Sorry, I wasn’t looking for things that an assurance contract could be used for, I was looking for things which are significantly improved by them (unsolvable without). I don’t think assurance contracts make any of those things particularly more common/feasible than without such contracts.
The original question was “why aren’t they widely used”, and my answer is “because they’re not that useful on the relevant margins”.
[note: I don’t believe they’re useless, just that I don’t think they’re important enough to be confused that you don’t see them all that much. I do believe that the IDEA of assurance contracts has contributed a lot to getting crowdfunding platforms going, but MOST of their projects are successful due to a functioning payments platform, more than the assurance contract portion of the service.]
I think voting for third-party candidates would be significantly improved by assurance contracts. Ditto for marches & rallies, and things like the Free State Project. (Imagine how much of a fail the FSP would have been if they used a more traditional method.) And I think maybe also kickstarter stuff? IDK, maybe this disagreement comes down to a disagreement about the meaning of “significantly.”
Sorry, I wasn’t looking for things that an assurance contract could be used for, I was looking for things which are significantly improved by them (unsolvable without). I don’t think assurance contracts make any of those things particularly more common/feasible than without such contracts.
The original question was “why aren’t they widely used”, and my answer is “because they’re not that useful on the relevant margins”.
[note: I don’t believe they’re useless, just that I don’t think they’re important enough to be confused that you don’t see them all that much. I do believe that the IDEA of assurance contracts has contributed a lot to getting crowdfunding platforms going, but MOST of their projects are successful due to a functioning payments platform, more than the assurance contract portion of the service.]
I think voting for third-party candidates would be significantly improved by assurance contracts. Ditto for marches & rallies, and things like the Free State Project. (Imagine how much of a fail the FSP would have been if they used a more traditional method.) And I think maybe also kickstarter stuff? IDK, maybe this disagreement comes down to a disagreement about the meaning of “significantly.”