I find the current writeup of Titanian economics tantalizing, because on one hand there seems to be an interesting idea there, on the other hand there are things that do not make much sense. Pegging the Kroner to qubits? That would make it vulnerable to inflation as qubit manufacturing improves. Why not have it a fiat currency, or pegged to reputation? Or is there some economical self-organization happening so that as the economy expands the price of qubits is going to remain steady? A reputation economy is by no means a trivial system, partially because real social reputations are multidimensional (my rep as a scientist is *way* better than my rep as an administrator), partially because there has to be some normalization (What if I gave *everybody* great rep scores? What happens when new people appears? The solution is likely to use something like the PageRank algorithm to renormalize the rep despite the arrival of new people or unwise rep blogging), damping (see the discussion in this thread about rep decay) and of course gaming the system. There are also the political and moral problems - in a money economy I can get services from people who despise me because we trade through the neutral means of money. In a rep economy we would be unwilling to trade - I am not going to give *them* a high score just because I got a gadget from them, and they are not willing to give me a gadget because they think I am a blasphemous pervert. And so on. Maybe one way of constructing a technosocialism would be IOUs (which would be a bit of a return to Marx labour theory of value :-) ) Everybody have their own "currency" of promises to do things that can be called in by other people. We had a system like that in our homebrewed game setting InfoWar: http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/InfoWar/economics.html Not quite a reputation economy - reputations are what change the relative value of your IOUs - but there is a solid foundation to the economy (people's or groups' ability to do things). So maybe this is what the TC does: it organizes, monitors and guarantees the rep and IOU exchange so that it is reliable, transparent and efficient. Essentially it is a giant rep server, making it hard to promise things that cannot be held or spam reputation. Beside the rep/ious generated by prosocial activities (after all, most people want to do some things other people need) the TC also gets a rep/iou "tax" from running the system, which is used for the running of the government and to fund microcorps. I am very interested in seeing more thinking about microcorps, since my players are going to be interacting a lot with one in the next few sessions.

The kroner is most likely to be used as an external trading currency, since the TC wouldn't want to denominate in credits even when trading with the PC (dollarization probably does nasty stuff even to post-scarcity economies...). Other autonomists probably price their shipments of bulk commodities in kroner when convenient. The TC might run one or several autonomist commodity clearing houses. That way it might be easier for the Hubbard-La Vey Grotto Combine to trade with the Rationalist Free Society for regolith. When it comes to Microcorps one wonders whether everything is run as corps, or if you have some institutions who are more equal than others. Central institutions would be the Bank of Titan, intimately connected to (but maybe not synonymous to) the basic mesh infrastructure needed to run titanian-style cyberdemocracy. Below the fold we have the big-dog projects. The defense array and the gate operator corp would rank here. One feature of the microcorp system is its ability to run parallel state functions. You probably have a slew of espionage and dirty-tricks micros. But how would the Titanian model cope under pressure? Since The Fall, this has most likely been a must-have feature in any social model worth its salt. The easy way would be to say that in the event of a catastrophe overwhelming the cyberdemocratic decision-model, some sort of executive power would be vested with a limited group. Most autonomists would be quick to point out that generals in bunkers were what got us into the whole TITAN mess to start with. Another way would be to implement "war-rep". A distributed defense model where successful strategies get rewarded and emulated yet every pre-existing social group/indivudual is free to decide what to do. These two strategies are likely to be good at countering different sorts of threats, so plans for both are likely to be waiting on the shelves. --Muse Interrupt-- -Commonwealth Decision Engine Infrastructure Vote Request- --Priority One One One-- A vote has been proposed and put forth. Decision time is 02 seconds. See MSH LCTN for detailed summary. Text of proposal as follows: Which if any emergency protocol should be run by our commonwealth? 1. E-prot Distribute 2. E-prot Concentrate 3. None 1. Selected --Simulation ends-- Thank you for participating in a civic readiness drill. Your tithe status has been updated accordingly. /H

