An idea I’ve been chewing on for a while is reframing how value is derived. Broadly, the predominant mechanisms used today requires resources to be finite in or

An idea I’ve been chewing on for a while is reframing how value is derived. Broadly, the predominant mechanisms used today requires resources to be finite in order for their value to be meaningfully quantified. This makes sense for physical and temporal entities, and I see the copyright and patent systems as the mechanisms we came up with to impose artificial scarcity of intrinsically abundant resources. I see this as ultimately rewarding self interested behaviour, which wild gesturing at everything. Rather than remove or replace it, I’d propose building a competing mechanism which values and rewards sharing abundant resources as broadly as possible. To my mind, the value of an idea should be quantified on the breadth and depth of its application, not by how tightly it can be restricted. One candidate would be a neural network akin to PageRank. Ideas would be the neurones (value sinks), and dependency links would be the synapses (value sources). The greater the links in size and number, the greater the value attributed to the ideas. Neurones and links could have ‘owners’ attached to facilitate accounting. There’s also a potential MMT component, where part or all of the generated value is instantiated by a currency issuer.