Respect theory

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Respect theory is a theory about how people perceive respect and distribute their respect to other people based on their deeds or properties. It also studies implementations of the respect within a society (descriptive), and properties of a theoretically optimal implementation (normative).

Scope

What are the properties of respect, how is it perceived, and how does it form, accumulate, and distribute in a society?

Definition

Data

All the current currencies basically measure resources or services that can be traded to other resources or services. However, Eric S. Raymond has noted that in a society where the basic needs have been fulfilled, social respect cannot be gained by collecting more wealth but instead giving something for common good. Therefore, it is actually necessary for a society to have some currency for social respect, in addition to the measure of resources. Otherwise respect remains implicit or hard to recognise, and it is inefficient in motivating people to work for social development. It is not enough to have the current focus on efficient resource distribution by using money as a means to create trust between people within the society.

There should be a currency for respect. The respect currency should measure the amount of respect a certain act gains from the society. There exists some primitive examples of such a currency already. Honorary and other medals that are given to respected people e.g. on the 91st independence day of Finland (which is the day when the first draft of this page was written) are one kind of respect currency. Gifts in general also show respect. However, these currencies are not quantitative (i.e. they do not actually measure the amount of respect), and they are not (easily) tradeable to material benefits.

Result

The respect currency should have the following properties:

• It should show the respect of the giver about an act of the receiver.
• Once given, it should gradually diminish in time, so that the respect should be gained constantly.
• It should be tradable to some material benefits, such as traditional money.
• Highly respected people should be able to show more respect (i.e., their respect is valued more by the society).
• There should be some kind of accounting, so that the acts worth respect are documented (i.e. it should be difficult to create fake respect by e.g. two people falsely respecting each other more and more and thus accumulating respect currency).
• A person doing respectful deeds full-time should be able to live with the respect currency he/she receives and trades for traditional money.