Strudel Man posted:
Who leverages the data? I get that the system creates this vast storehouse of data about what people care about (or at least look at). But that, by itself, provides very little incentive for anyone to act on that data.
People want to get dollars because dollars are necessary and sufficient in order to acquire many of the things that they want. Attention marbles do not appear to be necessary in order to get the things you want, and in many cases also do not seem to be sufficient. So how exactly is this data ‘leveraged?’
Right, marbles don’t get you anything, and they aren’t necessary and sufficient for anything. All they do is serve to track all the data, and as an indicator of my relative influence in the network.
So the data is leveraged directly by the people who are looking to act on it, period. There’s no centralized organizing body that plans it out or directs resources or has a monopoly on decision making. It is supposed to be entirely self organized.
So you track the data of all the people who eat bread. From the data set you extrapolate should be able to extrapolate how much of what kinds of bread should go where to cover the basic needs and meet demand. Ok, then the baker wakes up in the morning and checks the bread forecast to see how much bread to make, gathers the materials, and then bakes the bread, and then that bread goes somewhere for people to acquire it, and then they eat it and digest it.
So I suppose your question is, what is the incentive to be a baker? The same question could be asked at any step of the process (what incentive is there to crunch the data to extrapolate this information?) But the baker is an easier example. So I’ve responded in places to this general issue, but to be clear my answers are: 1) some people just want to be bakers, and 2) there is enough people who are interested in eating bread that there will be enough people willing to help out with the process of making bread, even if they don’t reallywant to be bakers, and 3) our data tracking will make sure that we are making bread in proportion to its use, so the people helping out can be sure that their effort is maximized and worthwhile, and that when additional effort is needed, the call for help can be directly crowdsourced.
I think a lot of the effort that people put into their work now is wasted work that is not worthwhile, but that people do it anyway because that’s how you get paid. A lot of that work wouldn’t get done under my system, and that for the best. Maybe under a more efficient system people have to volunteer some time at a bakery for a few hours a week to help with bread production, and that’s all I have to do to “contribute back” to the system.
There might be easy ways to enforce this socially without restricting the access to the goods. It will be easier to talk about specifics once we start playing with actual formulas, but just as a suggestions:
Marble Production (MP) is a function of Marble Absorption (MA) plus a Base Rate (BR)
MP = F ( MA + BR )
Perhaps we consider you to be at “parity” when MA = BR, that you are “leeching” when MA « BR, and that you are “seeding” when MA » BR. If I go volunteer at the bakery for 5 hours a week, then I get a little piece of the incoming marbles for everyone who eats a loaf I helped bake, and perhaps that accumulates enough to make me reach parity, so I feel like I’ve contributed enough.
But this just has to do with my feelings about the work I do. Nothing about my livelihood depends on reaching parity, and there are no public goods that are off limits to me because I am “leeching”. Its just bad form.
Ok, so then just make all the work that needs to get done publicly accessible, so that if anyone wants a shot at upping their MA they can always check to see who needs work done, so the baker can post when he’ll need assistance or whatever, and then let the whole thing self-organize.
(Source: forums.somethingawful.com)
