I’ll give you utility if you give me utility is a trade.
I won’t cause you disutility if you give me utility is extortion.
I don’t think that’s exactly the right distinction. Let’s say you go to your neighbour because he’s being noisy.
Scenario A: He says “I didn’t mean to disturb you, I just love my music loud. But give me 10 dollars, and sure, I’ll turn the volume down.” I’d call that a trade, though it’s still about him not giving you disutility.
Scenario B: He says “Yeah, I do that on purpose, so that I can make people pay me to turn the volume down. It’ll be 10 bucks. ” I’d call that an extortion.
The difference isn’t between the results of the offer if you accept or reject—the outcomes and their utility for you is the same in each (loud music, silence − 10 dollars).
The difference is that in Scenario B, you wish the other person had never decided to make this offer. It’s not the utility of your options that are to be compared with each other, but the utility of the timeline where the trade can be made vs the utility of the timeline where the trade can’t be made…
In the Trade scenarios, if you can’t make a trade with the person, he’s still being noisy, and utility minimizes.
In the Extortion scenarios, if you can’t make a trade with the person, he has no reason to be noisy, and utility maximizes.
I’ll probably let someone else to transform the above description into equations containing utility functions.
The more important part for extortion is that they threaten to go out of their way to cause you harm. Schelling points and default states are probably relevant for the distinction.
You can’t read a payoff table and declare it extortion or trade.
Schelling points and default states are probably relevant for the distinction.
Meh. I hope we can define extortion much simpler than that.
How about “Extortion: Any offer of trade (t) by A to B, where A knows that the likely utility of B would be maximized if A had in advance treated (t) as certainly rejected.”
In short extortion is any offer to you in which you could rationally wish you had clearly precommitted to reject it (and signalled such precommitment effectively), and A knows that.
How about “Extortion: Any offer of trade (t) by A to B, where A knows that the likely utility of B would be maximized if A had in advance treated (t) as certainly rejected.”
In short extortion is any offer to you in which you could rationally wish you had clearly precommitted to reject it (and signalled such precommitment effectively), and A knows that.
Another example.
A and B share an apartment, and so far A has been doing all that household chores even though both A and B care almost equally about a clean house. (Maybe A cares slightly more, so that A’s cleanliness threshold is always reached slightly before B’s threshold, so that A ends up doing the chore every time.)
So one day A gives B an ultimatum: if they do not share household chores equally, A will simply go on strike.
B realizes, too late, that B should have effectively and convincingly pre-committed earlier to never doing household chores, since this way A would never be tempted to offer the ultimatum.
A is aware of all this and breathes a sigh of relief that he made his ultimatum before B made that pre-commitment.
I’m almost convinced my definition is faulty, but not completely yet. In this case, if the offer was sure to be rejected, Alice (A) may move out, or evict Bob (B), or react in a different way that minimizes Bob’s utility, or Alice may just decide to stop chores anyway because she just prefers a messy and just household than a clean and injust one.
So precommitment to reject the offer doesn’t necessarily help Bob. But I need to think about this. Upvoting both examples.
How about “Extortion: Any offer of trade (t) by A to B, where A knows that the likely utility of B would be maximized if A had in advance treated (t) as certainly rejected.”
In short extortion is any offer to you in which you could rationally wish you had clearly precommitted to reject it (and signalled such precommitment effectively), and A knows that.
B is threatening to kill his hostage unless a million dollars is deposited in B’s offshore account and B safely arrives outside of legal jurisdiction.
A tells B that if B kills the hostage then A will kill B, but if B lets the hostage go then, in trade, A will not kill B.
B realizes, too late, that B should have set things up so that the hostage would automatically be killed if B didn’t get what he wanted even if B got cold feet late in the game (this could be done by employing a third party whose professional reputation rests on doing as he is initially instructed regardless of later instructions). This would have greatly strengthened B’s bargaining position.
A is aware of all this and breathes a sigh of relief that B did not have sufficient foresight.
Is A an extortionist? He is by the above definition.
A’s actions read like textbook extortion to me, albeit for a good cause. About the only way I can think of to disqualify them would be to impose the requirement that extortion has to be aimed at procuring resources—which might be consistent with its usual sense, but seems pretty tortured.
A is walking down the street minding their own business carrying a purse. B wants what’s in the purse but is afraid that if B tries to snatch the purse, A might cause trouble for B (such as by scratching and kicking B and calling for help). It is implicit in this situation that if B does not bother A, then, in trade, A will not cause trouble for B.
B realizes, too late, that B should have worn something really scary to signal to A that B was committed to being bad, very bad, so that neither kicking or scratching nor calling for help would be likely to be of any use to A. This would have strengthened B’s bargaining position.
