I've been playing with the idea of a 'karma economy': everyone starts with 1.0 karma. If someone uses a service or product you made, your karma increases by c * (user's karma), where c is some coefficient. Karma also decays over time, but never drops below 1.0. Creators of expensive (scarce) items could hold onto those items until someone with high karma wants one, thus maximizing their own karma gain.
I'm no an economist, so I have no idea if something like this would work, but it's a lot of fun to think about.
Is this similar to eh whuffies from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?
That sounds very similar, though I believe that giving someone whuffie is a voluntary action that you do when you like a service/product/etc that you got from them rather than being automatic and you can also decrease their whuffie if they do something you don't like.
I'm no an economist, so I have no idea if something like this would work, but it's a lot of fun to think about.
Is this similar to eh whuffies from Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?