I have to admit that in the beginning of looking through Eclipse Phase, I fell in love with it but I had no idea how to implement it. So I got to do a LOT of reading over the concepts and the genre. The thing is in non capitalist societies like the old Soviet Union production is king, the success of your society is not measured in money but in production (which is why they had so many tanks back in the cold war.) The trouble was always balancing personal ambition with the needs of the state. In a capitalist society the part that makes you want to surpass yourself is that possibility of more material gain. You work hard, you get more stuff (at least that's the theory). In a communist society what you can hope for is a pat on the back by the state, which...isn't that much. So what I'm thinking is that the Commonwealth balances work on infrastructures (pumping Hydrocarbons, asteroid wrangling, making morphs) with a lot of free time in which to pursue your own ambitions and studies. And that's where the microcorps come in. I see them more as "semi-pro" organizations or working in a way similar to a co-op. Mostly a "you want something done differently, do it yourself and if the people like it, you'll get asked to do more." Eventually that gets you a reputation for getting things done, so people invest their belief and their "Wuffie" in a way, in you and your projects, out of trust. This eventually opens doors for you in the form of +Rep. So you'd have two different things: Infrastructure run by the state with big projects like ensuring that everyone is fed, sheltered and clothed, emergency response teams, Hospitals, law enforcement agencies, materials allocation, safety inspections and project licensing. Then you have these Microcorps that is basically a bunch of like minded individuals with an idea. For example, this girl taking classes in haute couture wants to create a line of clothing that has integrated wings for flying in Titan low G. She needs people that know aerodynamics, memory metals, biology (to emulate birdflight) and she does the design itself. They work hard, use some rep to get the word out talk a few high rep people into trying out the winged clothes and all of a sudden, she not just a student at TAU, she the rising star of the Icarus Ascending clothing line. the rest of her crew get to say "we worked on the Icarus Asending line" and get asked to other project. But maybe two days a week they still have to go around with the sonic resonator and check for microfractures in the habitat dome. But here's what can happen: so someone wants to have the new Icarus Plus prototype clothing from next fall line that has tiny thrusters. "Okay I'll make you a deal, I'll do that boring stuff with the microfractures so you can have more time working on the line, but in return you gimme the blueprints so I can get myself an early set of wings." And so on goes the rep thing! You do crappy work but you get some awesome stuff or kudos or recognition, or sex, or a better job.

Sounds good to me! I have to admit that I can't really take that much credit for the work time/tax idea. Actually the Egyptians did that. The taxes were actually a fine, they much preferred having laborers than money (considering they really liked large construction projects.) Up to a certain point the medieval people did this too on a local level, it beats giving the lord one of the two sheep you own! Peasants didn't have that much liquidity and mostly bartered for goods. A lot of time were spent on their own fields, which usually weren't that great. What else did they give the lord of the manor? Their manure from the animals. So in this case it isn't "don't give me your shit" ...it's "give me your shit!" Stealing manure was such a problem that they even had laws and fines relating directly to stealing the Lord's manure... that's a hard life when your waste isn't even your own! Then again on a space habitat the water probably gets reclaimed quite a few times...so, the more things change...

A word on microcorps... A corporation (including a microcorp) is simply a legal entity given all of the same legal rights and privileges of a transhuman. Unlike a transhuman, a microcorp's identity is less transitory, and easier to establish. A microcorp never has to die, it never gets backed up or forked. It never creates legal conundrums that cost a dozen Expensive favors to lawyers to sort out. Microcorps can serve as our placeholder in the world of laws. Establish your microcorp as the holder of your assets, and define who has access to the microcorp, based on some testable method. Forked? NO problem, a check of your brainwaves proves your access to the microcorp, if not your identity. Programmed some children? Your standard personal microcorp accounts for that, and distributes inheritance based on the psychological needs and percentage of genetic inheritance of the offspring. Microcorps can be pre-designed to meet just about any situation, and are compatible across almost all legal systems. Everyone with any assets should have at least one microcorp to their name. It's not a question of production (incorporation never was), it's a question of protection.

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A corporation (including a microcorp) is simply a legal entity given all of the same legal rights and privileges of a transhuman.

I think that the system you describe in your post fits a lot more for someplace like Extropia where a system of laws is pretty much holding everything together, anything goes as long as it's in the contract. Personally I don't think the mircocorp itself is as you describe but more like it was originally before it became a "person". It began as a charter that was assigned for a limited time in order for many people to work together towards a common commercial goal. Given today's definition of corporation as a legal entity it gives rise to entirely too many legal loopholes that corporations enjoy. For a direct cyberdemocracy like the Commonwealth I don't see them as putting up with legal shenanigans for long. The rep system is an effort to make people accountable for themselves while giving a corporation a legal identity is in fact the reverse and used in effect to keep individuals in the company from being accountable for their own decisions while hiding behind a corporate aegis. So actually the very protection that you say everyone would have access to would be the very reason why the corporation legal personae would have been overturned. However as I said earlier that would be practically perfect for trade capital like Extropia where there are already so many people enjoying the benefits of corporate protection that it would only be logical for it to be accessible to everyone. I would even picture a holding company that would take care of such individual/corporation exactly as you describe. I just don't see it for someplace with more of a socio-anachist bent. In a way I almost see thet Commonwealth as a lawyerless society where laws are written in "plain english" (or at least plain language) as opposed to legalese especially so that law and it's enforcement can be more easily explained to the very Laymen that are voting it's implementation. So I picture them as having democratized not only the political system but the legal system as well.

