It’s all about incentives. Rewarding people for threatening to do, but refraining from, some action, will lead to people capable of threatening convincingly making a great deal of wealth, up to some equilibrium point where either the action is sufficiently tolerated by society or the people who don’t like the action have become sufficiently poor that the public threats to do it are no longer rewarding enough.
It’s all about incentives. Rewarding people for threatening to do, but refraining from, some action, will lead to people capable of threatening convincingly making a great deal of wealth, up to some equilibrium point where either the action is sufficiently tolerated by society or the people who don’t like the action have become sufficiently poor that the public threats to do it are no longer rewarding enough.
Yes, exactly right, but … did you mean that as a reply to RobinHanson?
Er, perhaps. I was generalizing a bit from what you said, so I wanted the context of your post. It was more directed at uninvolved readers, I think.
But I haven’t had much coffee yet today so I’m not sure.
Oh, okay. That works too. You have enough coffee; I’m just too combative today ;-)