

Providing public goods by profit seeking entrepreneurs. - eru
http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/PrivateProvision.pdf
Who needs the government since we have mathematics?<p>Also discussed on a canonical mailing list here http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2005-June/000783.html<p>"In the form he described in his paper, a dominant assurance contract is a contract offered by an escrow agent to members of the public; it is of the form, "In exchange for my payment of $S, if K or more people donate $S to this same cause, the escrow agent will create public good X (at cost $C), and keep all the donated money.  If fewer than K people donate $S, the escrow agent will return $S + $F to each of the donors and will not create the public good."
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eru
Who needs the government since we have mathematics?

Also discussed on a canonical mailing list here
[http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-
tol/2005-June/00...](http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-
tol/2005-June/000783.html)

"In the form he described in his paper, a dominant assurance contract is a
contract offered by an escrow agent to members of the public; it is of the
form, "In exchange for my payment of $S, if K or more people donate $S to this
same cause, the escrow agent will create public good X (at cost $C), and keep
all the donated money. If fewer than K people donate $S, the escrow agent will
return $S + $F to each of the donors and will not create the public good."

Edit: Designing a mechanism that works for new unproven products, too, is left
as an excercise for the reader.

