[cap-talk] Capability accounting - meta

[Ian G]

Jed at Webstart wrote:

> To my thinking there has been a significant divergence from the 
> original topic of "Capability accounting" as I try to address by 
> responding to Sandro's message below:


Yes.  This is a problem with money, it's a "whole
other world."  :)

Money can be merged with capabilities
at the micropayments level, from a technological
viewpoint, but that is somewhat forced or ideal, see
Nick's posts for why it runs into trouble.
This can be summarised as "micropayments don't work."
(Which obviously is a debatable thread taking another
1000 posts...).

At a higher level, Capability accounting can still
be best viewed as a money and trade issue.  The
concepts of retail trade and payments for goods
have a lot to offer here - so much so that I don't
see why Capability accounting is any different from
accounting for any other similar resource - e.g.,
your supercomputing CPU resource.


> I believe the existence of systems like PayPal argue that an IT 
> "account" model can work in the general Internet world.  The relevant 
> question for me is whether any sort of "capability" mechanism (with a 
> communicable authority token for an account) makes sense, adds value, can work.


Do you mean - capabilities used to deliver / build money?

If that, I would have to say yes, because it
is (I think) what I do.  I use capabilities or
capability-like constructs as the base concept
for a money and assets system.

(As a sort of funny aside, the reason for joining
this group was to find out if that was a true
statement.)

Or, do you mean, money used to deliver capabilities?

This I would say as "Unlikely."  The problem is
the same as with other markets -- predicting how
to charge when we haven't actually discovered
what it is we are charging for, and who needs
it and why and when, is too many unknowns stacked
together.

The Internet validated a model that works -- build
it and give it away for free.  Then work out how
to make money from it.


iang