"In fact, this is a general problem of capitalism: over any interval, people who provide money to an operation at the beginning reap rewards far above the value of any managerial abilities they contribute."
This is not a general problem of capitalism at all. If in a venture, you don't like the actions or lack of them on the part of investors, provide your own resources or choose another investor. Who is to say how rewards should be allocated or deserved, other than by agreed local free and fair negotiation on the part of the people who created the enterprise.
What if you don't have any resources and your situation and skills aren't suited to bootstrapping? That's true for the vast majority of workers in a capitalist system.
I'm not saying traditional investment isn't valuable. Maybe it's the best way of amortizing risk, for example. I just think that it would probably be better, even from a purely consequentialist standpoint, if, in general, there was somewhat less ability to control things in perpetuity just by virtue of having money at the beginning. And maybe that sort of thing actually does partly occur with stock dilution, stock options, etc. I don't know.
Look on the bright side. Never before in human history have there been opportunities as abound today for finding resources, acquiring & leveraging skills and changing situations. Yes, there can be local difficulties. For instance I live in Romania where there seems to be a conspiracy against those creating and running small and medium businesses or start-ups. That's part of the reason why the country is so poor. Talented young Romanians emigrate in large numbers. Here, the dead hand of the state is all too evident. It is also increasingly prevalent in Western Europe and the UK. I contend that it is the ever-growing bureaucratic controls (mostly dictated by folk who have no appreciation of how wealth is created but are comfortably financed by those who do) that have created a massive disinclination for wealth creation on the part of the workers in the capitalist system.
I notice that nobody mentions the much higher risk involved in early state investments - that's why early stage investors require higher rates of return.
The problem with this is simple: money is power. Those that have it are deeply invested in keeping it that way. Any other social currency is DOA until that changes somehow.
It's worth noting that there is some consensus amongst sociologists that money and people are the two primary forms of power. (And I do mean primary: all other forms of power derive from them.)
It's also worth noting, in a much less constructive but perhaps more interesting discussion, that "money is power" presupposes a power structure that allows money to exist. Hmm...
Money seems to be a natural consequence of trying to scale up barter trade, and allows society to specialize. It's hard for me to imagine how a resource-scarce society can expand without some form of 'currency' (be it our 'normal' money, reputation, whatever), that would be a unified unit of value for all things one wants to exchange.
The problem with asking for reputation points in exchange for services is that you're really just asking for payment. A lot of the things people do that deserve payment would be free with nothing asked in return
The system should also be anonymous so that it's not even possible to get points as payment, otherwise the Donald Trumps of the world would pull some marketing trick or make some system to get all the points and all the money, assuming it's ever worth something. We want a system that would have put mother Teresa or the google of old on top, just on their ability to reach out and positively influence so many people
True, if there's any way to game the system or brute force your reputation, it's going to cause problems. Digg had issues with power users getting paid to post, and even news aggregators like Reddit and HN can be abused if people have their friends upvote submissions. People like sharing things they find interesting/important or have an emotional response to, as twitter has proven.
If you search a business' name on twitter you'll get some sort of consensus on what people think about it. This stuff isn't aggregated in a way that is really helpful, though. That's is what my startup is trying to solve - http://moodstir.com. When a company like Netflix pisses off its customers and they are willing to tweet about it, others considering using the service ought to be able to find out the general emotional stance customers have towards the service.
Wisdom and collective decision making are not the same thing. Wisdom is not a shifting changing quantum, nor is it a set of rules. Wisdom at its best has always insisted on clearly defining the parameters within which we are to play and within which our lives can be best enjoyed.
The fool at his best will doubt the goodness of the goads of wisdom and will insist on his ability to define those parameters for himself leading him to folly and ruin. The tendency of wisdom is to be absolute. The hubris of the fool is to say there is no absolute.
