[FRIAM] academia as a market of ideas

[Steve Smith]

Jon -
> "there must be some asymmetry in valuation to *drive the engine*."
>
> Perhaps, but must such a valuation be scalar-valued, orderable, or even
> comparable? 
Agreed...  
> The exchange of things seems sorting-algorithm-like but overall
> more shuffling-algorithm-like.

I think that the presumption of trade is that participants *are* seeking
to increase their perception of value of their "hoard".  

Trying to use the language you introduce above... I think I'm claiming
that *local* orderability with no *global* orderability is what makes
this work.   Locality may apply to time as well as space/individual.  
My daughters at a certain age would return from a sleepover, having
exchanged *their* dirty old sneakers for someone else's and *both* would
apparently feel they had come away with a good deal.  Perhaps the
surplus value (in an otherwise presumed to be conserved valuation) came
from each having increased some sort of friendship bond in the exchange,
or perhaps it was just each pair of sneakers was "new" or "novel" to the
other (most likely both).

>  For all of our differences, placing all of
> our goods outside our houses and permuting *like* things would effectively
> lead to no change.

There was once a woman in El Dorado whose home was an artists-materials
trove.  She would scour garage sales and thrift stores for "objects of
desire", especially things that could be transformed into collage,
jewelry, multimedia, etc.   She would carefully select, clean,
smooth-out, package and price and generally "make precious" other
people's junk.   On a limited schedule and by appointment, local (and
international actually) artists would visit her trove and buy items from
her collection.   After many years of this, she claimed that she no
longer had to go out hunting and gathering because her local customers
would bring her boxes of their discards and excess which she would "give
the treatment" and others would then come and pay a premium for the
sorting and preciousizing.  In fact, she claimed she had friends who
would return months later and buy their own items back simply because by
sorting and bagging, she had made them precious again!  

I try to do this with the Habitat for Humanity restore.   To avoid my
own hoarding habits with building materials, I try to think of Habitat
as a "storage location" and the price I pay to get my materials (or
like/similar ones) back later is either a donation to a good cause, or a
storage fee (or a little of both).  In that vein, trading a 12' 2x6 for
a 10' 2x4s is a bargain if I need a 10' 2x4 and the 2x6 is just taking
up space awkwardly.   Global/Local/Contextual valuation?

>
>
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