From: Blanc Weber <blancw@microsoft.com>
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 94 14:43:21 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Problems with anonymous escrow 2--response
Message-ID: <9408312143.AA04819@netmail2.microsoft.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Anonymity & reputation as assets:

From Hal:

Besides the question of trustworthiness, another problem I see with
anonymous escrow agents applies more generally to any form of
anonymous business.  Anonymity makes sense to me for the individual.
Each person manages his own affairs and he can keep secret or reveal
what he wants.  But at the business level it is going to be much
harder to keep the same level of secrecy.

From Tim:

...what good would assets do if they can't be traced? More generally,
reputation capital is what they need, not physical assets.
...............................................................

I'm not seeing the relationship of these two concepts of anonymity in 
conjunction with reputation.

How could such attributes co-exist?
Can they really function successfully together for both the agent & 
their client:  how could one individual or escrow agent be both 
unknowable and yet depend upon reputation capital to go on?  To have 
reputation means that one's behavior from the past must be known & 
evaluated for future interactions, but to be anonymous means that their 
client will not know who that particular entity is with whom they is dealing:

so would this like doing business with God, where you only know what 
s/he's *supposed* to deliver, but never really know who it is wot does 
the deed, or whether there really is one?

Blanc