[Moyamo]

A refinement of (1) would be Harberger Taxes[0].

1. When a person registers a name they declare a price they are willing to sell the name for. They can update their price at any time.

2. They pay an annual tax (about 1% to 5%) for the right to keep the name.

3. If someone is willing to buy the name for the declared price they are forced to sell the name to them.

This system has the advantage that the person who values the name the most will get to keep it, and the person who lost the name will be fairly compensated.

[0] https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/upload_documents... (See the bottom of page 39 in particular)

[clairity]

that's an economic solution (and a neat one at that) to a sociopolitical problem. societies use names to address, differentiate, and even affiliate each other.

economics concerns itself with the best allocation of productive resources. names don't really fall into that category (even if there is some marginal utility in the economic domain for edge cases like celebrities' names).