It sounds like the sum of UOPs is constantly inflating, possibly by a large (but perhaps nearly constant?) amount. This might or might not be a problem, but it seems to me to at least be a barrier. I don't know enough about economic modeling, especially for this particular case, to decide whether spending UOPs on bids negates this or not. It seems like it would, but I can't justify that.
It depends how competitive the voting is. Lets say we have two people Jim and Bob. The average amounts of UOPs you can get from being in charge is 5000, let say they both have the same fixed costs for flunkies (2000), it makes sense to bid anything up to 2999. They will both still get a profit of 1 UOPS. If either of them think they can improve on the average they might bid more than 3000, and if they aren't well calibrated they would lose UOPS.
The big worry is collusion to keep bidding low, so that they can both gain control.
If UOPs are a currency, how are exchanges regulated? Can one write them into a will to be inherited? Can one purchase them with regular money? Can one give them to another politician in order to negotiate a policy?
I'm not sure. If the market is competitive I'm hoping the transfers won't need to be too heavily regulated as no one should gain too much, so they won't be able to give much away without sacrificing their ability to gain a post. The worse that might happen in willing things is someone incompetent might be given them, and then you have a time period of not very good governance, and that person loses most of their UOPs and can't get control again. But that might happen with things like alzheimers or other brain injury.
Can one donate them to another politician in order to see him or her elected? What about demanding that donation be a loan, perhaps with interest?
These seem necessary for new politicians to be introduced into the system, so I wouldn't regulate them too much.
Its design is loosely inspired by learning classifier systems where nepotism/collusion is not too much of a problem, so I don't know how it will interact with live humans. It might be like communism, nice in theory but not practical.
I'm planning to try it out at some point, on the small scale.
I'm definitely interested in how you plan to try it out.
The biggest problem that I see is the potential for
The rich get richer, and the powerful gain more power; we require a lot of protections against this pattern in our own governments, which still work poorly. It seems like with a fungible currency, this pattern is that much more dangerous.
You are now in control of a habitat on the moon. It has no ties to any government; its creation was funded by a wealthy philanthropist who just wants people to emigrate from Earth. The cost of doing so is within the reach of a middle-class family if they sell their home; you can therefore expect a decent number of immigrants.
What sort of government do you establish? How do you go about ruling so that your new settlement on the moon will survive and thrive?