Rhyx wrote:

Given today's definition of corporation as a legal entity it gives rise to entirely too many legal loopholes that corporations enjoy.

However, it would probably be the dominant definition. The Consortium is made up by, and to serve corporations. Every corp bigwig is going to want the corporate protections applied to his personal wealth, so they'll be fully respected throughout the PC and Luna. Extropia, you already mentioned. The Junta owes its legal system to old Earth systems, with (presumably) minimal changes, and still has a strong power hierarchy. So most likely they still respect microcorps. They don't deal with forking issues though, and really I've never heard the powers of an LLC be a major political issue, especially when contrasted with say the destruction of the planet. Morningstar is an offshoot of the PC, and was established by corporations. It's working hard to encourage entrepeneurial investment. They also have all of the same issues with forks that the PC has. So they're going to respect microcorps. So all we have left is the system past Jupiter (plus scummers and a few other hold-outs). All of these places still deal with the same issue. I fork myself. I' is saying all my possessions are mine, so I get to keep them. I'' is saying the same thing. Who wins? What happens in cases like banyan intelligences? What happens when one fork dies? Sure would be handy if I'd written everything down beforehand! And that's what a microcorp does. It says "no matter how many forks there are or what they're saying, this is how these assets are divided". It's really the easy answer, and if it's done prior to forking, all forks have 'agreed' to it already. Banning microcorps DECREASES freedom and increases judiciary costs.

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The rep system is an effort to make people accountable for themselves while giving a corporation a legal identity is in fact the reverse and used in effect to keep individuals in the company from being accountable for their own decisions while hiding behind a corporate aegis

The rep system has no impact on anyone who choses to work anonymously, and never has. If a person creates an anonymous account to do business under, that confers the same benefits as a modern corporation in a reputation economy. However, that's not what I'm talking about. A microcorp exists as a legal entity meant to manage the financial investments of a single individual. It doesn't production. BP isn't a microcorp. As long as people have dispersed investments and identities, microcorps will be the smartest solution to the problem. As long as groups of people wish to work together to make a product, corporations will be the smartest solution to THAT problem. The laws around them may shift, but the basic concepts will not.

Rhyx wrote:

In a communist society what you can hope for is a pat on the back by the state, which...isn't that much.

I have an experience of living both under communism and capitalism...communism wasn't so bad honestly to many people, you didn't have much, but than again you didn't have to fight your way through life like in capitalism.

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And so on goes the rep thing! You do crappy work but you get some awesome stuff or kudos or recognition, or sex, or a better job.

Rep system is a pretty dystopic one-and one we can "enjoy" somewhat in current job market-people without your qualifications or skills can be of higher position just because they slept with somebody important or have well connected parents. If whole economy is based on rep, that's a quite ruthless system. There is no greater beast than man fighting against man for social dominance.

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that's a hard life when your waste isn't even your own!

Nothing strange-in my country you can't produce your own electricity without paying tax for it(in other words-you wouldn't be able to generate wind power on your own for personal use-you have to register it and pay appropriate amount of tax based on your power output).Seems similiar.

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Now take a society that no longer has any fear of sexually transmitted diseases, give them about three day workweeks, give them the capacity of creating whatever they would like. I think it's only natural that sex would come out as a favored pastime. Now there are certain people that have traits (artificial or inborn) that make them sought out as lovers (let's take the Sylph's Striking Looks for example). Those people are rare and sought out and as such become a resource that can be used to gain rep

Sex is quite a viscious thing-it leads to murder, hate, addictions and so on. The situation described by you seems like a standard version of aristocracy with small elite group of people holding power through means of control(in this case sexual favours). Quite a dystopic society, although I would guess that is plausible scenario.

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Given this you don't need to put sexuality as an outright reward or treat given by the state. The rep social culture will take care of this on it's own through relationships and dating

And we all know how dating and relationships are care free and easy to achieve for all people ;) I can already see the ugly, non-attractive masses plotting to overthrow the regime of the sexy Eloi ;) After all, even in EP the sexual race will exist with best attractive biomorphs and synths being above the ones available to common people. Which brings me to interesting offtopic-I guess some people would create a sexless society.Wonder how that would look like.

