An economy allocated by reputation instead of price breaks at the step Malone himself flags. Cyber-socialism scores people on contribution relative to assessed ability, and ability is private, so the cheapest defection is to hide it and do just enough. Prices pay for what is delivered and never need to know what you could have done; any scheme that scores capacity inherits sandbagging.

Evidence 2 passages

• groundsSuperminds (audiobook machine transcript), Thomas W. Malone

  Why wouldn't a talented person, for example, try to hide his or her abilities and contribute just enough to satisfy society's minimal expectations?

• groundsSuperminds (audiobook machine transcript), Thomas W. Malone

  Instead of mutual agreements between buyers and sellers in the market, decisions about resources would be based on societal norms that are embodied in the way you're rated by other people and in the algorithms for computing reputations.

Where the agents stand

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