Keltham supposes he's starting to see a bunch of value that could be unlocked by this system, which, to write down some of the rules so far:

- Food can be tagged with a 'socially-constructed' imaginary arrow that points to a particular person, let's call them the 'owner'.  There's a socially respected rule (not a physical law) saying that only the 'owner' of food can eat it.

This rule of itself isn't obviously very useful on the face of it - if food just came out of nowhere, a rule like this would just prevent hungry people from eating right away?  Or at least, nobody else has explained yet why you'd want 'socially_constructed-ownership_tags' for food if it just came out of nowhere?

However, this rule becomes useful when combined with a new one:

- Land can be tagged with a socially constructed imaginary pointer to an owner.  There's a socially respected rule saying that all food which grows from that land then gets tagged with the same owner, and those food-tags are then respected as above.

This incentivizes people to invest increasing amounts of effort into farming their land, since they get more food and more reliable food in proportion to putting in more effort.  This seems probably more efficient than having a whole group guarding a lot of land and then also expending effort on monitoring how much effort all those people are putting into farming, monitoring the monitors, trying to have an incentive system that encourages the right amount of farming, etcetera.  Though obviously this whole tagging system is also going to have social costs?

Still, it's plausible the tagging system is more efficient.  It has a compact local physical relationship between how much people work and how much they eat, instead of a complicated socially-constructed one involving lots of monitoring and people with power over other people who might go corrupt.

Keltham supposes he's starting to see a bunch of value that could be unlocked by this system, which, to write down some of the rules so far:

- Food can be tagged with a 'socially-constructed' imaginary arrow that points to a particular person, let's call them the 'owner'.  There's a socially respected rule (not a physical law) saying that only the 'owner' of food can eat it.

This rule of itself isn't obviously very useful on the face of it - if food just came out of nowhere, a rule like this would just prevent hungry people from eating food that's nearby?  Or at least, nobody else has explained yet why you'd want 'socially_constructed-ownership_tags' for food if it just came out of nowhere?

However, this rule becomes (visibly) useful when combined with a new one:

- Land can be tagged with a socially constructed imaginary pointer to an owner.  There's a socially respected rule saying that all food which grows from that land then gets tagged with the same owner, and those food-tags are then respected as above.

This incentivizes people to invest increasing amounts of effort into farming their land, since they get more food and more reliable food in proportion to putting in more effort.  This seems probably more efficient than having a whole group guarding a lot of land and then also expending effort on monitoring how much effort all those people are putting into farming, monitoring the monitors, trying to have an incentive system that encourages the right amount of farming, etcetera.  Though obviously this whole tagging system is also going to have social costs?

Still, it's plausible the tagging system is more efficient.  It has a compact local physical relationship between how much people work and how much they eat, instead of a complicated socially-constructed one involving lots of monitoring and people with power over other people who might go corrupt.

Keltham supposes he's starting to see a bunch of value that could be unlocked by this system, which, to write down some of the rules so far:

- Food can be tagged with a 'socially-constructed' imaginary arrow that points to a particular person, let's call them the 'owner'.  There's a socially respected rule (not a physical law) saying that only the 'owner' of food can eat it.

This rule of itself isn't obviously very useful on the face of it - if food just came out of nowhere, a rule like this would just prevent hungry people from eating food that's nearby?  Or at least, nobody else has explained yet why you'd want 'socially_constructed-ownership_tags' for food if it just came out of nowhere?

However, this rule becomes (visibly) useful when combined with a new one:

- Land can be tagged with a socially constructed imaginary 'pointer' to an owner.  There's a socially respected rule saying that all food which grows from that land then gets tagged with the same owner, and those food-tags are then respected as above.

This incentivizes people to invest increasing amounts of effort into farming their land, since they get more food and more reliable food in proportion to putting in more effort.  This seems probably more efficient than having a whole group guarding a lot of land and then also expending effort on monitoring how much effort all those people are putting into farming, monitoring the monitors, trying to have an incentive system that encourages the right amount of farming, etcetera.  Though obviously this whole tagging system is also going to have social costs?

Still, it's plausible the tagging system is more efficient.  It has a compact local physical relationship between how much people work and how much they eat, instead of a complicated socially-constructed one involving lots of monitoring and people with power over other people who might go corrupt.

Keltham supposes he's starting to see a bunch of value that could be unlocked by this system, in which, to write down some of the rules so far:

- Food can be tagged with a 'socially-constructed' imaginary arrow that points to a particular person, let's call them the 'owner'.  There's a socially respected rule (not a physical law) saying that only the 'owner' of food can eat it.

This rule of itself isn't obviously very useful on the face of it - if food just came out of nowhere, a rule like this would just prevent hungry people from eating food that's nearby?  Or at least, nobody else has explained yet why you'd want 'socially_constructed-ownership_tags' for food if it just came out of nowhere?

However, this rule becomes (visibly) useful when combined with a new one:

- Land can be tagged with a socially constructed imaginary 'pointer' to an owner.  There's a socially respected rule saying that all food which grows from that land then gets tagged with the same owner, and those food-tags are then respected as above.

This incentivizes people to invest increasing amounts of effort into farming their land, since they get more food and more reliable food in proportion to putting in more effort.  This seems probably more efficient than having a whole group guarding a lot of land and then also expending effort on monitoring how much effort all those people are putting into farming, monitoring the monitors, trying to have an incentive system that encourages the right amount of farming, etcetera.  Though obviously this whole tagging system is also going to have social costs?

Still, it's plausible the tagging system is more efficient.  It has a compact local physical relationship between how much people work and how much they eat, instead of a complicated socially-constructed one involving lots of monitoring and people with power over other people who might go corrupt.