A, not being an idiot, is aware of this as general fact about people, including about B, and breathes a sigh of relief that there aren’t any scary-looking people in sight.
Is A an extortionist? Is A continually extorting good behavior from everyone around A, by being the sort of person who would kick and scratch and call for help if somebody tried to snatch A’s purse, provided that the purse snatcher had not effectively signalled a pre-commitment to snatch the purse regardless of A’s response? A is implicitly extending an offer to everyone, “don’t try to take my purse and, in trade, I won’t kick and scratch and call for help.” A purse snatcher who effectively signals a pre-commitment to reject that offer (and thus to take the purse despite kicking and scratching and calling for help) places themselves in a stronger position in the implicit negotiation.
This seems to follow all the rules of the offered definition of extortion, i.e.:
How about “Extortion: Any offer of trade (t) by A to B, where A knows that the likely utility of B would be maximized if A had in advance treated (t) as certainly rejected.”
In short extortion is any offer to you in which you could rationally wish you had clearly precommitted to reject it (and signalled such precommitment effectively), and A knows that.
Hmm. Interesting edge case, but I think the fact the second extortion is retaliation aimed to disarm the first one with proportional retribution prevents our moral intuition from packaging it under the same label as “extortion”.
If A threatened to kill in retaliation B’s mother, or B’s child, or B’s whole village—then I don’t think we would have trouble seeing both of them as extortionists.
Or this scenario:
A: Give me a dollar or I punch you on the nose
B: Withdraw that threat, or I kill your goldfish.
A: Withdraw that threat, or I kill your mother
B: Withdraw that threat, or I genocide your people.
A: Withdraw that threat, or I destroy the universe.
B: Here, have a dollar.
Still, perhaps we can refine the definition further.
I offer a variant on the hostage negotiator here. In this variant, the hostage negotiator is replaced by somebody with a purse, and the hostage taker is replaced by a purse snatcher.
As a point of comparison to the purse snatching scenario, consider the following toy-getting scenario:
Whenever a certain parent takes a certain child shopping, the child throws a tantrum unless the child gets a toy. To map this to the purse snatching scenario (and to the other scenarios), the child is A and the parent is B. If the parent convincingly signals a pre-commitment not to get the child a toy, then the child will not bother throwing a tantrum, realizing that it would be futile. If the parent fails to convincingly signal such a pre-commitment, then the child may see an opportunity to get a toy by throwing a tantrum until he gets a toy. The child throwing the tantrum is in effect offering the parent the following trade: get me a toy, and I will stop throwing a tantrum. On future shopping trips, the child implicitly offers the parent the following trade: get me a toy, and I will refrain from throwing a tantrum.
I would call the child an extortionist but I would not call the person with a purse an extortionist, and the main difference I see is that the child is using the threat of trouble to obtain something which was not already their right to have, while the person with the purse is using the threat of trouble to retain something which is their right to keep.
I don’t think that’s exactly the right distinction. Let’s say you go to your neighbour because he’s being noisy.
Scenario A: He says “I didn’t mean to disturb you, I just love my music loud. But give me 10 dollars, and sure, I’ll turn the volume down.” I’d call that a trade, though it’s still about him not giving you disutility.
Scenario B: He says “Yeah, I do that on purpose, so that I can make people pay me to turn the volume down. It’ll be 10 bucks. ” I’d call that an extortion.
The difference isn’t between the results of the offer if you accept or reject—the outcomes and their utility for you is the same in each (loud music, silence − 10 dollars).
The difference is that in Scenario B, you wish the other person had never decided to make this offer. It’s not the utility of your options that are to be compared with each other, but the utility of the timeline where the trade can be made vs the utility of the timeline where the trade can’t be made…
In the Trade scenarios, if you can’t make a trade with the person, he’s still being noisy, and utility minimizes. In the Extortion scenarios, if you can’t make a trade with the person, he has no reason to be noisy, and utility maximizes.
I’ll probably let someone else to transform the above description into equations containing utility functions.
Yeah, I was being sloppy.
The more important part for extortion is that they threaten to go out of their way to cause you harm. Schelling points and default states are probably relevant for the distinction.
You can’t read a payoff table and declare it extortion or trade.
Meh. I hope we can define extortion much simpler than that.
How about “Extortion: Any offer of trade (t) by A to B, where A knows that the likely utility of B would be maximized if A had in advance treated (t) as certainly rejected.”
In short extortion is any offer to you in which you could rationally wish you had clearly precommitted to reject it (and signalled such precommitment effectively), and A knows that.
Another example.
