Bribery via truthcoin

[zack]

Can any of these bribery situations occur? Why or why not?

If I am on trial for a crime, perhaps I could make a large bet that I will be declared guilty.
Someone on the jury could do this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

If you send an application to a government regulator to start a controversial business, a prediction market bribe could help get regulators to ignore you.

If a researcher want to win a big research grant, he could use a prediction market to bribe the government officials into accepting his proposal.

I you want regulators to shut down a competing business, it should be easy. Health regulators, drug regulators, handicapped regulations... There are enough laws that law enforcement can get any business closed.

[psztorc]

Can any of these bribery situations occur? Why or why not?

If I am on trial for a crime, perhaps I could make a large bet that I will be declared guilty.
Someone on the jury could do this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

If you send an application to a government regulator to start a controversial business, a prediction market bribe could help get regulators to ignore you.

If a researcher want to win a big research grant, he could use a prediction market to bribe the government officials into accepting his proposal.

I you want regulators to shut down a competing business, it should be easy. Health regulators, drug regulators, handicapped regulations... There are enough laws that law enforcement can get any business closed.

Check out the FAQ under 'Public Bads' https://github.com/psztorc/Truthcoin/tree/master/docs#if-pms-can-be-used-to-finance-public-goods-can-they-also-be-used-to-finance-public-bads-for-example-to-assassinate-someone

It is difficult to do something secretly, how do you guarantee that the jury is uniquely paid? Someone else could, foreseeing what you are doing, make trades that you will be innocent. Then the jury could wonder how crazy this is, and bet and vote guilty. You need what I call a 'Schelling Indicator' to actually make this incentive-compatible in a way that is simple enough to practically work.

To Uniquely pay, the Provider must reveal secret information, but someone else can intercept and reveal that information if it is anonymous.

[zack]

The court jury will vote in whichever direction is most profitable. If they can win 80 cents per dollar by voting not-guilty, and they can only win 20 cents per dollar by voting guilty... then they will choose not-guilty.

If he ends up in prison, he will win a big sum of truthcoins, so it acts as insurance.

How much money would a heroin addict pay to stay out of prison?
How much money can be earned from holding an addict in prison?
The CCA makes about $2 billion in 2011, and they have 91,000 beds. That is a profit of about  $20,000 per person, per year. So if you were charged with a crime that would put you in jail for 3 years, and you had $60,000 of money to pay for bribes, you should be able to go free?

A guilty verdict requires consensus between 12 people, which is unlikely when they are trying to trick each other to win money from each other.

[zack]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Anarcho_Capitalism/comments/1zfv0u/anarchy_and_geopolitics_what_would_anarchic/

This discussion is about using prediction market bribes to convince military leaders to stop wars.

[psztorc]

It sounds a little unrealistic to me.

First of all, every suggestion ignores what I spoke about earlier: the unique Schelling indicator being hidden information known only to the provider. Specifically exploiting an endogenous price requires some kind of equilibrating-force, otherwise the strategic reasoning will never converge ("...but if he buys up all the Yes side because he thinks many people are buying the No side so that someone else decides to buy up the Yes side and become a Provider...").


Then, specifically:
"This is likely to happen if Russia values $5 billion more than whatever it hopes to get out of the Ukraine."
That's a lot of money.

"A Private Defense Company believes that they can cause Russia to withdraw from Ukraine while only spending $4 billion on the attempt."
This would be using PM-bribes to start a war!

Option 3 is essentially a different 2.


I would just cheer for full-blown Futarchy instead of this.

[zack]

As an alternative to the shelling coin...

What if, when creating a prediction market, you include a list of yes_addresses, and a list of no_addresses.
The only people who can buy shares of YES are in the yes_addresses list. The only people who can buy shares of NO are in the no_addresses list.

Assuming that everyone already has a publicly available truthcoin address, you can make the no_addresses be the jury, and judge, and lawyers. The yes_address should be only yourself.

Also, no one should be able to sell shares of either type until the decisions are settled.

The only person who profits if you go to jail is yourself. If you go free, then they jury, and judge, and lawyers could profit.

Cryptographers are making better addresses. If you know Bobs's address, you can make a new random-looking address out of it that sends money to Bob. No one can tell that the random-looking address is owned by Bob, except for you and Bob.