Quantified Prestige – Making Intellectual Property Obsolete

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Main contents of the video, with some extra details:

Introduction

  1. I suffered from low motivation several weeks ago. Luckily, that phase is over now.
  2. About 7 weeks ago I broke my left collarbone during a bicycle accident. It was a rather sunny day, so I didn’t expect those leaves on the road to be wet. Tragic mistake! It was a sharp downward curve in the forest and I lost control of my bicycle on the slippery leaves. Eventually, I fell on my left arm. And ended up in the hospital where they made x-rays and sent me home with a complicated gilchrist bandage, which I had to wear for a couple of weeks. Now, I am almost fully recovered.
  3. There is this crazy complicated neurological disease called ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatique syndrome). I have that. It entails a generally low level of energy – with some unpredictable energy swings. But at least I’ve gotten much better at understanding, treating, and managing that disease. Being able to do stuff again feels good! 🙂

What Is Quantified Prestige?

  1. It’s a reputation economy system. I define a reputation economy as economy in which it suffices to have a high reputation in order to be relatively wealthy. Reputation economies have so far only been featured in science-fiction novels (please correct me if I am wrong – I know there were some efforts to create reputation economies, but they don’t really fit my definition). Most prominently, the sci-fi novel “Down and out in the magic kingdom” by Cory Doctorow features a reputation currency called “Whuffie”. I wondered how something like that would actually work in reality, so I eventually cranked out this system that I call Quantified Prestige.
  2. Yes, it’s a fully developed system – at least in theory. Here’s the link to the documentation: https://radivis.com/public/quantifiedprestige002.pdf
  3. Quantified Prestige has at its core a reputation system in which people in a peer-to-peer network rate other people. Users of the network can allocate points to other users. Essentially, the amount of points you get from other users determines your Prestige index. The Prestige index is a quantified positive reputation index that basically says how esteemed you are in the network. This on its own doesn’t represent a full reputation economy, yet. So, we need another component:
  4. Electronic currency distribution funds! It took me quite a while to realize that it’s actually the best to use money in a reputation economy, even if you would ideally expect that in a reputation economy people wouldn’t need to use any money. Well, money is very useful, so I use it in my system! A basic electronic currency distribution fund works like this: Some people donate money into that fund. Then, the money in the fund gets periodically paid out to the users of the Quantified Prestige network – in proportion to their Prestige index! The money could be in dollars, euros, yen, or cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, litecoin, or dogecoin (lol). An obvious problem with this system is that you need people who are incentivized to pay into the fund. In the documentation I have mentioned some possible incentives for doing so, but there’s still a better way to implement a reputation economy:
  5. Fluido, the natural, continuous, anti-inflationary, anti-deflationary electronic currency generated by Prestige. Yes, it has awesome features, so it is the preferred solution. It’s a natual solution in the sense that it represents the wealth that is continuously created by having Prestige. There are some interesting mechanics that should make the value of Fluido rather stable; more stable than the value of fiat currencies or typical crytocurrencies – in theory, at least. And you can transfer Fludio continuously to other users. If you think about it, you might realize that this is actually a more natural solution to transfer wealth and pay for subscriptions than transfering it periodically.

What’s The Point Of Quantified Prestige?

  1. The main point is to make intellectual property obsolete! Like: “Goodbye patents and copyrights, we don’t need you anymore, because we have a reputation economy now!” Historically, intellectual property schemes have been introduced in order to reward content creators. They have been more or less successful at that, but have come at the cost of the end-users who not only have to pay for the creation of the content, but also its distribution, and some intermediaries in the value chain. In today’s world in which we have this great invention called interned, we can transfer digital goods with zero marginal cost, so ideally, consumers should not pay for any marginal costs! Also, new internet based distribution systems reduce the need for intermediaries dramatically. In a perfect economy, consumers should only pay more or less for the creation costs of digital goods like books, articles, songs, videos, programs, inventions, and so on. In a reputation economy this payment would be represented by the reputation that the content creators get from the consumers. The reputation would pay for the fixed costs of content creation – at least if the content is so good that it is considered useful or popular.
  2. In a reputation economy there are better incentives for companies to behave ethically. Ethical companies can easily be rewarded with a good reputation. On the other hand, companies that use problematic business practices, for example planned obsolecence, can be punished with low reputation scores.
  3. New business models become possible. Entrepreneurs could create “for-reputation” businesses – as oppsoed to “for-profit” businesses. These would provide servies and digital goods in the hope to get a high reputation. They don’t need to interact with classical markets, but can distribute their goods for free and also provide services for free! In the current economic paradigm such a business model wouldn’t make much sense. But in a reputation economy this new business model would be a really good idea!

Facebook Group: Quantified Prestige Community

  1. Recently, I made a new Facebook group called “Quantified Prestige Community“. You are invited to join, if you are interested in reputation economies.
  2. The point of the group is to discuss Quantified Prestige and the issues surrounding it, and to further its development.
  3. It is recommended that you use the documentation to inform yourself about the relevant aspects of the system you want to discuss. For the core system these would be the “Esteem” and “Prestige” concepts. For the coupling with electronic currencies, the relevant parts are “Electronic Currency Distribution Funds” and “Fluido Currencies”. At the end of the documentation I’ve tried to give answers to possible social issues of the system.
  4. If you have friends who are interested in alternative economic systems, it would be worth considering to invite them to the Facebook group.
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