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Re:Statement on New York Times Article by newsbinator on Sunday February 14, 2021 @05:40AM (#26131170)
> ConTracked: A proposed replacement for government contracting. For example, the state might issue a billion ConTracked tokens which have a base value of zero unless a decentralized court agrees that a bridge meeting certain specifications has been built over a certain river, in which case their value goes to $1 each. The state auctions its tokens to the highest bidder, presumably a bridge-building company. If the company builds the bridge, their tokens are worth $1 billion and they probably make a nice profit; if not, they might resell the tokens (at a heavily discounted price) to some other bridge-building company. If nobody builds the bridge, the government makes a tidy profit off the token sale and tries again. The goal is that instead of the government having to decide on a contractor (and probably get ripped off), it can let the market decide and put the risk entirely on the buyer.

This seems like a good idea.

The government could prevent shorting government-issued tokens.

Re:Statement on New York Times Article by alentist on Sunday February 14, 2021 @01:27PM (#26134757)
Reminds me of a concept called dominant assurance contracts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract#Dominant_as...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A100495710953...

> Many types of public goods can be produced privately by profit seeking entrepreneurs using a modified form of assurance contract, called a dominant assurance contract. I model the dominant assurance contract as a game and show that the pure strategy equilibrium has agents contributing to the public good as a dominant strategy.

Re:Statement on New York Times Article by yownie on Sunday February 14, 2021 @09:25AM (#26132613)
I'm glad that I wasn't the only one who thought so too, even though it was meant to be a bunch of joke alt-coin ideas.

I guess the only criticism could be, won't you end up with a bunch of half-built bridges eventually?

*oops* hadn't realized it was by the same author!