Thanks for the reply! You raise a number of good discussion points. Some of which correspond with my own thinking as I was reading and thinking about this pair of articles.
Difference between economic value and actual value
I think of economic value as a measurement, so in the ideal sense, I don't think there should be a difference between the two. Of course the economic measurements are far from perfect, so I agree with you that - in practice - full actual value is rarely captured in depictions of economic value, especially in the digital/virtual space.
This reminds me of Goodhart's Law which is often paraphrased as, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
So I think we're in a sort of agreement that the target should be to produce actual value, not just good numbers.
Difference between actual groups and potential groups
You're right about this. This is the reason that I was thinking as I was reading these articles that both Reed's Law and Metcalfe's Law might be better seen as upper boundaries instead of expected values.
Following the logic of Metcalfe's Law is Wrong, I was wondering if n log(n)2 might be a better description of expected value growth for a GFN (applying Zipf's law to both the list of connections and also the list of groups).
This discussion as an example of a GFN
You're right about this, too. Which runs counter to my section on applying it to Steem. I was even beginning to have thoughts along these lines as I was writing it, but they hadn't gelled yet. Basically, having the ability to follow people and use categories already made Steem into a GFN. That capability is extended by communities, but it's not as black and white as I implied in that section of the article.
You're right, too, that SMTs and Oracles can enhance the GFN capability even further.
I mention Goodhart's Law at work time and time again. People still prefer to target good numbers.