I'm not a big fan of this idea, though I probably can't express my reasonings with a lot of clarity at the moment. I'll certainly try.

First, I'm all for a way for Hubski to raise some money. I'd be more in favor of either direct donations (which probably exist somewhere) or some sort of premium membership (no idea what that would look like, but I'm thinking of reddit gold) - but I'd support that.

You create a Hubski bank account of sorts

This is my first problem. Where and how? I have the bite in the back of my head that tells me this idea was probably jolted into existence by the opening of Circle - which I have no experience with, no confidence in, and no knowledge of how it works. If it's (edit: 'it' being the Hubski system, not Circle) just paypal operated (another site I have issues with, but mostly just because their customer service is terrible), I'd be a bit more okay with it. But really, the "Hubski Bank Account" isn't something I have a giant problem with, just an insecurity.

Then, every time you comment or post, you are charged a fee (say, one or two cents), which goes to Hubski's coffers. Alternately, when you upvote or share, the same fee is transferred to the account of the user whose content you are appreciating. You would also have the ability to transfer credits to whomever you want without having to share or upvote.

This is a bigger problem for me. I don't like the idea of being charged to post content, even if it is one cent. Even if a ten dollar deposit would give me 1000 posts+shares, I just don't like the precedent. I'm sure it seems minuscule and insignificant, and there may very well be no logical reason for it. I simply don't like it.

This is also exactly how badges work already right? Badges "transfer" from person to person when they're awarded. If this were discussed further, I'd want to see statistics on badge movement. Do they actually move around? I've got seven (a fact I didn't know until I turned off Zen mode a few moments ago to collect info), and they definitely don't go around. This is important because...

Third (and this is the most interesting aspect, IMO), it would create an economy on the site based on social capital, as credits would be passed around, bought, sold, and given away based on appreciation from the members. The negative side, of course, is that this could represent an upward redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, so to speak, but it could also encourage development of ideas, since each comment would have a value.

I don't think Hubski's content should have an economy on social capital. It has an economy built in: interest and discussion. I think implementing something like this would have serious upward distribution. In fact, I don't think it would have anything but upward distribution. Power users with hundreds of followers will be able to make an absurd amount when compared to newer or simply sharing users.

For instance, thenewgreen has 977 followers. Assume half of his followers share something, that's $4.89 he's made with a .01 cent investment. Great return for him.

I have 15 followers. If I share something, and half of my followers share it, that's .075¢. Not a great return. If all of my followers share it, it's 15¢. Not a great return.

That's obviously discounting the cascade effect a "share" actually has. Obviously if thenewgreen shared my post, it has a potential to reach another 977 people, which would open me up to his "market."

Which brings me to...

It is my conjecture that members who may not have much or any money, but who are valuable would be supported by the richer among us.

Trickle-down economics is a bad idea, and it's never worked. Though, with extremely microscopic transactions like 1¢, it probably has a much better potential here than anywhere else. Again, I want to see information on badge distribution and storage. thenewgreen has 73 badges (I see him badge things quite frequently). For users with a lot of badges, do they badge enough to sustain an economy? It's not something they should really be concerned with, I think.

I think this does a couple things. First, it will keep out spammers and undesirables.

While I understand the desire to keep out spammers, I really wish the rhetoric on "undesirables" on Hubski would disappear. It comes off as elitist. That's an irrelevant nit-pick.

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Despite all of that, I do find the idea interesting. My biggest problem is the eco-speak in the presentation. Hubski shouldn't be a marketplace. It should be a forum. I don't want people to pay me for my comments here, and I don't want to pay people for their comments. In the rare cases which I do, I'd give a badge.

Here's my suggestion, which I think could test this idea and some of the theory behind it:

Introduce a way to buy "marks", a strict one-time-per-user test run. $1 = 100 marks (making each mark worth 1¢, the proposed price). I'm imagining a clone of badges (the only reason I suggest using something other than badges is so that the integrity of the test isn't compromised by existing badges or badging behavior). Marks can be given in the same way that badges can, received in the same way, but also go away with each post. So for users who have invested the $1, a post now costs 1¢.

Track the transfer of marks to and from users for the duration of... between one and three months. I think this would be enough time to track some of your theories and see if they work. It also makes the experience voluntary, which means there will be an existing control group of people who don't participate in buying marks. This would allow us to see how behavior changed when money was introduced into the equation (even an infinitesimally small amount).

At the end of the test run, our subjects will be the evidence. Those who participated could only have initially purchased 100 marks. How many do they have now? How many did they give away? I'm sure a dozen other metrics could be taken from the information as well.

I'm purposely ignoring shares here because they're a metric that I think should remain totally free of pay. I don't anticipate a great deal of difference between the shares and marks in this test, however. My theory is that if a post is worth badging or marking, it's worth sharing. That's a possible weakness to the test, but it's my suggestion that shares be completely free.

This would also be an incredibly interesting study of extremely micro-economics which could be cool to watch and participate in. My testing suggestion probably has issues too, but I think a test run with something more focused (marks (or whatever), instead of shares) would be beneficial).

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I realized about halfway through that I was being really negative, and that wasn't my intention. I get very worried when people start putting price tags on opinions, and when free discourse becomes a market. Things can go very bad in a very short amount of time, and it worries me (just look at the evening news). 1¢ is basically nothing, I get that. I worry about down the road.