[notJim]

> Requiring benefit is a huge step from where we are.

The phrase "requiring benefit" is doing a huge amount of heavy lifting in this statement by assuming benefit is something that can easily be agreed upon, or that it's not already taken into account.

Since it will obviously be difficult to agree on this, what if we just vote? I'd propose a system where each of us gets a certain amount of tokens, and then we use our tokens to vote on which products are beneficial. Those companies that make beneficial products will receive the most tokens. They can distribute some of them to their employees and shareholders. The companies that don't provide enough benefit will naturally go under as they fail to accumulate enough tokens to attract employees. We can also set up systems to ensure that everyone receives a minimum number of tokens, and also so that certain people don't accumulate so many tokens as to give them too much control over society.

I believe this system will work well for rewarding companies which produce benefits and punishing those who don't and look forward to it being implemented.

[__MatrixMan__]

Something along those lines is what I would propose, although once the tokens were used to decide which companies get dissolved (and maybe which ones get tax breaks) I'd zero-out all balances rather than creating a secondary economy around their circulation. By that point they'd have done their job. But I'm not really enough of a game theorist/economist/evolutionary biologist to be coming up with the details. My point is just that we should try something like this.