Comment author:Zvi
25 July 2012 02:21:23PM
*
20 points
[-]
I believe the real world results of these attempts, if they were attempted this brazenly, are as follows:
The Evil Plutocrat: Democrats and Republicans coordinate and agree to vote down your bill. Voting is simultaneous and public, and you can change it, so even these two groups can trust each other here.
The Hostile Takeover: Leave aside the question of whether your taking over is about to destroy the stock price, and assume it does, and assume the SEC doesn't come knocking at your door. The other guy sees what you're doing, and adjusts his offer slightly to counter yours, since he has more money than you do, and a similar threat can get him all the shares.
The Hostile Takeover II: Again assume what you're doing is legal. The board members vote themselves another set of giant raises, and laugh at you for buying stock that will never see a dividend, since you've obviously violated all the norms involved. That, or they sign a contract between themselves and take all your stock.
The Dollar Auction: It's proven to work as a tax on stupidity, especially if others aren't allowed to talk (which prevents MBlume's issue of coordination), with only rare backfires. Of course, the other cases are "look what happens when everyone else thinks things through" and this one is "look what happens when people don't think things through..."
The Bloodthirsty Pirates: The first mate turns to the others, says "I propose we kill this guy and split the money evenly." They all kill you. Then maybe they kill each other, and maybe they don't. Alternatively, they've already coordinated. Either way, you're clearly trying to cheat them, and pirates know what to do with cheaters.
The Prisoner's Dilemma Redux: That was gorgeous to watch that one time. It likely won't work again. The coin is another great trick that they'd likely outlaw after it was used once, since that one does work repeatedly.
In general, this is the "I get to set the rules of the game and introduce twists, and then everyone else has to use CDT without being able to go outside the game or coordinate in any way" school of exploitative game theory, with the Dollar Auction a case where you pick out the few people who think badly, often a quality strategy.
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I believe the real world results of these attempts, if they were attempted this brazenly, are as follows:
The Evil Plutocrat: Democrats and Republicans coordinate and agree to vote down your bill. Voting is simultaneous and public, and you can change it, so even these two groups can trust each other here.
The Hostile Takeover: Leave aside the question of whether your taking over is about to destroy the stock price, and assume it does, and assume the SEC doesn't come knocking at your door. The other guy sees what you're doing, and adjusts his offer slightly to counter yours, since he has more money than you do, and a similar threat can get him all the shares.
The Hostile Takeover II: Again assume what you're doing is legal. The board members vote themselves another set of giant raises, and laugh at you for buying stock that will never see a dividend, since you've obviously violated all the norms involved. That, or they sign a contract between themselves and take all your stock.
The Dollar Auction: It's proven to work as a tax on stupidity, especially if others aren't allowed to talk (which prevents MBlume's issue of coordination), with only rare backfires. Of course, the other cases are "look what happens when everyone else thinks things through" and this one is "look what happens when people don't think things through..."
The Bloodthirsty Pirates: The first mate turns to the others, says "I propose we kill this guy and split the money evenly." They all kill you. Then maybe they kill each other, and maybe they don't. Alternatively, they've already coordinated. Either way, you're clearly trying to cheat them, and pirates know what to do with cheaters.
The Prisoner's Dilemma Redux: That was gorgeous to watch that one time. It likely won't work again. The coin is another great trick that they'd likely outlaw after it was used once, since that one does work repeatedly.
In general, this is the "I get to set the rules of the game and introduce twists, and then everyone else has to use CDT without being able to go outside the game or coordinate in any way" school of exploitative game theory, with the Dollar Auction a case where you pick out the few people who think badly, often a quality strategy.
Not very difficult to think of ways to randomly determine a winner verbally without a coin, to be fair.