A and B share an apartment, and so far A has been doing all that household chores even though both A and B care almost equally about a clean house. (Maybe A cares slightly more, so that A’s cleanliness threshold is always reached slightly before B’s threshold, so that A ends up doing the chore every time.)
So one day A gives B an ultimatum: if they do not share household chores equally, A will simply go on strike.
B realizes, too late, that B should have effectively and convincingly pre-committed earlier to never doing household chores, since this way A would never be tempted to offer the ultimatum.
A is aware of all this and breathes a sigh of relief that he made his ultimatum before B made that pre-commitment.
By the above definition, A is an extortionist.
I’m almost convinced my definition is faulty, but not completely yet. In this case, if the offer was sure to be rejected, Alice (A) may move out, or evict Bob (B), or react in a different way that minimizes Bob’s utility, or Alice may just decide to stop chores anyway because she just prefers a messy and just household than a clean and injust one.
So precommitment to reject the offer doesn’t necessarily help Bob. But I need to think about this. Upvoting both examples.
B is threatening to kill his hostage unless a million dollars is deposited in B’s offshore account and B safely arrives outside of legal jurisdiction.
A tells B that if B kills the hostage then A will kill B, but if B lets the hostage go then, in trade, A will not kill B.
B realizes, too late, that B should have set things up so that the hostage would automatically be killed if B didn’t get what he wanted even if B got cold feet late in the game (this could be done by employing a third party whose professional reputation rests on doing as he is initially instructed regardless of later instructions). This would have greatly strengthened B’s bargaining position.
A is aware of all this and breathes a sigh of relief that B did not have sufficient foresight.
Is A an extortionist? He is by the above definition.
A’s actions read like textbook extortion to me, albeit for a good cause. About the only way I can think of to disqualify them would be to impose the requirement that extortion has to be aimed at procuring resources—which might be consistent with its usual sense, but seems pretty tortured.
A is walking down the street minding their own business carrying a purse. B wants what’s in the purse but is afraid that if B tries to snatch the purse, A might cause trouble for B (such as by scratching and kicking B and calling for help). It is implicit in this situation that if B does not bother A, then, in trade, A will not cause trouble for B.
B realizes, too late, that B should have worn something really scary to signal to A that B was committed to being bad, very bad, so that neither kicking or scratching nor calling for help would be likely to be of any use to A. This would have strengthened B’s bargaining position.
A, not being an idiot, is aware of this as general fact about people, including about B, and breathes a sigh of relief that there aren’t any scary-looking people in sight.
Is A an extortionist? Is A continually extorting good behavior from everyone around A, by being the sort of person who would kick and scratch and call for help if somebody tried to snatch A’s purse, provided that the purse snatcher had not effectively signalled a pre-commitment to snatch the purse regardless of A’s response? A is implicitly extending an offer to everyone, “don’t try to take my purse and, in trade, I won’t kick and scratch and call for help.” A purse snatcher who effectively signals a pre-commitment to reject that offer (and thus to take the purse despite kicking and scratching and calling for help) places themselves in a stronger position in the implicit negotiation.
This seems to follow all the rules of the offered definition of extortion, i.e.:
Hmm. Interesting edge case, but I think the fact the second extortion is retaliation aimed to disarm the first one with proportional retribution prevents our moral intuition from packaging it under the same label as “extortion”.
If A threatened to kill in retaliation B’s mother, or B’s child, or B’s whole village—then I don’t think we would have trouble seeing both of them as extortionists.
Or this scenario:
Still, perhaps we can refine the definition further.
I offer a variant on the hostage negotiator here. In this variant, the hostage negotiator is replaced by somebody with a purse, and the hostage taker is replaced by a purse snatcher.
As a point of comparison to the purse snatching scenario, consider the following toy-getting scenario:
Whenever a certain parent takes a certain child shopping, the child throws a tantrum unless the child gets a toy. To map this to the purse snatching scenario (and to the other scenarios), the child is A and the parent is B. If the parent convincingly signals a pre-commitment not to get the child a toy, then the child will not bother throwing a tantrum, realizing that it would be futile. If the parent fails to convincingly signal such a pre-commitment, then the child may see an opportunity to get a toy by throwing a tantrum until he gets a toy. The child throwing the tantrum is in effect offering the parent the following trade: get me a toy, and I will stop throwing a tantrum. On future shopping trips, the child implicitly offers the parent the following trade: get me a toy, and I will refrain from throwing a tantrum.
I would call the child an extortionist but I would not call the person with a purse an extortionist, and the main difference I see is that the child is using the threat of trouble to obtain something which was not already their right to have, while the person with the purse is using the threat of trouble to retain something which is their right to keep.