Given that karma is a quantifiable thing in the Shadowrun universe.

And Free Spirits need it to grow and have to get it from other thinking beings.

Any idea what the 2070 market value of a point of karma might be?

You can't exchange Karma, experience points may be a quantifiable thing in RPG games but that doesn't mean you an buy and sell it or transfer it in any way.
As a mechanically device Karma exists but the characters themselves have no concept of karma being used to advance there stats.
Just as in certain games that shall go unnamed YOU may know your level 14th and one Encounter Level 8 will bring you to level 15th. But the character does not possess this knowledge.

Some GM's allow you to trade say 5,000 nuyen for a point of Karma usually for technomancers who have no real use for cash.

A mage can create a Ward that lasts for a week or two, and that's a common enough service that competition will create a common range of prices (adjust by local supply and demand).

A mage can also make a Ward that lasts indefinitely. Some people are willing to pay more for that ward than for the short-term one. How much more will they pay, how much does she charge?

The difference in price, is the cash value of the Karma to make a permanent ward. QED.

PCs get Karma according to specific conditions. Whether NPCs get Karma the same way is an open argument, and can be different than PCs without breaking game balance, and perhaps that happens in a way that people can understand, maybe even measure over time.

Except that in Shadowrun mages better have some idea or they are going to waste alot of time on projects that fail because they don't have the Karma to power them. Also, like the OP said, Free Spirits need karma and you can't tell me a Free Spirit with the Wealth power isn't willing to part with some nuyen if someone will be a willing Karma drain.

Chris

Jack Kain brings up a good point, though...how, exactly, does a character understand his level of Karma? I imagine this exchange going on...

Free Spirit: I'll give you 20,000 nuyen for your karma.
Player: My what?
Free Spirit: You know...your potential to improve skills and such.
Player: No way. Not worth it...I can barely make it on the streets as it is.
Free Spirit: Well, you can earn more.
Player: More what?
Free Spirit: More karma.

I use the 5000 to 1 karma rule, and we've had good luck with it, but understanding how the character sees that interaction is difficult. Maybe easy to understand for the awakened.... "Hmmm, your aura/chi/whatever is very strong." Or perhaps, with mana existing, karma is something your character can feel, even if he isn't awakened...he just feels powerful/good/happy?

I dunno...thoughts?

I'd say opportunity costs need to be considered, though. 5,000 /karma is all well and good, except that some characters are going end up having hundreds of thousands of nuyen. If someone has half a million, that's a hundred karma. I'd come up with a sliding scale based on income; then again, I'm some sort of crazy socialist.

I dunno about you, but if some random spirit came up to my street sam - who's in a hurry to upgrade his wired reflexes to beta, or swap to Move by Wire - and offered him a big fat stack of cash for some kind of intangible 'potential worth', he'd do it in a hurry. It would just seem like a ridiculous thing to say no to.

Of course, he's one of those guys who firmly believes in "cram as much ware into yourself as you can to keep your edge and do drugs, too, if you have to." You know. A Cyberpunk, with a capital C.

Incidentally, on the other side of the fence, I don't allow Karma exchanges for money.

Instead, I just give out more money and/or karma payoffs. It's not unheard of for players to earn 10-14 karma for a run (roughly two to three sessions) and I've had payoffs well into the 200,000 nuyen (they took second in a poker tournament -- fairly, too!). As a result, those that need money have it and those that need karma have it. Then, a more rigid application of the rules for availability and the times for learning/enhancing skills/attributes keep people from getting too powerful too quickly.

I think it makes sense to exchange Nuyen for Karma, but not the other way around. Think about it:

In real life, I donate money to an organization, I feel better about myself, etc.

It just doesn't make sense the other way around though.

See previous comments about Free Spirits needing/wanting Karma, having the ability to take it from you, and some of them having the Wealth power or just being around long enough to have cash.

Chris

Then to trade your karma for nuyen, you'd have to find a free spirit who wants your karma, no easy task and probably not worth it.

doesn't EVERY Free Spirit want Karma? O.o
you don't even need to know their true name to donate if i am not mistaken . . and even if you did need to know, there's laes . . the date-rape-drug for spirits o.O

only for spirits?

This reminds me of a free spirit frm a Game I ran a while back.

He started as a Hearht spirit of a corporation building (looked like a sec guard) and ended up becoming a Street sammi type who spent much of his nuyen on karma

It's really easy to justify trading karma for nuyen. Though karma works like experience points in Shadowrun, at the same time it represents the Hindu idea that by doing good deeds, you are rewarded. Of course, 'good' is relative to your dharma. If you're a kshatriya, or warrior, lopping off heads is your function, and earns you good karma. Though the Hindu tradition is much more nuanced than that, I think it makes sense to view it this way in Shadowrun. If you're a shadowrunner, your dharma is shadowrunning, and by shadowrunning, you earn karma.

If we think of karma as accumulated good will of the universe, it's easy to imagine how you could trade it for money. Spend some karma, and omg you won a contest! Or you found a certified credstick in your couch. Or your dog takes a dump and it turns out he ate a big ass diamond. Whatever. The point is, karma isn't just 'exp,' it's something that can be looked at more flexibly. I know that, per canon, it's just a game mechanic like essence, but that doesn't prevent us from taking liberties. We're talking about creating rules from whole cloth, after all. Trading money for karma or karma for money is not allowed at all, per canon. So why be concerned with what the devs think karma represents, as long as we're changing the way the game works?

I think that if you allow magical characters to buy karma with yen, you need to retain balance by letting mundanes buy yen with karma. This is just basic fairness - magicals don't really need money, but streetsams can start out so close to the cap in their important skills that they don't really need karma. I think the best policy is to just play the game per RAW, since who knows what changing the karma/cash dynamics will do to your campaign? But if you're up for experimentation, why not adhere to basic common sense notions of fairness between archtypes?