 Basics of Altruistic EconomicsThe fundamental idea of
Altruistic Economics is that people's care for one another
is a vital aspect of their psyche and is definitely worth modelling.
To allow this to happen, people publish information about their
values and their relationships
in a standard form so it can be accessed by others (e.g. their friends)
interested in taking their feelings into account.
Certain key principles are worth bearing in mind from the outset:
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1. | People have to trust their friends.
A simple corollary to this is that if no one is willing to trust you, you cannot join the system.
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2. | Your data is your own.
Subject to 1 (above), everyone has complete control over what they publish, and who accesses it.
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3. | People are completely free about how they interpret one another's data.
The model assumes open source software from the outset.
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The first point to notice is that, like on WWW, there is no central repository of data.
The second is that
a social network is created and maintained bottom-up, by the individuals concerned.
Everyone is free to publish what they like, where they like,
in whatever format they like. Where they intend this for a wide audience,
it will be helpful to follow established standards
(c.f. HTML for webpages, MP3 for audio etc.) but these
are voluntary.
The following two components are central to the
altruistic economic model:
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1. |
Network of Care |
A dynamic social network, arising from individuals' statements about who cares for whom.
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2. |
Sympathy |
A quantitative representation of the strength of the care relationships involved.
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