Great questions. It’s just honor system for now. That’s not necessarily crazy though. I mean, why do people on ebay actually send the goods after they get paid?
People on eBay who don’t send the goods get negative feedback, which influences their ability to make future deals. Even that doesn’t always stop thieves; a family friend once bought an iPod on eBay and was sent a padded envelope full of crumpled newspaper. (Then he went on court TV to get his money back from the scammer, but that is another story.)
Good point, though ebay still succeeds in the sense of providing a valuable service despite the fraud. Kibotzer should probably always remain community oriented—perhaps an existing user has to recruit you and vouch for you (and for Kibotzer) before the bet starts.
Right now I’m just focused on the value of a service like this, assuming away the trust/fraud issues. I’m confident those are ultimately solvable. People are mostly pretty decent, in my experience.
By the way, thanks everyone for all the feedback! The comments would also be a great place for pointers to other anti-akrasia tools. I mentioned stickk.com already. Are there others? Anti-akrasia can be interpreted more broadly than “create new carrots and sticks”.
I would upvote this because it’s important that you answered the question and I don’t want to discourage that, but I don’t want to imply that I like your honor system solution.
How do you know that people won’t lie about their weight in order to win bets? How do we know that you’ll pay people who win their bets?
Great questions. It’s just honor system for now. That’s not necessarily crazy though. I mean, why do people on ebay actually send the goods after they get paid?
People on eBay who don’t send the goods get negative feedback, which influences their ability to make future deals. Even that doesn’t always stop thieves; a family friend once bought an iPod on eBay and was sent a padded envelope full of crumpled newspaper. (Then he went on court TV to get his money back from the scammer, but that is another story.)
Good point, though ebay still succeeds in the sense of providing a valuable service despite the fraud. Kibotzer should probably always remain community oriented—perhaps an existing user has to recruit you and vouch for you (and for Kibotzer) before the bet starts.
Right now I’m just focused on the value of a service like this, assuming away the trust/fraud issues. I’m confident those are ultimately solvable. People are mostly pretty decent, in my experience.
By the way, thanks everyone for all the feedback! The comments would also be a great place for pointers to other anti-akrasia tools. I mentioned stickk.com already. Are there others? Anti-akrasia can be interpreted more broadly than “create new carrots and sticks”.
I would upvote this because it’s important that you answered the question and I don’t want to discourage that, but I don’t want to imply that I like your honor system solution.