[FoRK] Special Circumstances

[Simon Wistow]

On Fri, Apr 04, 2008 at 11:50:07AM -0700, Kevin Elliott said:
> I think the key issue is that in a true post-scarcity world, the entire 
> science of economics loses meaning.  Economics is about how to allocate 
> scarce resource- no scarcity, no economics.

Since you're all jolly clever people I was pondering your opinion on one 
of the things that's bothered me about explictly and implictly 
reputation based currencies in post-scarcity civilisations.

I shall pick on the Whuffie because it seems to be the most obvious 
example - it's designed to be a better currency but still suffers from 
the old problem of "The Rich get Richer" in that the more famous you are 
(and therefore presumably have a lot of reputation) the more likely it 
is that people will recognise your reputation (and therefore give you 
Whuffies) than if you're an unknown artist, say.

The standard response, I believe, is that it's no worse than the current 
monetary system which is true but feels unsatisfying.