[cap-talk] Capability accounting

[Ian G]

Jed at Webstart wrote:
> All,
> 
> If others aren't interested in this topic (e.g. think it a waste of
> time), why so?  E.g. because there isn't enough capability
> infrastructure to account for (e.g. wideword?), because
> capability mechanisms don't need accounting, because there's
> some other clear and better way to do it, or what?


As I hale from the digital money side, I see "accounting"
as a poor copy of digital money.  Although it is interesting,
I probably would always model it as a money problem.  Then,
the accounting view tends to disappear.

One thing that pushing things into a money framework does
is to more clearly show how value is being used and allocated.
This is often "bad", because it shows that certain things
are really hard to get going as money problems.  E.g., the
"micropayments" guys would get all gooey about the notion
of charging micropennies for a capability.  But if they were
to try and build it they'd discover that there are hard
transaction costs which break the paper model;  that is, it
isn't worth charging for something below transaction costs,
and often there aren't enough sales above the transaction
costs to make it worth doing.

Money makes all those things come to the fore.  The accounting
people will say "oh, we don't need those costs, we'll just
run an accounting system," but the accounting system *hides*
the costs somewhere, rather than eliminates them.  So this
only works if you can find a place to hide them.

Hence, most Internet systems are built without any accounting,
and without any money.  Then, when we discover where the real
shortages are, we get around to experimenting with the accounting
and / or money.

(I don't know whether you actually got that far in your developments,
I spotted that one of you mentioned it was an up-front requirement.)

iang