Arguably, that reputation metric is less abstract than fiat currency in a fractional reserve banking system.

Examples
1. The Entity that finds an inoculation for HIV, and releases the information on how to create and deliver it to the Commons would probably get enough Wuffie to rarely have to pay for anything.
2. A mural on a downtown street that many enjoy is going to be covered over by an advertising billboard, but it has accumulated enough Wuffie that acting on its behalf the Wuffie trust buys/leases the space and erects a steel frame and lexan window over it to protect it from the elements and prevent it from being obscured.
3. A wetland marsh is slated for development into a gated community but bird watchers and others that like the swamp the way it is nominate the swamp for Wuffie, and end up accumulating enough to qualify the swamp for enough trust money for it to purchase itself – the swamp becomes its own owner in perpetuity (yes, far fetched I know, but it’s just an example).

Anyone wanna poke holes in my concept? I’d love to hear some critique, or possible refinements.

But that was the opposite of the writer above, that was a case of “blogs save lives” – the annonymos internet saved a real life person from a real life shyster.

How does that fit in to their economic theory?

Also, yay. Something I submitted got posted here! YLJ has a whole series of articles that were posted in the past few days. This one just jumped out at me because it struck me (a bit) that it was evocative of Cory’s Whuffie system.

As someone who (I like to think) is relatively respected as a good and competent person, I’d love to live on a system of Whuffie rather than Dollars.

If you don’t believe it, don’t. It’s just hard to shut the eye once it’s been given the eagle’s talon.

The whole idea of reputation as property is based on a misunderstanding. Your reputation is formed of other people’s opinions, and those people have a right to form their opinions on any basis they like, and to change them at will. My opinion can’t be your property if I can take it away whenever I want.

If others are being intentionally misled about you, the primary insult is to them, not you, even if it damages you. It may make sense, from a policy point of view, to have a libel law that allows you to allow you to protect them from being so misled, but to say that you own your reputation is to say that you own their minds.

If you think about it this way, the example of “selling a business with goodwill” starts to look like institutionalized fraud. After all, I deal with a business because I like the way it’s run. If somebody new is running it, is it OK to actively conceal that from me?

Arguably, that reputation metric is less abstract than fiat currency in a fractional reserve banking system.

Ah, now that is an intriguing juxtaposition… between reputation systems and the “confidence” so often referred to in the inherently insolvent fractional reserve banking system.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

– Iago in Othello, Act III, scene iii

“We probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of us if we could know how seldom they do.” – Olin Miller

which would you prefer: to hear Angelina Jolie whisper “I want you now!” in your ear at three AM – or me? Same words (well, some drier and less mucousy). What vision would you prefer haunt your wet dream? Bloody primates; you RUN on illusion. You all carry your little virtual world around between your ears and every good or bad thing you do comes from it.

It’s completely understandable to have trouble with property as an abstract but it’s completely natural for lawyers. For the extent of this discussion between lawyers I think you can consider “property” to be a technical term.

To someone who employs a lawyer property is physical but the lawyer only considers the rights which rest on that property. An owner has a right to control a thing and it’s that right which is legally interesting whereas the house, car, whatever isn’t the legal concept.

Personally I understand the idea of protecting (as you have a right to in property) a reputation against the world but I think the act which affects the reputation is defamation and that’s already understood.

Valuation of that reputation is incredibly subjective but its effect is clear – respected bloggers can earn a living through ad revenue which is diretly relate to their readership. If someone was to attack that reputation the blogger would create an economic loss.

It not possible to directly equate reputation to a house (heritable property) but both are important and that’s important to think of. It’s an interesting debate though and something I think is a little late in this apparently “information economy”

These things are inalienable and obtainable in a court of law before a jury of peers.

See the binary.

Fortunately I live in the real world and have no visible fantasies regarding either Angelina or yourself whispering in my ear at 3AM or any time for that matter

However, according to the Darwinian perspective, I am a ‘bloody primate’ so part of me would probably go down the basic, primitive, approach to mating that we all invariably do me little good in a modern ‘civilization’.

There is a path of scientific research that is moving toward the concept that we all live in a 2D world as 3d holograms. This would make Angelina rather flat chested and ‘good or bad things’ rather limited in their scope.

See:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?page=1

For further references I quote:

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=LRTE5r7wHzM&NR=1

and…

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=1wiRhVzsXFM

You may choose your ideally realized vision of your reality, however, the winds blow in a fashion that is not of our own making…unless we ask them.

Property and responsibility are related, but definitely distinct from one another.

However it is quite different from material things because it is transient and not naturally scarce.

Though, I guess when all you’ve got is a hammer (econ/law degree), every problem starts looking like a nail (un-formalized market).

There’s nothing “scarce” about reputation. But there is a tendency, particularly among the more Objectivist-inclined, to believe that anything with potential value must be assimilated into the bulwark of “property”. c.f. so-called “intellectual property”

However, this vulgarization of the word “property” undermines its genuinely useful definition, just as when G.W. Bush says “freedom” when he means “empire”, or “disappointments” when he means “mistakes”, and other such newspeak.

As I quoted Inigo Montoya, he’s using the word “property” as if it meant something else… perhaps more like “cultural currency” or “cachet”.