Editing Talk:The Consumerium Exchange (section)

== Whether social capital can completely replace financial ==

:::Better arguments and better facts to back them up is your capital here. And reputation

::::You are talking about [[social capital]].  I suggest you read [[Paul Adler]], in particular, ''[[Social Capital: The Good, the Bad and the ugly]]'' before deciding to rely exclusively on this.  In summary, that paper's arguments suggest it will not work, as any reputation system relies ultimately only on authority style arguments.  There is no global way to challenge a reputation other than by betting (definitive challenge within the trust system - making a market out of it) or experiments (investigative challenge - making a science of it).

:::Getting accredited as a source of not-so-good information will cause you to look bad in other information which will make everyone just ignore your future "information". Providing good, reliable information in the long run will increase the value of your information and future information. If you want to bet with your drinking buddies about how [[Company X]] will be looking in 6 months then _that is your problem_ and The Control Freak in Charge of Irrigation Systems cannot/doesnotcareto do anything about such behaviour, except perhaps hope that you don't take out a bank loan to support your filthy habit and in case you do here is a link to help you out http://www.gamblersanonymous.org/

::The global economy does not run on gambling for no reason.  Have you ever played poker?  The game literally does not work without real money, you cannot play for "reputation", you must play for some strict quantity that represents combined reputation, skill, and luck - money.  You must at least make it very easy to bet for or against the given information being accurate.  It is simply not possible to run a system like this with no betting:  without it, anyone can provide so much information of all kinds under so many identities that reputation for providing it becomes meaningless.  The only check on this is the amount of money it costs - if that cost is nothing, well, then there is no check, and no limit to the amount of [[propaganda]] that will be dumped into the system, hoping that some of it gets through.  Any system above a certain scale needs betting to make it work properly.  If there is global economy then there must be a simple bet-real-money-on-it way to send reliable information signals around.  If all the ways to send signals cost nothing, then so many signals pile in that the system collapses.

:::Yes, I've played poker and it's a wretching feeling when you have a royal flush and have to fold due to running out of money while someone else raises till you have no money.

::::But, you can show someone the royal flush and they can lend you money, for a percentage of what you earn.  If this is easy to do, the problem goes away.

:The basic idea being of course guessing where the aggregate of all campaigns on some issue will equilibrium. eg. What "light" will prevail for [[Company X]]