I thought it interesting because despite the idea of reputation-based currency being by far the most convincing and fully-realised part of Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, it wasn't until reading this essay I realised how much contempt he had for the concept.
(without giving too much of the plotline away, the main distinguishing factor of the reputation-based currency is that people lose it very quickly when they upset people, and in the book people are usually upset for perfectly understandable reasons. Otherwise, people achieve high reputations with the same blend of shrewdness, endeavour and inheritance as required to get rich in today's economy).
> it wasn't until reading this essay I realised how much contempt he had for the concept.
That's because he didn't. Cory published DaOitMK in 2003, meaning it was in the publisher's pipeline in 2002 and written probably 2000-2001. This essay was published in 2016. He's had 15 years of cumulative experiences upon the basis of which to change his opinion on reputation economies -- is it surprising that he's done so?
(Similarly: I disagree violently with the Charlie Stross who wrote Accelerando, circa 1998-2004, on the subject of the singularity. But hey, it's been close to 20 years; younger Charlie had less data and experience to go on, is all.)
((Disclaimer: I have no insight into Cory's mind on this topic other than that which comes from having known him for about 15 years and written a book with him.))
I'm about as skeptical about the singularity these days as Cory is skeptical about Whuffie.
(When you look at the pattern of beliefs around the singularity they structurally resemble the complex of beliefs held by pre-millenarian Christian fundamentalists. They're equally difficult to falsify, too. If you conditionally accept the theory that atheism as understood in the West is a product of the Enlightenment and thus a Protestan heresy, then it looks like a bunch of the avowedly rationalist atheists have come full-circle and accidentally built themselves a tree house that looks uncannily like a church.)
(without giving too much of the plotline away, the main distinguishing factor of the reputation-based currency is that people lose it very quickly when they upset people, and in the book people are usually upset for perfectly understandable reasons. Otherwise, people achieve high reputations with the same blend of shrewdness, endeavour and inheritance as required to get rich in today's economy).