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Markets in everything, if this works it will change the world edition
Cut a deal with anyone, using a website to record the terms and conduct the negotiations.
For instance perhaps (ha) you can convince your wife to turn down the thermostat in the house in return for taking out the recycling bin every Monday. Or, more promisingly, maybe I can promise to Bryan Caplan that I won't make fun of his naive realism in return for his eating Pho with us twice a year. This site gives you a handy written record of the agreement.
Further below you read about training: "Make a sample deal with our interns."
The motto of this very ambitious site is: "Asynchronous Negotiation Favors the Underdog"
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 10, 2009 at 07:13 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Huh? Why not write it down yourself?
Posted by: Zamfir at Mar 10, 2009 8:39:57 AM
contract enforcement?
Posted by: bbb at Mar 10, 2009 9:27:56 AM
If the website could monitor, and enforce, all such agreements it would change the world. It is difficult to imagine how that might be achieved, however.
Posted by: Timothy at Mar 10, 2009 9:29:14 AM
Good idea but might be a bit ahead of its time. Didn't we just find the limit of where commitments don't make them happen? Too many commitments results in retrenchment and default and repudiation.
"You should have known I could never pay that, so why did YOU make that agreement?"
I'm pondering how often the collateral of a loan is the thing being purchased with 5:1 or more leverage. In retrospect, it seems like a laughable concept.
Posted by: Andrew at Mar 10, 2009 9:30:01 AM
As a contract attorney I find this site amusing. I'll keep an eye on it though. Ultimately though the single most limiting factor on deal negotiations is each side's willingness to actually read and understand the terms of the contract that don't interest them, and I don't see how this website would ever change that.
Posted by: Brock at Mar 10, 2009 9:57:23 AM
In the terms and conditions, there is an admission that the promises are not legally binding. In fact, there is no enforcement mechanism.
Posted by: michael at Mar 10, 2009 10:00:42 AM
Hmmm, I wonder how many contracts are actually 'enforced' in general.
Posted by: Andrew at Mar 10, 2009 11:22:00 AM
Independent verification that each party had understood the contract before signing - for example, by requiring them them to summarise the content of the contract in their own words, as in high school reading comprehension - is a service such a site could offer.
Posted by: Timothy at Mar 10, 2009 11:45:33 AM
Their motto sounds cool but does it make sense?
Somebody should build this type of service on top of Twitter. Each person gets 140 characters to articulate their demands.
Posted by: at Mar 10, 2009 12:04:19 PM
Bryan doesn't like pho? How can you not like pho?
Or, does he just not like eating pho with Tyler?
Posted by: JH at Mar 10, 2009 1:21:46 PM
put the contract on Facebook...then everyone (friends, co-workers, etc.) can 'enforce'
Posted by: Christian at Mar 10, 2009 6:22:37 PM
Yeah, so the mind works off mental models, but from whence do those models come? Memory, eh? Memory of experience. If a coconut falls on your head, you may perceive its hardness, or it's furry surface, to varying degrees of accuracy, but the main thing you will remember is not to shake a coconut tree and your mental models of gravity and kinetic energy will be quite accurate for the next time you happen on a coconut tree. The coconut either did or didn't bonk you on the head. If it fell and missed, you can correctly attribute that to luck. The scientific method constrains our minds to find evidence objectively, but it is also built right into the processes. I don't think we are either naive realists or not, it's both, in constant tension, and it works best that way.
Pho looks tasty.
Posted by: Andrew at Mar 11, 2009 5:51:46 AM
I guess the question is, do you doubt your senses just because you know they are biased? That seems like the wrong road, not just from a scientific hand-waving perspective. Even if senses were perfect, the world is a bell curve of possibilities, so it would seem that introducing an additional error term on top of uncertainty compounds the error. It would seem better to assume the actual sensory input is the mean because that is what you can be surest of, but don't bet too heavily on your conclusions, unless you are absolutely sure.
Posted by: Andrew at Mar 11, 2009 6:20:49 AM