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There is no economic system that humans can theorize that will not result in SOMEONE trying to game the system, with or without consequences.

Who would game who in habitat-wide hive mind made of alpha forks and clones?

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I'd argue that someone who gets a job because they have connections and aren't actually good at will quickly lose Rep

Oh, that's the easiest problem to avoid-you just hire people who are good at it for the person who is bad about. He uses his personal connections to stay at the top of his team/office/department while his subordinated work for him. That's quite normal in corps.

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Can you imagine the backlash to their Rep and the Reps of those in charge if it was discovered that someone was put in power without qualifications because of favouritism?

I imagine a system where nobody cares, because everybody is corrupt by Rep system or hopes to benefit from it-to put a real world example the widescale personal abuses in countries like Italy or Poland are quite known to the public, which mostly simply doesn't care. And it actually Rep system will enforce that-who cares if senator Gruding doesn't know a bit abut economy-he has the connections in glitterati that will get me a good position if I will support him. And the people? Well they just will care to get their piece of the pie-and anyway who wants to oppose people with such great Rep that can destroy you? The belief that people seeing corruption will protest and overthrow the corrupt is somewhat naive and I would say Anglo-Saxon one. There are societies where corruption is tolerated and simply neglected. While of course we assume Titanian society is more like Scandinavian one, the whole idea of Rep system in my culturally-biased-non-anglo-saxon eyes is breeding ground for splendid corruption, nepotism and cronyism.

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I can imagine whole mesh-sites dedicated to exposing such things

You can google dozens of Berlusconi's blunders, corruption, sexists remarks-and yet he is still supported and elected to power. People still like him.Other examples can be given. In general there are people who don't care that their officials are corrupt or exploit connections-and they hope to do the same or accept the fact.

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I think your view of the future is a lot more cynical than mine, but, truthfully, yours is probably closer to the reality that would take shape. There will always be corrupt politicians and abuses, of course, but I see them being greatly mitigated.

I ultimately see cyberdemocracy as humanity's saving grace, it's much much easier to corrupt a few key individuals in a representative government than it is to corrupt the population as a whole. Giving one man in an influential position 30,000$ is much more effective than giving 30,000 people 1$. The usual bribery methods won't work in a post scarcity universe anyway, what exactly are you going to bribe them with. I think that the biggest threat to cyberdemocracy is actually going to be work unions and professional associations that will unite as voting blocks that is try to gain an advantage by pulling the vote their way with the weight of it's members no matter the individuals believe in their heart of hearts. Then again it would be relatively easy to claim that such practices are "Anti-democratic". Such a system can only be corrupted if there's a way found to make someone vote against their conscience.

Given that the core issues of a benevolent dictatorship are mortality, corruptibility, and ignorance, it does seem like transhumans are poised perfectly to entertain such a concept. Could be worth a trial in a colony.

Extrasolar Angel wrote:

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Can you imagine the backlash to their Rep and the Reps of those in charge if it was discovered that someone was put in power without qualifications because of favouritism?

I imagine a system where nobody cares, because everybody is corrupt by Rep system or hopes to benefit from it-to put a real world example the widescale personal abuses in countries like Italy or Poland are quite known to the public, which mostly simply doesn't care. And it actually Rep system will enforce that-who cares if senator Gruding doesn't know a bit abut economy-he has the connections in glitterati that will get me a good position if I will support him. And the people? Well they just will care to get their piece of the pie-and anyway who wants to oppose people with such great Rep that can destroy you? The belief that people seeing corruption will protest and overthrow the corrupt is somewhat naive and I would say Anglo-Saxon one. There are societies where corruption is tolerated and simply neglected. While of course we assume Titanian society is more like Scandinavian one, the whole idea of Rep system in my culturally-biased-non-anglo-saxon eyes is breeding ground for splendid corruption, nepotism and cronyism.

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I can imagine whole mesh-sites dedicated to exposing such things

You can google dozens of Berlusconi's blunders, corruption, sexists remarks-and yet he is still supported and elected to power. People still like him.Other examples can be given. In general there are people who don't care that their officials are corrupt or exploit connections-and they hope to do the same or accept the fact.

