SocialCapitalReward is not really a curreny at all, in the normal sense. Instead, it is a symbol of gratitude.
and, importantly, it is a form of TrustMetric, a ValueMetric?, and a trust-building mechanism. It can help facilitate collaborations like CommunityWikiResourcePool, by giving a way for participants to give recognition to one another. This is similar to a “BarnStar”, but may also have a potential to be used as a token AlternativeCurrency within communities that will accept it.
– SamRose (?)
People can be awarded a score, points, or some form of object that can might least be converted to FloatingPointNumber? or Integer value, so that it can potentially be used as numerical data.
People are thanking each other for things like volunteerism, good service, donation, etc
A useful model might be borrowed from http://regenerosity.org/
The more I read about all of this, the more I find myself thinking… “Its just a way of quantifying the extent to which I feel obliged to contribute some work.”
Now please don’t assume I am biased against alternative currencies or other barter arrangements. Instead, let me assure you that I am simply trying to clarify my understand of all of these different “currencies” assumptions and proposals. A few aspects that I find puzzling are…
It really seems to me that that is all there is to it; assuming “an efficient market” and the usual “Supply and Demand” forces.
I want to stop calling this “currency” already, because the ideas at http://regenerosity.org and http://spreadlove.com that inspired this are not really exploring a market economy currency.
Also, in reply to Hans, the whole idea is to have systems that are actual workable and applicable alternatives to market economy, for-pofit transactions for RivalGoods (like labor, time, server space, etc)
There are some real problems when everything is reduced to “price”, as we’ve discussed before. Plus there are some motivations beyond “price” for producing some things, witness OpenSource software, WikiPedia, content on CommunityWiki, etc.
Okay, Lion, but…
Well, if I really want to do the $40/hour job, all I have to do is hire someone to do the work that I really don’t want to do so badly, that I’m charging $50/hour for it. If I’m “clever” I may actually negotiate to pay only $45/hour and make a $5/hour “profit”.
Now, given that we frequently discuss whether or not a solution can “scale” up. Let me assure you that this one does, and it is on this basis that I believe its a lot easier to just make money than it is to re-invent alternate currencies.
Sam, I understand your points, especially with respect to “not for profit” motivation. I’m just interested in how to get things done as efficiently as possible and I don’t believe that it will ever be easier for me to convince someone to use alternative currencies, as opposed to just paying them.
You are probably right, and this is another reason why I want to take “Currency” out of the name that is here. Because the 2 things we are actually talking about are:
The “thanks” is more of a metric that can help groups analyze themselves, for instance. More like a BarnStar than “money”.
Beyond that, in response to your central point, Hans. Again, it is probably easier to pay people to do a lot of thngs. but, not everyone can pay, and I don’t always want to be paid.
Plus, I would assume that CommunityWikiResourcePool would contain RivalGoods that would be the equivelant of “donations”, or surplus that peopel can contribute.
CommunityWikiResourcePool would then exist to leverage that surplus
not only that, but CommunityWikiResourcePool would exist to GROW THAT SURPLUS
Now, you have more CarryingCapacity for donating time to projects where there is not always a strict “OverLord?” who absolutely demands that things be a certain way because he has paid you to make them that way. Now you have a communinty-created commons based resource. The Community may decide collectively how to apply their resources.
So, basically, I am talking about using some specific tools for enhancing DonationBased? systems. Money pooling systems that are employing commons economics. Acutally, borrowing some of the useful things from market economies, and ditching the stuff that is based around depletion of commons, enclosure, and reducing people and nature to “labor and resources”. People who feel it is too difficult to pursue are free not to participate (RightToLeave).
Well, … Hans, that makes a lot of sense for you.
But for us “out here,” it doesn’t work that way. We simply can’t afford to pay someone $40/hr to do some variable-hour task (we don’t even know how much it costs.) Because of our scarcity of dollars, we believe it’s actually easier for us to convince people to use alternative currencies.
You can fluidly, like liquid, convert your time into money. If you have a few spare hours, you can just agree to take some phone calls, and in comes a bunch of money. Out here, it doesn’t work like that.
I’m salaried. My time out from work doesn’t just turn into money. I’m not making a choice between more money or alternative currency. I’m making a choice between no money, and alternative currency.
Sam, I have a hard time completely disconnecting Thanks from a concept of currency. I can accept a “fuzzy currency” – perhaps “thanks a lot” (big?) vs. “thanks” (medium?) vs. “I owe you one.” (small?)
I can understand that thanks can fade or be remembered. I can understand that these aren’t contracts.
But I don’t undertake complex specialized works (transforming from DokuWiki documents to Scribus documents, for instance,) for no promise of return.
The case of David Korten was weird: I originally thought there would be a return- that is the story of how I got involved. Once I got involved, I cared, and said, “To hell with future repayment, this is too cool not to do.”
I agree, so, for collaborations that are TooCoolNotToDo?, something like CommunityWikiResourcePool can help. For things that need reciprocation, InternetExchange could be an option (or you could just say “I need to be paid cold hard cash for this”). You could look at what I am offering, and name your “price” in barter for what you could do, or name your “price” in actual money “price” 
I like your idea of different sized “thanks”. It makes sense. I also like the idea of it beign a FuzzyCurrency?. That really sums up what it is. There may be a use for it as an actual currency, but this is where you run (currently) run into most people not wanting to accept it, and all of the AlternativeCurrency problems people are talking about recently, such as the currencies not having any real value, etc
Lion wrote:
I agree withyour points. Plus, to me, it is even more than this, this is a way for people to leverage their existing non-money reosurces, and knowledge, in combination with existing knowledge commons, to solve problems, build new types of wealth that are based around commons principles. People are already doing this with NonRival? goods, and their are examples of people doing this throughout history with RivalGoods. I don’t want to destroy the existing market, or have a revolution. I want to augment the existing market, and create pathways for people to sustainably transition their ways out of it over time. Because, in many ways, the existing economies are destructive and non-sustainable. Let’s use the useful, postive beneficial parts of them, and lets drop the destructive parts over time.
