The reputation economy

Receiving "points" for carrying out certain tasks has been quite well established in the domain of retail brand loyalty schemes.  People will sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to receive "points" of incredibly low economic value, often amounting to tiny fractions of a pence each.  There's now a proposal to extend a similar points based system to casual labour.

If the "points" have some non-trivial economic value then this may be a good idea, basically clearing out a lot of the bureaucracy surrounding the process of hiring casual labour.  This isn't really the same as the "big society" idea, which is based upon the notion of volunteering without economic reward.  I think the big society will fail to boost volunteerism by a significant percentage (most people are not highly altruistic), but that altering the economy to be more focussed around alternative currencies - such as a person's reputation - may be more successful.

It might be a better idea to have a single, officially approved, reputation system which is exchangeable for goods and services, rather like money.  Performing certain tasks either boosts or decreases your reputation, with the votes of other people being used to decide who has a higher or lower reputation.  In this way even if structural unemployment rises due to automation people who are unemployed in the conventional sense will still be encouraged to maintain their reputation and engage in activities which enhance their social standing in the opinion of others.

An advantage of a reputation based points system is that you can't borrow your own reputation from others and get into reputational debt.  You have to build up your reputation from your own actions, and antisocial activities will damage your reputation and reduce its economic value.  Also, reputation systems should be non-zero sum, such that if I increase my reputation this doesn't mean that someone else is excluded from having the opportunity to also do the same, although relative competition would still exist.

It's worth remembering that there is nothing inalienable or inherently valuable about money as we now know it.  It's just an imaginary man-made system, and could be replaced by other kinds of system which in some way indicate value and facilitate the fair distribution of goods and services.  New technology and ubiquitous internet access may mean that value representations more complex than physical cash (metal or paper) or credit cards can be implemented and made practical.