Now to my shame, I can't recall where I found the link to the Global ideas bank, but it was probably PledgeBank, the site mentioned in my previous post.
I've published my commitment auction scheme there, just to see if it gets any feedback. It's basically the same as my auctions post, but hopefully more articulate. Here's the text:
Commitment auctions
Funding public goods or projects that benefit a lot of people other than the buyer.
Suppose you want to write an article about electronic money, and there are two people who really need it, John and Alice. Alice is willing to pay 50€ for the article, and John is willing to pay 100€. However, that's the maximum either will pay.
Let's say you know this. However, you have calculated that for it to be profitable for you to release the article, you need to be paid at least 120€. Now you have a problem of setting the price. If you set it at 50€ or less, both will buy, but you will only earn 100£ at best and this won't cover your expenses. If you set it between 50€ and 100£, only John will buy, and you still won't cover your expenses.
Now the solution is that you go to a bank and ask them to set up a commitment auction. The bank then puts up on their website a notice that you will write an article on electronic money for 120€. Now John and Alice can transfer money to the account associated with this auction, but the trick is that if the sum of pledged money does not reach 120€ within a designated time, they get their money back, and the article doesn't get written. However if the pledged money does reach the level, you take all the money and write the article.
Now both John and Alice have an incentive to commit the amount that the article is actually worth to them, so you get 150€, enough to write the article and a 20€ bonus.
This is a sensible way to share costs for a public good: everyone pays what it's actually worth to them. This should be a great way to finance things like art displays, open source software, scientific research or even news reports.
http://www.pledgebank.com/ does something similar, but it would be much more useful if the bank had the authority to hold the money during the bidding and enforce the contract (in this case that the article was written) like any other work contract.
The fee for setting up the auction should be covered by the one requesting it, and committers should be given regular interest rates on the commitments during the bidding period. This is to make making a commitment as risk-free as possible.
Remember my post about auctions?
There's a site who has realized a similar idea. They call themselves Pledgebank, and I found it through Chris Lightfoot's weblog. The bad part is that it isn't. It isn't a bank, so it can't hold people responsible for their commitments. It relies on trust, which makes the free-rider problem to big for commercial use.
However, the good thing is that you can pledge other things than money, and in fact it seems that's what people are actually doing. It's a good effort, at the least, but I think they should become a real bank, so people can send them money commitments and get them back if the motion doesn't go through.
But nonetheless I've been looking up the reasons others have for not consuming alcohol, also known as being a teetotaler.
(That's a link to myself, the teetotaler, in a sort of protest at google's poor results when you search for this. It can't even tell me how it's spelled. Huh.)
An old article (1996) by one Keith Drury. What he writes on religion is especially interesting: "I like my denomination on most days, so even if I wanted to drink myself, if it is important to the people in this church for 150 years, I can think about it a little while longer."
That's conservatism at it's best. But of course arguments 2,3 and 6 are a lot stronger.
Robin Skyler has an interesting sort-of-FAQ humorously reflects the attitudes teetotalers meet, and at the same time makes a very good case. Of those, I think the second-to-last is one of the better arguments here, although they all hold up. I sort of disagree with nr. 2 though - it's about right and wrong whether he intends it to be or not.
Interestingly, in punk culture it seems people are less afraid of talking about it when they don't drink. This article is a good example of the type, although the reasons are mostly personal and emotional.
I think I have to cut it here. I will write my own text one of these days.
What's worse than a French intellectual?
Sure, Islam is there and is in many ways bad. Terrorism is also there, and is of course very bad indeed. But journalists whose argument seems to be "Look at me, I'm frothing at the mouth, and I'm proud of it!!" aren't worth anyone's attention.