From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Jul 08 2002 - 16:49:18 MDT
On Mon, Jul 08, 2002 at 08:59:13PM +0200, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>
> Ok, now you need some kind of organization that approves the "ok" labels
> on products (in a free market, a for-profit one? I'll have problems
> trusting them).
Hmm, why do you trust ok labels from governments or non-profit
organisations? A common argument for such labels is that such
organisations would not profit from lying about them, but this is
somewhat spurious. A for-profit organisation would lose business by
becoming known as lying (e.g. by putting ok on non-ok products to get
more money, or refusing to ok good products). The same incentive isn't
true for government organisations since they only have an indirect
incentive for being correct (if they misbehave, people may complain to
the politicians who may in turn demand a change - if it is in *their*
interest). Non-profit organisations are somewhat in between. But any
organisation is run for the profit of *someone*, bringing with it both
the risks and checks and balances linked to this.
Review organisations is an interesting subject. They produce value
estimates, whose accuracy in turn has to be estimated. It is very
similar to the cryptographic webs or trust, but here it becomes possible
to link agents, organisations or review boards with economic and legal
ties. This seems to make the problem far more tractable.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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