Talk:The Consumerium Exchange

I have to warn that this is a work in progress and the authentication issue seems so massive that someone please alert the friendly trollls

mmm. as you might have guessed the system for direct voting relies on the vote-challenge-confirmation scheme used by many web based services ie. You get an email that says that "somebody (propably you) voted on these and these issues with your account and to confirm this you have to reply something to this message". As to the question of if this an adequate level of security will propably remain an disputable issue always, but will not propably crash the whole system due to the fact that people who feel that direct voting is not reliable can choose to view only the indirect votes, which are authenticated by cryptographically strong methods such as GnuPG.

Never rely on cryptography exclusively. The April 2000 rebuild of the PGP key tree at the Computers Freedom and Privacy conference, in Toronto, was actually signed by Terence and Philip - the two fictional Canadian comedians from South Park...

The dual voting (direct+indirect) system provides improved reliability and flexibility for The Consumerium Exchange at the same time. Due to the dual voting system the exchange is less susceptible to distortion. It is propably better left unknown how people value these different votes on each issue or in general because it provides the intrigue and safety of not-knowing

Yes, very important.

This permits several factions to develop and align behind different views, and for those who choose a faction or a point of view defined by a faction on one issue, it permits buy or not decisions to be made clearly. Without this facility, there will be less "green light" and "red light" clarity, and more "yellow light" ambiguity.

The Consumerium Exchange does not necessarily determine whether the "red light" or "green light" goes off. In fact only those cases where a "yellow light" (caution) goes off, should really require anyone to read anything. --142.177.X.X

Actually i think that The Consumerium Exchange _is_ what turns on and off the lights if you desire such a simple interface.

Realistically, this simple interface is what almost all consumers will really use, and more important, what retailers will use to decide what to stock on their shelves. I can think of retailers who would have nothing less than a "strong support" on their shelves, others that would only respond to a global boycott:

Let me explain. Suppose there are three different levels of Boycott (avoid, strong avoid, boycott) and three levels of Endorsement (support, strong support, endorse) that the Campaign management chooses from. Then the algo for figuring which light out of the spectrum appears would roughly be the following:

Give "weights" to each level. say -1,-2,-3 and 1,2,3
Multiply the votes for each Campaign with the weight the campaign has set
Divide the result with the total amount of votes in the Campaigns on this product
Voila. We have a number that can be converted into a shade of light on your favourite spectrum

This process will of course get a lot more complicated in practice due to that one has to take a stand on how to trust direct and indirect votes and further on how to trust different classes of direct votes and then there is of course the selective exclusion of votes that also affects the algo, not to forget the fact that an industry, company and/or product group may be targeted by campaigns that could cascade to the product itself and one would have to figure out how to value these cascading votes ... -Juxo 17:14 Oct 1, 2003 (EEST)

The trust algorithms can be quite individual, or specific to a region (especially an ecoregion) of origin (if the issue is how it is produced) or consumption (if the issue is how it is disposed).

It is also unclear how to prevent abusive companies from acquiring multiple direct votes by creating many identities, or from creating their own nonprofit entities to do nothing but say the right things, and vote against their competitors, regardless of anyone's behaviour.

Isn't that just the thing they are doing right now?

Yes, but not right here right now. ;-) They will eventually try it here, too, and we have to anticipate all their exploits, worst cases, threats.

Strange idea on turning the exchange into a casino:

It is not strange. The entire global economy runs on this principle. And this is the only way to make the project pay for itself.

You're right it's not strange, it's plain silly. They did invent this thing called a Stock market a little while back. If you got capital, go play there. If you think some price is going up buy shares. If you think it is going down buy reverse instruments on it. Simple, eh?

Everyone has capital. Some have instructional capital. Some have social capital. Sometimes this is convertible to financial capital. Sometimes not. If you realize everyone has capital, then everyone is a player.

A bet. This is an actual monetary bet that over a certain period of time, a certain company, product, industry will not violate the norms, or will improve, or will never be red-lighted etc. Unlike a stock, option or bond purchase, this is a direct bet on the company's good behaviour, like a bail bond. If there is no problem with that product, company or industry, then the bet pays off with a modest return, similar to a bond - 5-10% above inflation perhaps. If there IS a problem, the value of the bet drops very drastically, becoming worthless if the product, company or industry does something to get itself fully red-lighted for the entire span of time of the bet.

