eBay has evolved considerably over its twelve years of existance so far, but at its core it has always been a sort of national garage sale. People buy and sell collectables and other goods across the country and sometimes the world. And the standard proceedure is for buyers to pay before the item is shipped. Why do buyers trust sellers they’ve never met enough to send them money? The answer is eBay’s feedback system. After each purchase, the buyer is invited to rate the seller in terms of shipping speed, item quality, etc.. This means that future buyers can rely on the feedback left by past buyers in their judgement of a seller’s trustworthiness. And it gives incentive to the seller to behave honorably because otherwise it will have a negative impact on his feedback rating.
Now, nearly everyone who’s ever shopped on eBay wants to point out that I am painting a far-too-utopian picture of the credibility of its sellers. And eBay certainly has its share of fraudsters, just as any flea market does. But I would argue that these gaps in the effectiveness of the feedback system are largely due to the ability to maintain more than one eBay account. When a less than scrupulous seller has driven his feedback rating too low, he simply has to open another account to start back at a clean record with no feedback, positive or negative. But most sellers are only willing to do this if they have relatively low feedback ratings. A seller might be willing to walk away from a +10 rating in order to scam you, but they are far less likely to similarly walk away from a +150 rating. And professional sellers are often part of eBay’s Power Sellers program, which gives buyers extra confidence by holding sellers to very high feedback standards. A seller who is part of such a system is highly unlikely to jeapardize his position by behaving dishonestly.
So why am I going on about feedback? Because technosocialism is all about empowering people to make choices in a decentralized and genuinely free market. If Bill needs the oil changed in his car, the system ought to be able to direct him to the closest mechanic capable of that. But Bill wants to be able to make his own decision and to choose a mechanic with a reputation for reliability. So instead of doing a simple location search, Bill can instead ask the system for a list of mechanics within, say, a five mile radius who have a feedback rating of 95% or higher and make his decision that way. And after he has had his oil changed, he rates the mechanic himself, making it easier for the next citizen coming along to make his choice.
The goal is to have a rating occur every time a Consumption/Contribution transaction takes place. The great mass of information thereby created allows citizens to make informed choices about their consumption, and attempts to prevent unscrupulous pseudo-Contributors from flooding the market with inferior products. As with the relatively benign culture of Facebook, the key is linking someone’s behavior immediately to their identity and thus to their reputation. Not only does this help prevent fraud and allow consumers to gauge the quality of a product before selecting it from the Market, it also helps producers. By recieving critiques from their entire customer base rather than simply the part of it particularly impressed or enraged, they can learn how they need to improve their product to appeal to a larger customer base.