lucyfersam wrote:

Actually, since we left the gold standard years ago, money is based on public perception (and really even the gold standard was based on the publics perceived value of gold). The only difference is that the majority of the public doesn't realize it.

Yes and no. While money's value is based intrinsically on how much we trade it for, it isn't really based on opinion. Money's value is intrinsically based on the flow of the market, and government regulation through setting interest, taxing, and shifting money through the banking system is how they control its value. As the money supply increases in relation to money stagnation (and other factors, such as counterfeiting), the value has to go down. Money increases in value when it is successfully pulled out of circulation without the need to put it back out... which rarely happens, but has on occasion. Of course, governments tend to want their money to gradually suffer price inflation, as it depreciates the value of debt overtime. Inflation also eases the potency of recessions.

lucyfersam wrote:

Also, you seem to be trying to make the mechanics reflect an ideal rep system. There is no reason whatsoever the mechanics should try to do this, as there is no evidence that the rep system in EP is anywhere near ideal. There are, and should be major flaws in how it works. It should be exploitable by the unscrupulous. Abuses of it should happen and should cause problems for those who live in it. As far as reputation systems becoming more rigid over time, such a concept is in no way mutually exclusive with having a high rep and screwing up once having a huge negative effect. Sure, a single bad rating isn't going to do much to you rep, but if you screw up publicly and piss a bunch of people off, you aren't going to get one bad review - you're going to get hundreds or even thousands depending on how bad and how well word spreads. This is an important drawback of rep systems, public perception is a fickle thing and that makes it a dangerous thing to base an economy on. In the end though, public perception is the final arbitrator of any economy - it's just a bit more obvious in a rep economy.

I'm not talking about an ideal rep system so much as a functional one. An economic model needs certain traits to be functional in a way that is usable. I'm not talking about a system that cannot be gamed... that's an impossibility. Even the bittorrent system I referenced earlier as a good guideline is capable of being gamed quite easily. I'm talking about a system that is stable enough to be representative of any form of purchasing power, of which a simple opinion system is simply too whimsical to work. A nation's currency technically only has value within its own borders: when a nation trades with other nations in currency, the value of its currency is based on the perceived economic power of said nation... its reputation. In effect, the global market and foreign exchange systems already are reputation systems based around entire nations as entities. The reputation systems of EP decentralize this concept, and make it so that every single person has their own economic power. This purchasing power, both in EP and today, cannot be based on public opinion to function; it would not make sense for the US Dollar to have any purchasing power in the majority of nations if public opinion truly decided its worth. This isn't to say that there can't be dramatic shifts in reputation that are influenced by public opinion. It happens in real life to the value of nations all the time. However, it shouldn't be "oh, there's an upskirt shot of you without panties, so you can't buy a house". It should be "oh, they found an army of molested child slaves in your basement, so your value has shot to crap" (this is basically what happened to the value of German money after WWII... it lost all spending power due to the holocaust leading to the creation of the German and East German Mark). When a reputation shoots up, it shouldn't be "oh, you gave everyone in the entire system a wonderful hallmark card, so you have the best reputation ever". It should be "you just successfully took controlling shares in the most powerful hypercorp in existence, and your rep has shot through the roof as a result". However, the largest majority of shifts in value should be miniscule and nearly inobservable. Reputations that fluctuate wildly (whether positively or negatively) have no value in an economic model.

lucyfersam wrote:

Those are things the central authority controlling the printing of money does to influence the public perception of it. The bottom line though is that a dollar only has value if people believe that they can trade in in for goods and services which represent real value; these actions by the central authority mix with other factors such as media perception of the economy to define the public's perception of the value of the dollar. Reputation systems remove the central authority from this and make it each individuals own PR capability mixing with basically the same set of external factors to define the publics perception of a persons value to society.

This is inherently true for every aspect of the economy. Any given good or service only has any real value so long as people believe they can exchange it for other goods and services... and what they are willing to part with in exchange for those goods is what defines the value. That's basic supply and demand, and it exists even within barter systems that have no currency. This is the reason for the transition to a reputation system in the first place. Currency economies cannot really handle any resource which is easily produced by anyone with no effort, and costs little to nothing in order to do so. Such is the issue already, as corporations wage a losing war against post-scarcity information on the internet.

lucyfersam wrote:

I don't think in most rep networks that an upskirt shot would have much of a negative impact on rep, those that it would be likely to any impact at all on are based in transitional economies anyway where a lot of money can buy you out of rep trouble. On the whole, I think the system presented in the book, when used with reasonable GM discretion, handles the situation pretty well. I don't think that it would be possible to make a good rep system that didn't rely fairly heavily on GM discretion without being very over complicated. Another thing to remember on judging the quality of the rep system in game - it has not been around for very long and has a fairly limited population base using it. It has a lot of growing to do in game before it can be considered a long term functional system and the only reason it is functioning at all in its current state is because it is totally unnecessary for basic survival. An economy that has to account for people's basic needs requires a great deal more stability than one that doesn't. On the whole, the rep system is considerably more volatile than a monetary economy, and will always be somewhat more volatile. It's biggest advantage over monetary systems though is that it doesn't require a constantly growing population base to function - and while that advantage is less important at this point post fall as humanity recovers from the fall, if humanity survives for another couple centuries it will be a very important advantage.

I agree that the only two options for a functioning rep system are to make it largely GM-managed or to make it very complex with a multitude of rules. However, it seems like they tried to make a compromise between the two that didn't work, by making a general set of fairly concrete rules that simply have too many holes within it. I would have rather had a very concise amount of information on how to govern a rep system as GM, with some info on how to use networking skills, with simple guidelines on when best to shift reputation scores rather than hard and fast mechanics for doing so. That, or I would have liked a more concrete and complex system. Something in the middle didn't really work in this case, because the concrete mechanics that were present were too simplified, yet they did not simply utilize pure GM discretion. Also, I disagree that the advantage of a rep system has anything to do with population growth. It has to do with adapting an economic model that is capable of handling post-scarcity goods, which currency models simply can't do. Population growth is an easy thing to cause, moreso when resources are easily acquired... if that were the only issue, then currencies could prevail well past the Fall. Unfortunately nanotechnology creates a new age of post-scarcity involving physical goods... and this is where the reputation system is necessary to prevent economic collapse.

root wrote:

In theory, the money piles up for the groups of people who add the most to society, in the societies that add the most to humanity, and all of it stretched over the course of millenia.

Seems someone have found a way to game this, big time, as of recent.