At 03:27 PM 12/14/2002, Ian Grigg wrote:
> Szabo's works...contain a number of faulty foundations...such as
>
> "Reputation relies on intermediaries to convey information."
>
> ....The empirical
> evidence of past behavior is all over the place and does
> not require intermediaries to observe. One might
> argue that persistence of facts in repositories are
> necessary. But persistent facts need not be warehoused
> by a service provider, let alone, an "intermediary" in
> trade.
It seems to turn on what the definition of
an intermediary is. Is it the case that
he is defining it widely and you are defining
it narrowly?
Fair enough. But the reputation passage begins with the
following, which I think, is fairly unambiguous.
"Reputation relies on intermediaries to convey information.
For example, credit rating agencies are used to minimize
adverse selection (hidden knowledge) problems in credit. "
Grrr... I absolutely HATE the credit agencies' monopoly!
They impose self-serving rules, collect excess rents, and
are as obsolete as banks.
To Szabo the endpoint of analysis, is that credit reporting
agencies are necessary?
This conclusion must be a result of assumptions about the
goals of reputation, the purpose of money, and the constraints
within which money exchanges arise (e.g. the legal domain,
finality of settlement, blocking of historical spending trail,
identity, and other facts by a statist banking model.)
I regard credit agencies and the whole sorry mess, not
as the endpoint of analysis but beginning point of a new
inquiry, to find another alternative.
You know, in all his writings I never found anything suggesting
an awareness that a lifetime of provably good activities, by a
real person, in a long term web of business and societal
ties, family, etc. with fixed addresses, might be highly
correlated with not having screwed anyone, i.e. there may
be little need for systems of negative reputation. We know
that real transactions can be provably stored, with digital
signatures of counterparties, thus requiring no further
cooperation from anybody at all.
This is called, owning your own reputation.
Todd