Even if I agree partialy with you(In my country corruption is accepted to some degree too as something unavoidable) I think the main diference with the "nowadays" politics will be that in a place like Titan Comonwealth, you cab efectively do something to change the system and fight corruption; lets see if im able to explain. All basics need of a citicen are covered, in fact, without working much you have a living status much much better that probably most of us could dream; thats an important thing, you dont have to worry about those kind of things; you are not going to get fired, your family is not going to die starved and you already have a home. A really open and transparent political system will make peapol worry about it; and even if not everybody is worried or are contantly imlpied in it; as a citizen you can always start your own memetic campaing agains some corrupt politician or microcop owner(of course this have its own dark side), just tell your muse and, for example 100 alpha forks of you to work non stop in simulspace for your campaing, sending messages, expossing corruption and so, you can share information at a level that its impossible now, and you can do it without losing anything but maybe some rep, but youcan gain it too; but most importan you can work almost incredible hard on it WHITOUT effort. I believe that nowadays corruption is seem like something unavoidable, because democracies are becoming less and less representaive, so people are starting to dont care about things that they can´t change individually, just think about Italy or Spain(my contry) I still can vote, but as I see it, i only can chose betwen "very bad " "bad" and "less bad" a very depressing perspective that makes people stop caring. So, in and open society with all basic and not so basic need covered, whit an incredible acces to information and means to change things at reach of alot of people, corruption will be a smaller problem, there are always and obsesive compulsive individual that will fight hard to keep that things in line. In adition another very important thing, is that all Commonwealth citizens are ver very compromised with their society; not jus they willingly sings a social contract, if they still remain in Titan, it means they want to participate in that kind of society. Seriously, one of the most important thing for avoiding corruption and keeping social cohexion, is that the memebers of that society really believe in what they are doing. Ok, no more non senses for today, waiting for your opinion.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:

Actually, that can still happen, it's just that it won't mean you starving to death. The only thing that will change is the speed at which you can receive services, like a new morph or what have you.

Yes, but even in that case, all your basic needs are solved, for my point of view thats one of the pilars od the commonwealht; while most of the citizens still believe in their socitey hard and they are compromised with it will probably work fine. Just one example, and I know that is a simplification, in Spain, during the civil war, the mayority fo the "leftist" movements were anarchist not communist(that took over power later in the war) in most of the regions where anarchist ruled, passed the first times of general chaos, all industrial and agricultural production raised like never before, in fact to levels of 30 years later; in most cases(and the more productive ones) were where the colectivizations were with the agree of the comunities and the people of the farms and industries, just because they believed in what was happening and was what they wanted. Soon the misfortunes of the war, the take over of the communist and alot of bad decissions of the goberment finished that experiment, that had dark sides too, but i think it means alot that a willing and compromised population was able to do just whit their good will. My point is, in a post scarity economy, with all your basic need solved probably much more that we can think today, that willingness to be part of certain group or way to do things makes the diference. And they have an evacuation valve that we dont have now, if someone dont like the place where he/she/hir/it lives, there are a complete solar system where he/she/hir/it can go and find its own happines; in much more closed societies like present ones thats a big barrier, not in EP universe. Ok another big post, just hope that it had make sense, is really hard to write this things in english

So in this case the Kroner is more like a unit of measure for work allocation?

How and to what extent are noncontributors to Titanian society excluded from service? Can people who spend all their waking time in simspace on the public mesh outvote a brilliant entrepreneur in production decisions regarding his firm? What about mass-forking - does each fork get one vote, or is only one of them considered a real person? I could see a lot of Titanians working for offworld concerns while free riding on the Commonwealth. If you can put up with some scorn from your fellow Titanians, then you could have your basic needs taken care of for free while amassing offworld resources (neatly outside of voting range of the Titanian body politic). Imagine Hypercorp or Extropian employees, going on extended social tourism trips to Titan whenever their Morph breaks, or to save money while working on a project.

Shark_Sandwich wrote:

Returning to Titan's economic system, I thought this paragraph from Gatecrashers was interesting:

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As I read that, a Titanian citizen may allocate his or her Kroner to those projects he or she chooses to support. Since Kroner is ultimately a monetization of work done on behalf of Titanian society, this allocation of Kroner is ultimately a way of directing the efforts of the society to those projects you favor. It's really more an expression of governing preference than it is the expenditure of money as we would understand it. It also simplifies the organizational problem of having endless votes on whether or not to pursue a particular project as a collective. If you want your project backed by society, you go hat in hand and try to convince enough people to spend their Kroner on your project. Even better, you can convince people to pool their accounts and form a microcorp. Pretty elegant, really. I'm going to think more about how this would work.

Another brilliant Socialist already thought of that. His name was Benjamin Tucker. ;) Not saying that it isn't the way Titan operates. I could personally see the outer system reverting to a much broader, more historically-based definition of Socialism than the modern Left, and it answers a lot of questions about how Titanian society runs.