- By keeping the bets visible here, we make the conflicts of interest visible too, rather than hidden as people move money in the background (which they will anyway). It's also clear who has the most to lose if a company is about to lose status, and, more of the debate will become visible, and more of it can thus be passed on to the company or stockholders, whose interests are exactly aligned with the bet-maker

- The money held in trust funds the whole Consumerium process and rollout, since it can be invested in various ways - ideally in ethical investing funds or sustainable forest product funds or something. This may require a backer or insurer to cover catastropic losses. No investment in any one company should be allowed for risk management purposes.

Hey, it was YOU who called it an "exchange". If what is going on is voting, it is a "forum". So pick the correct name.

You should google around for Robin Hanson's paper "Shall we vote on values, but bet on beliefs?" It will explain a great deal to you!

Thanks, I did. The latest rewrite of the paper can be found at http://hanson.gmu.edu/futarchy.pdf . It looks interesting and I'll try and read it through when I've had some sleep. Though there was this part in the abstract that either is not English or I'm just too stupid to understand what it is supposed to mean. Terrible English allover. Perhaps Robin is a troll?

Oh, yes, without question. Moin moin moin... neh neh neh...

Having almost read it half way through I got this idea that it might be interesting to have sort of "Futures" in the exchange. No monetary bets I guarantee, but more of a chance to gain prestige as having the gift of foresight or an educated guess in seeing what kind of support different things will aqcuire once voting gets onway.

See http://longbets.org - maybe we can make a close cooperation with them, as they are doing this now, and betting money that goes to charity? I think without money it makes little sense, as there must be some real pain for placing wrong bets, and a way to prevent someone from hedging too much.

Hedging? Now you will have to explain that. How can there be hedging?

I publish three opinions with three different identities - one says X is good, one says X is bad, one says X is mostly good with a few problems that can be solved. Now the opinion that X is good gets attacked and I lose reputation for that identity, the opinion that X is bad gets reinforced and I see by who. Third identity exploits the fact that it is taking a "moderate" position, and uses all the arguments launched on either side to bolster its own reputation. Now I have one spam identity that everyone knows is just saying X is good, I discard that, leaving me with two identities with good reputations: one that is seemingly opposed, one that is seemingly a moderate critic, of X, which I secretly own... if anyone has been foolish enough to publish their own opinion as themselves, I know who they are and can work out their motivations and other opinions, and attack their reputations selectively. However, you cannot trace MY three identities back to one body even if you force me to provide my DNA, because I can just pay others to front for me and pretend the opinion I pay them to have, is theirs. The only thing you can do is make it cost me money to do this, in proportion to the impact my opinions have, and that at least forces overall accountability back to the same wallet, if not the same body. See the point? This is exactly why the global economy is built on a casino model.

And for the millionth time: NO MONEY, just information.

All information is distorted by money, as much as motion is distorted by the presence of more mass, which creates what we call "gravity". So I am talking about the economic law of gravity here - it all comes down to money. You can deal with it directly, or be manipulated by those who deal with it directly.

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.

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

If I own X, it is so dangerous for me NOT to do the above, that I *must* do it, for fear that others who promote my competitor Y will do it instead. Also it is possible that there will be NO GREEN LIGHT FOR ANY PRODUCT in some category, which implies that you are asking someone to undergo a lifestyle change, that they may or may not realize is implied by their moral choices. So it might be a lot better to think about a basic model based not on the green light but on choices like "is X so much better than Y that I should pay 4 cents more for it?" - which again brings us to quantified choices. Given the price information also, this becomes a Green light (if X IS that much better, and costs only 4 or fewer cents more) or yellow light (if X IS that much better, but costs more than 4 cents more than Y, leaving you a nickel that you could maybe better spent by donating 8 cents (3 of which are tax-deductible) to save Great Apes)), or red light (if X is not that much better, and costs more, meaning that you are giving more money to those who don't actually share your values much).