HopeFox comments on Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities - Less Wrong
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Ah, my mistake. You're arguing based on the intent of a legitimate mugger, rather than the fakes. Yes, that makes sense. If we let f(N) be the probability that somebody has the power to kill N people on demand, and g(N) be the probability that somebody who has the power to kill N people on demand would threaten to do so if he doesn't get his $5, then it seems highly likely that Nf(N)g(N) approaches zero as N approaches infinity. What's even better news is that, while f(N) may only approach zero slowly for easily constructed values of N like 3^^^^3 and 4^^^^4 because of their low Kolmogorov complexity, g(N) should scale with 1/N or something similar, because the more power someone has, the less likely they are to execute such a miniscule, petty threat. You're also quite right in stating that the more power the mugger has, the more likely it is that they'll reward refusal, punish compliance or otherwise decouple the wording of the threat from their actual intentions, thus making g(N) go to zero even more quickly.
So, yeah, I'm pretty satisfied that Nf(N)g(N) will asymptote to zero, taking all of the above into account.
(In more unrelated news, my boyfriend claims that he'd pay the mugger, on account of him obviously being mentally ill. So that's two out of three in my household. I hope this doesn't catch on.)