The preference economy

There is now the new era of a multicurrency society. Numerous non-monetary currencies are coveted, amassed and exchanged including reputation, social graph, time, ideas, intention, attention, affinity, preference, health, and resource access.

The internet is already doing a good job of serving as a clearing exchange and means of valuation for the currencies of reputation, social graph, intention, and attention.

The next generation of economy 3.0 startups is building even more dimensionality into the multicurrency society.

Blippy broadcasts purchasing activity and serves as a leading indicator for public company quarterly sales; a real-time economy feed.

Hunch goes a step further with the grand vision of mapping and predicting the affinity of all people for all objects.

For example, what is any individual’s preference for Nike, TikTok, Slaughterhouse-Five, Ulan Bator, existentialism, or any other noun, brand, product, item, object or idea. Social feed “likes” are already being mined for preference, affinity, and revenue.

Value, preference, and affinity could become an expected attribute of any product, brand, website, and experience just like social networking is and gaming principles are starting to be. These seemingly unobtrusive currencies could stream nicely into exchange via automatic markets.

Civilized transition to the post-scarcity economy

Contemplating a new era of bountiful resources compared to previous times, some call for a socialist, or equal, distribution of the new resources. Two examples of new eras would be those triggered by the advent of the molecular assembler and uploaded human minds; the resources would be, respectively, Earth and Solar System matter and processing capacity.

A socialist resource allocation is moot because:

1. At t+1 or t+n, there will have been a reallocation of resources based on individual skill, utility and Darwinism,
2. Capitalist forces will figure out how to attain more of the resources in other ways,
3. Ways of enforcing a socialist resource distribution will probably not exist or be desirable, and
4. Market mechanisms are likely to provide the most effective resource distribution.

Much more important than which post-scarcity economy resource allocation model to use is how to engender a smooth transition to the new era.

Presumably the rule of law will persist and the critical part will be adapting it to extend and protect rights in the new eras. What is going to happen when someone erects a Dyson sphere around newly terraformed Mars homesteads and starts levying a toll on IP traffic and physical egress? Law seems to be the most stable profession in the face of accelerating technology and new eras!

Absent UN AI Peacekeeping Forces, there should be a way to design incentives backed by consequences and force if necessary to reduce the claim-jumping, lawlessness and vigilanteism (its new guise: nano-weaponry arms races!) that has accompanied historical landgrabs.


Reference:
At the end of “Engine of Creation,” Eric Drexler discusses “Inheritance Day,” a time for “distributing ownership of the resources of space” in three possible scenarios:

1. (capitalist) First-come first-served, a landgrab as homesteading and mining claims have occurred traditionally. Dismissed since the first one to arrive with an appropriate molecular compiler could to re-work and thus claim as far as it could reach in the universe,
   
2. (socialist) Equal distribution and recalibration over time, and
   
3. (socialist) One-time equal distribution – the libertarian and most preferable approach

The multi-self team

Can you imagine yourself in competition for resources with ... yourself?

There are several future cases where multiple copies of people may be quite likely and normal. Multiple personal instances could arise to repair medical damage, to make a backup, to have a physical and a digital version, to extend the capability of an individual and because the technology exists, to name a few possibilities. Regulation and legal rights of multiple personal instances are interesting issues but not considered here.

It is likely that there will always be some scarcity of resources whether tangible (matter, energy, processing power, etc.) or intangible (status, reputation, attention, etc.). So it is likely that individuals and groups will always compete for resources.

Whether in the physical domain, digital domain or across domains, if you have copies of yourself, you will be competing with yourself for resources.

Initially, you will know exactly what your other self is thinking and strategizing and you might share resources effectively.

Then, although identical at the outset, any copies, if not mind-synced, will increasingly diverge. In situations of multiple personal instances, regular mind-syncing will probably be desirable but there will be many cases where this will not be possible or desired.

Even if two copies of the same entity are experiencing the same situation, it will not be equal in interpretation by both, the physical experience will not be completely equivalent and the mental experience will be even more different with the randomness of the brain and micro differences in cell chemical states triggering different experiences and interpretations.

Divergence in experience and interpretation could lead to divergence of goals. As with any current or historical examples of resource competition, divergent goals lead to destruction or collaboration.

The multi-self team
An optimal and evolutionarily superior final state would be one's selves coming together in a new entity, a multi-self team, a pool of many nuances of self and abilities, a borg being broader and more capable than any individual.

Philanthropy 2.0 and Voluntourism

Leading philanthropy consultant Katherine Fulton's November 2006 talk at the LongNow was interesting and informative but unfortunately ignored the Accountability 2.0 and Effectiveness 2.0 that should be accompanying Philanthropy 2.0. It becomes increasingly clear that the roadblocks are more about political, structural, procedural, institutional and organizational issues than the receipt of funds. As Amy Chua points out in "World on Fire," there is no incentive for ruling elites to take any action to diminish their power. Philanthropy 2.0 should be about the effective usage of financial and other resources not simply their presence.

Peer-to-peer finance is the Markets 2.0 improvement - a more direct way of allocating philanthropic resources, using services such as third-world entrepreneur lender Kiva, international grassroots project donation site GlobalGiving and livestock donation service Heifer.

Even better than personally-directed philanthropic capital is moving into an active role by being a volunteer tourist, voluntouring for two or more weeks in a country of your choice with programs run by UniversalGiving, Social Venture Partners and other organizations. A nice antidote to regular travel, adventure travel, extreme travel and eco-travel.