habitat with limited recourses (raw materials and energy) know if they should produce that starship or instead 14 shuttles? How does it prioritise? And how do members of that habitat know what other members want in terms of, say, services from him? Should he give legal advice, bookkeeping services, become a stand-up comedian? Similarly to a monetary system, a system of pricing is an economic tool, not oppressive capitalistic humbug.

I think what you're overlooking is that the resource budget allotted to even a zero-rep person in the average "new economy" hab, while technically limited by resources and therefore not post-scarcity, is effectively post-scarcity in that it's still far more than a person is likely to use for any but the most outlandish personal needs and desires. And rep itself IS a form of pricing. In order to do something that's going to severely cut into the hab's overall resource budget, or in order to get a service that's not widely available, you're going to have to spend some of your rep as a way of convincing people that you deserve this particular item. The better your rep with a group, the more willing its members are to trust that you know what you're doing and give you what you want. And as far as a member of the habitat figuring out what services or specialty goods the other members want, that's incredibly easy. They just go onto the local section of the Mesh and look at whatever the EP equivalent of a bulletin board is to see what services people are asking for, as well as what services people are actually offering. Sifting through this data on a day-to-day basis is probably something that most people end up delegating to their muses, taking a more personal interest only when they're looking for something very, very specific.

OneTrikPony][quote=Ramidel wrote:

Highschool and every thing that comes after it in human experience tells us that this is [i]absolutely[/i] oposite of the truth. I had to fight all the time, just to be left-the-fuck-alone, having any reputation aside from that was not even an option. The truth is that REP in any system is heavily influenced by Popularity. My experience is that the high reputation that gives you access has very little to do with your skills or success but rather other's perceptions of your skills and success.

The way I read it, it doesn't precisely work like that. I understand rep as something you earn, not just popularity. That douche from high school might be popular and manipulative, but he doesn't have a high rep - he just knows how to throw what little he has around, whereas you skimped on your social skills and might not be as capable of drawing on your larger bundle of rep. (I don't need to imply anything here, just using that example, even though EP isn't high school.)

standard_gravity wrote:

Also politicians of today (elected by the populace as they are) are extremely “nice and friendly”, yet they bomb innocent people, put people in prison although they have not harmed others, force you to fight their wars, steal around half of your wealth etc etc. In ALL societies in (trans?)human history, our leaders have been charismatic, scheming, social animals. Even most dictators (although judged as monsters by later generations) often seemed very friendly and nice to contemporaries.

Many, if not most, of those politicians are old money. It seems that in an economy where rep is the focus, you have to stand on your own legs. There's probably no helping that family and friends can and will help out, but if you're utterly incapable of earning rep yourself, you probably can't get anywhere in such an economy. I doubt it'd be perfect in this regard, but I do think it'd be more "fair" than a monetary based economy.

Wayfinder wrote:

So, if I want to be a lazy douche-bag and do nothing but eat and sleep, I should go to a faction that supports me in spite of whatever rep I may have? On the other hand, if I want to be a pure individualist, and provide strictly for myself and build my own economy and my own property, that means my rep might not be so good, so I might want to go somewhere where what I trade is more important than whatever social rep I might have, provided I'm honest enough.

Like Ramidel said, it doesn't seem to be that simple. Unless you were born into wealth, you have to pull your weight... anywhere but Titania. Titania takes care of its dregs, which is one of the problems they have. You can't just show up on their doorstep and head for the fridge, though. Unless you were born there, you have to earn your citizenship... so you'd be forced to make an effort initially, at least. I don't really understand what you mean by the second part. If you perform a valuable service, you'll earn rep, which can be used to get the goods you desire. To get a low rep, you'd have to burn it... but you could have the same issues elsewhere. Living above your means, all that.

standard_gravity wrote:

I believe this could work in a small community, perhaps even in a mid-sized one if there is a strong-enough sense of communal purpose or feeling of “we-against-the-universe”, but beyond that I maintain that it goes against the very nature of (trans)humans. I am happy to be proven wrong here - how would you (in theory and in game) rationalize that your nomadic, wild scum NPC would sacrifice his time or material wealth in favour of a barsoomian settler or a titanian bureaucrat PC? What do these people have in common other than a mutual distrust for inner system politics?

I thought about that, but it does make some sense. I still think some negative modifiers would in order, but they do know they're in it together... and more importantly, that if you help them, they'll help you. The network tracks it, and someone else from your society might be needing something.

standard_gravity wrote:

Lets say you invested as lot and pulled some strings and asked for a few favours to start a new venture, and it failed. You may as well move to the inner systems, get a fake ID or kill yourself (your ego, that is). In a capitalist economy it would be more like "ouch, that'll hurt, better luck next time". I am aware that reality (in EP...) is more nuanced, but it strikes me that the basic premise is such.

I didn't get that feeling at all. I guess it'd depend how you set it up. Did you burn all your rep on a get rich quick scheme? Anyhow, I don't see why a monetary system would automatically be more forgiving. Declaring bankruptcy and moving on might not be an option - you might be stuck with that debt for the rest of your life... in which case a rep system would be a good deal "nicer." Well, sorry about the spam. I'm a little ashamed about that, but hey. Oh, disclaimer: I might not know what I'm talking about, but at least that's how I understood it.

I think it requires some effort to earn rep, and that it isn't just "fame" or what you'd call it. I see it as "value to community." As for the war hero example, that's fairly simple. If your community were, say, fighting the Jovians, battling them would fairly quickly lose any rep you had with the Jovs, while you'd gain some in your own community. There's several kinds of rep in the game, after all, and the GM can split it into more groups if he wants to. I'll quickly agree that rep wouldn't work in the real world (certain similarities to our reliance on paperless money aside). EP has the advantage of a low-scarcity setting, as well the muses. Favors and reputation is quickly and easily dealt with, since the muses can navigate that twisted web of favors and overall worth, and no doubt trade a few favors here and there as a matter of course. Take away all the muses, and I think all the new economies would come crashing down in minutes. Regardless of which means of trade you pick, it'll naturally have advantages and disadvantages. I mean, say, bartering means you'll have objects with inherent worth. I don't see rep as a perfect means of transaction - it certainly has disadvantages. I don't agree with webs of favors being a large problem in game context, although the added emphasis on persuasiveness certainly is. You do need to get them to take the favor, after all. Still, I suppose I'd prefer to live in a society with such economics (again, assuming everyone had muses). There's certainly a better safety net. Of course, when it comes to PCs, it's a different matter. Credits is pretty much a universal currency, allowing greater (or at least easier) mobility, emergency spending sprees (whereas rep has to "recharge" or suffer loss), etc. All very useful traits for player characters.