| As I understand it, there are two moral systems: accounting and generosity. One keeps the books, the other has no books.
Of the two the former is most easy to understand, and to apply. It includes all of our justice systems, along with the language we use to explain how they work: we pay for our crimes, owe debts and favors (e.g. karma), and pay forward and back. George Lakoff outlines some of this here: < http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html>
On the generosity side, we don't expect to be paid for what we give freely, and with love, to our spouses, children, friends, tribes and countries. To put a price on love is to make less of it.
The great religions respect both. In Christian teachings, for example, Jesus dies to pay for everybody's sins. That's moral accounting. St. Paul explains moral generosity in 1 Corinthians 13: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." In other words, it keeps no books.
These can only be reconciled ironically. If God keeps no record of wrongs, why does his son die to pay for those wrongs? Don't ask. As a priest once explained to me, probing such ironies only leads to "the mystery" which can never be answered fully.
So, all that said, I think it's a mistake to think of one's self, or one's data, only as an "asset," or "capital" of some kind. We are larger, and other, than that.
Doc
On Mar 9, 2015, at 9:22 PM, Identity Coach <
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Nathan,
Re: assignment of value, there's something to be explored. There are two different parts of the brain: the part that does charitable things and what's "good" for the world. That part deals in goodness, personal morals and a sense of what's right. There's a very different part of the brain that deals in what's fair and the value of things. It has some priority over the "good" side, and will even overrule a "good" decision if this side decides that it's not "fair."
There was an experiment in one of the Nordic countries about recycling trash. A city asked people to do it because it was good for the environment, and the people did it. Another city or time, the city offered some financial token if people would recycle, and many chose not to because it wasn't worth it.
In our case, there's no token other than "privacy" (or other abstract concept) so people would rather ignore the value exchanged and realized by others.
judi
On 3/9/15 11:51 AM, Nathan Schor wrote:
Judy, Along with the others, I appreciate the link, as I wouldn’t have known about it on my own. Not just the article, but also your subject line also reminded me of the title of a recent book by Michael Fertik, the CEO of www.reputation.com – ‘The Reputation Economy: How to Optimize Your Digital Footprint in a World Where Your Reputation Is Your Most Valuable Asset’ The books audience isn’t the likes of us, but the professional public and it does a decent job acquainting them with the value of their ‘reputation currency’, and in a VRM friendly way. A word’s connotation matters a lot, of course. So the more ‘personal data’ is associated with ‘currency’ then the more people realize their personal data, in whatever of the multiple ways they expose it, has ‘real’ value; perhaps not so much in its raw form, but surely when its vacuumed, filtered, and put out to bid. We often discuss what the tipping point will look like for an economy based on VRM principals. Issues over privacy and trust have been debated as candidates, among others. But IMO the spark that could very well ignite the VRM engine is customer’s recognizing just how much their digital exhaust is actually worth. The argument for ‘value appreciation’ - customers awakening, as they increasingly are, to the value packed into their data has the advantage of backing from cognitive science. Once people accept they’re aren’t getting a fair deal when it comes to their personal data, a potent behavioral motivator kicks in - fondness for fairness. As an indicator of its strength, a sense of fairness crosses species, as our primate cousins exhibit it as well.
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