Thanks for the link. I think this service is a step in the right direction, but I find I have the following problem with services with this model. When I make the commitment and set the penalties, I then tend to immediately convert the penalties I will pay into a sunk cost, so that I already account for losing that amount (this may just be the good budgeter in me, but it defeats these sorts of systems). How might we change the structure of such a system to at least prevent this type of self defeat?

Some ideas that come to my mind are:

1) Pay for meeting goals, funded by ad revenue or subscriptions to a related service (such as a discussion forum)

2) Randomly fluctuating penalties (although this will in practice require setting an acceptable range, and then you can just budget for the max)

3) Increasing penalties (especially if they increase exponentially; after I pay $1024 for not meeting the goal, then I might do something about it so I don't pay $2048 the next time)

Any other ideas on how we might modify such a system to be more successful?