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I think the question of what tangible benefits are rewards for RP misses the point. Tangible rewards is just one type of encouragement. Whole reams of educational literature have been written on how to encourage children to learn, for instance, and rarely do those methods have anything to do with giving the children tangible rewards for learning. Instead, the encouragement is usually built into the structure of the system, much like in most RP-encouraged MUDs. Most successful examples of systemic encouragement designed to elicit particular sets of behaviors do not use the hand-the-dude-a-lollipop type of encouragement. For instance, a classic example of a way to discourage crime in a crappy neighborhood is not to give people lollipops (or whatever) for behaving lawfully. It's to change the culture of the area by, for instance, repairing broken windows, cleaning up graffiti, etc. In this way, people are encouraged to keep their neighborhoods freer of crime and cleaner generally (well-documented to work too) and that encouragement is part of the 'system' of the neighborhood.
--matt
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