(will come back to these questions, runnign out of time now)
Hans also wrote:
Never say never, as the old cliche goes… 
These are brand new ideas from me, although reformulted and synthesized from many familiar concepts.
But, the becnhmark that I will set is that, if the “Pattern” myself and others are trying to seed with these ideas is able to grow into something useful on it’s own, it shouldn’t take a lot of convincing. People will either resonate and participate, or they will reject and pass over the route to solving the problem.
I can assure you that I am not alone in thinking about, or experimenting with these ideas, though.
TheSheep introduced me to an article by ClayShirky recently, that gives an interesting perspective on “ItDoesntScale”
http://www.shirky.com/writings/situated_software.html
I propose that a similar argument can be made as to how a group of people decide to handle the economics of a problem.
Remember our discussion about the TenThousandDollarWebsite??
TenThousandDollarWebsite? that really is only worth maybe 2000.00 dollars, is the result of certain people trying to sustain a lifestyle, and only focusing on sustain that lifestyle by building wealth through money.
BuildWealthWithoutMoney is based instead on giving, sharing economies, trust, reciprocation, and working together voluntarily to sustain commons, and to grow people’s capacity to BuildWealthWithoutMoney.
I’m especially interested in making use of the resources that we have, but don’t consider especially valuable or that are not trade-able at all. Sometimes they are too small to “sell”, sometimes we just don’t think anybody would need them. But when they are pooled together, they become usable, instead of being just wasted. I’m still thinking about how to communicate about these resources – advertising them doesn’t sound too good, because to advertise some resource I have, I must first know it’s valuable and worth advertising. Maybe a “pull” system would work better than a “push” one: we describe what we do (not necessarily in too much detail, because time is valuable too) and what is needed, and then others can see it and decide if the y have something that could help. I’m really not sure about this, but it would be great if it could work.
As for leaving physical marks of trust and appreciation – I don’t believe this is needed. Yes, we need to communicate our appreciation, and also our dissatisfaction, because that lets us keep things up to date. But do we need to record that? Sooner or later it will become hopelessly desynchronized from what we really feel, and the whole system will become a burden, something we have to do because we promised, not something we do because we really believe in it. Then again, there is the problem of stability. If I run a project and need some resources, and somebody promised them to me, I want to be sure I’ll get them – so that I can stop looking elsewhere. In similar vein, if I work really hard, I don’t want it all to go away just because I got into argument with someone on some small issue.
I’d like to point to a AutisticSocialSoftware article. From its summary:
I am much more comfortable with the lines of thought I see emerging from Radomir’s statements. Some specific reasons are…
In practical terms, I absolutely agree with Radomir’s suggestion that we should be able to find ways to pool our resources profitably. This is the primary reason I am interested in the CommunityWikiBusiness? opportunities, which personally, I feel negligent for not pushing ahead with, more aggressively!
Radomir writes:
Yes, this is exactly one of the things that I am talking about with helping one another expand our ability to pool resources, to BuildWealthWithoutMoney.
This is what I am thinking about with CommunityWikiResourcePool. Teh idea is to work within communities, not to make somethign like a “CraigsList” for resource sharing. at least, not yet.
Maybe not, but community recoginition, like “BarnStars?”, is often appreciated. What I am talking about is not much different than that.
Hans wrote:
My goals are those stated in the page I made at CommunityWikiResourcePool, and here, and my own personal page SamRose. In my experience, I’ve found that there are times when it would be better for me and people I have been working with, to pool resources, and to do things that I am describing, to minimize the “exchange” nature, and work more in a reosurce pooling way. This helps me maximize the enjoyment that I get out of doing these things. I hope that interested people might experiment with me on those ideas, but I do not expect that everyone in CommunityWiki will adopt the idea. I would be glad to move CommunityWikiResourcePool project out of CommunityWiki if it clashes too much whith what people are interested in doing here…
Did you see something in what I was suggesting here and on CommunityWikiResourcePool that would suggest that I do not want to pool resources profitably? What you are saying here seems to suggest that you believe that I want to pool resources in a way that would make people lose, or deplete their resources…
I think it’s a great idea.
Sam… Hopefully this will be an effective “quick clarification”…
I certainly do not see anything in what you suggested that implies you do not want to pool resources.
After all, if I expect to earn the trust of folks, I believe I need to help set their expectations appropriately, if there is to be any chance of them seeing a reliable Cause and Effect between what I say I’m going to do and what I then actually do (avoiding CausalFallacies).
Hans, totally understood.
I just wondered if maybe you thought I was talking about something that would end up being not profitable, with what I put down on CommunityWikiResourcePool?
Let’s maybe explore this in the form of a story. I’ll post it to CommunityWikiResourcePool, since what it will contain will be more related to that, than this…
Define external redirect: CommunityWikiBusiness FuzzyCurrency DonationBased BarnStars OverLord ValueMetric TenThousandDollarWebsite TooCoolNotToDo FloatingPointNumber NonRival