Re: Free goods entail free bads or every lining has a dark cloud.

[Jon Crowcroft <J.Crowcroft at Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>]

 >  (1) Each of us would receive a number of tokens/credits each month;

 >  (2) Mail would remove tokens and would be possible only while
 >      positive credits are available;

so far this has the "token ring" fairness attributes - works fine and
is conventional democracy.

 >  (3) Tokens could be increased/decreased via positive/negative votes
 >      that the list would send (when aroused) to the list server.

this mechanism (games theory (see Hofstadter - iterated prisoners
dilemma)) will lead to ever increasing blandness on the list in one of
2 ways (extremes on a spctrum):

i) either a czar sends nacks - they deterimine a single point of view
takes over (see monitor station on cambridge ring)
ii) all objections/nacks from all sources quench senders - reduces
content to lowest common denomitor - in evolutionary terms, regression
to mean & population stagnation...