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satt comments on Book Review: The Reputation Society. Part I - LessWrong
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Comments (8)
Indeed, I doubt that "those people with the best reputations and trust networks" and "people with money and nominal power" are especially distinct groups. And insofar as peer networks do successfully "confer legitimacy on people emerging from the grassroots", I expect them to make the two groups more similar, not less. (Reputation, or at least fame, just isn't very egalitarian.)
Interesting. Thanks for the link also. I think you're right that under an efficient reputational system, people with good reputation would be rich and powerful. Indeed, that notion is implied in the title ("The Reputation Society") and is expressed in some of the chapters (especially the two last ones).
If your reputation mirrored your merits, this would also make society more meritocratic. If so, that would be the continuation of a long historical process. In the feudal age, you could be rich and powerful just because of your lineage. Thanks to the market economy, your income correlates to a far higher degree with your merits today. Efficient reputational systems would improve the functioning of the market economy and make this correlation even stronger.
Could you please elaborate this further? I understand that people are unequal in money, and unequal in prestige, but I'm not sure whether/why you think these two would be correlated. Especially if prestige could also have negative values (as opposed to "negative publicity is also publicity" fame, which is much easier to buy for money), which could happen to rich people who abuse their power.
Do you mean that rich people could generate trust, or rather that trustworthy people could generate money? The former seems bad to me, the latter seems good, but the end result of both would be greater correlation between money and trust.
You can use money to buy prestige (if you want to and not stupid in going about it) and you can use prestige to get money (if you want to and not stupid in going about it).
Sure. Lumifer's given a concise summary already, so I'll zoom in a bit with some specific examples.
If I am (for example) a YouTube poster with no money but a good reputation — i.e. if lots of people follow my account and watch my videos — I can make money by selling merchandise or convincing people to donate, or through YouTube's official programme for monetizing videos through advertising and paid subscriptions. In the long run I could even use it as a launchpad for getting a TV series or a film.
Alternatively, if I'm rich but don't have a good reputation, I can pay a PR company to come up with articles that say nice things about me and have them circulated on popular websites, pay an SEO company to help bury embarrassing Google results and promote more PR-friendly stuff, or pay to run a high-quality online magazine or newspaper so I can benefit from the halo effect.
Of course, wealth and trust/prestige don't have to be positively correlated just because of the above. (Wealth can be used to destroy a reputation, too.) But in practice the two seem positively correlated to me, and mechanisms like those I've mentioned are very likely one reason why.
See The Forms of Capital
Not sure if this would be his argument, but time can be spent acquiring reputation (e.g. politicians knocking on doors, for a straightforward if inefficient example) or money, and having more money reduces your need to spend time acquiring more, thus freeing up time to acquire reputation.
Additionally, money makes it much easier to acquire fame, and fame would certainly magnify any reputation losses/gains.