If anyone would be wise, let him start with Proverbs, quoting from the beginning of chapter one:
"Their purpose is to teach people wisdom and discipline, to help them understand the insights of the wise. Their purpose is to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives, to help them do what is right, just, and fair. These proverbs will give insight to the simple, knowledge and discernment to the young. Let the wise listen to these proverbs and become even wiser. Let those with understanding receive guidance by exploring the meaning in these proverbs and parables, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching. They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck." - Proverbs, http://bit.ly/aJpmva
This is the worst kind of poisonous nonsense, appeals to authority and the sanctity of the known falsehoods of religion. Wisdom may be hard to define, but it is easy to define what is not wisdom; allowing provably bad sources to make your choices and define the parameters of your existence for you.
Words like "poisonous nonsense", "appeals to authority", "known falsehoods", "provably bad sources" are polemic.
In fact, the book of Proverbs is as sure in history as the Greek classics. There is wisdom to be found in both. You would be better arguing in terms of textual criticism, historicity of events, than polemic.
This kind of liberalist thinking that we are free to say anything so long as it is liberal not does not seem very liberal to me.
If you are into Christopher Hitchens, you may also enjoy his brother, Peter Hitchens, also a journalist and a former atheist. He has what looks to be a good book out: "The Rage Against God". He warns against the kind of atheistic state that his brother advocated, drawing on recent history: Stalin, Hitler, Mao. That is the kind of state that uses words like "poisonous nonsense".
A polemic is an argument leaning toward attacking a person, I do not know you at all and make no claim to be able to attack you and expressly disclaim any desire to engage in polemic or ad hominem. Some things are simply accurately described with negative labels.
Religion itself, as well as the ideal of moral absolutes defined therein being the sole source of wisdom for the world is just as accurately described by these words as fascism or North Korea's implementation of their Juche ideology.
Some things simply really are that bad. Religion is one of them. If after all the water that has passed under the bridge of this particular debate has not managed to sway your opinion at this stage of the game I am well aware that my simply stating it is unlikely to do so now. However this does not change the fact of the matter that all the labels that I used to describe the position you put forward are simple truths.
For the record, I am an anarcho capitalist, not a "liberal", and I do not take my positions wholesale from anybody else, I think about them extensively and decide for myself.
My idea of wisdom is that it comes with age, higher-level patterns one finds out for themselves. What you call wisdom is simply obedience to a set of norms set by others.
There are many claiming that their words are wisdom, so you can only make that call for yourself, from life experience.
After you gain wisdom you can use that to teach others to live "good" lives, but that does not imply any static absolute. A good life for you might be a sucky life for someone else.
"The idea of a reputation economy is that by implementing the "reputation graph" and making it a public resource, everyone will be able to make better decisions about people."
don't think this is good idea making it public , what if you have good reputation of <name some activity that you don't want everybody to know.>
With a pseudonymous identity model, you could simply maintain separate identities for separate areas if you wanted. You wouldn't even be able to manipulate the system that way (say some activity = "being evil"), because as long as you confined behavior that generated reputation for being evil to one pseudonym, the positive reputations for your other pseudonyms that don't mention being evil would actually be entirely correct.
wouldn't this be susceptible to leak if someone finds out your pseudonym, how about system that keep your current reputation rankings (encrypted). and only you know it. system gives your current rep (of some activity) only to people of similair reputation. and that you are making deals with.
I despise Doctorow though. Not sure why, but I can't help but really dislike the guy.
Edit: Put my finger on it finally. It's the ceaseless shilling on boing boing when he as new work coming out.
Don't get me wrong, his work with the EFF and CC is hugely important and appreciated, but the outright lack of subtlety when it comes to promoting his own gravitas on BB gets to me.
Obligatory mention: Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom" - a book about post-scarcity technological utopia that has imlpemented a reputation economy.
This is not a general problem of capitalism at all. If in a venture, you don't like the actions or lack of them on the part of investors, provide your own resources or choose another investor. Who is to say how rewards should be allocated or deserved, other than by agreed local free and fair negotiation on the part of the people who created the enterprise.