Regarding the “tell everyone that everyone else has signed”, is this an issue that can be solved with assurance contracts, or is there vague politics involved where you’re not even willing to sign your name to a thing if you’re not confident it’s going to succeed?
I’d expect a fair amount of optimization to have gone into finding assurance contract solutions if they actually worked in this instance.
I have seen this in real life in small: Getting a startup off the ground. Investors want to see a business plan, capable team, and prospective customers. Employees want to work for a company that has a chance to succeed and is able to pay their salary. And you need customers who want a supplier with a track record and great products. Assurance contracts wouldn’t work even less than in the real estate developer case because the volume is too small, and even worse, you often don’t even know what your product or customers will be in the end. How does this work at all? It is not blatant lies. It is more like coming up with a great future state that appears doable and positive and getting some tentative commitment. With this, you go to the next person(s) and grow the vision. And include the latest tentative commitments. Repeat until you succeed. This will only work with participants that are sufficiently risk-tolerant (angel investors, students, people open to experience, etc.), but for these, this can create a sufficient positive reinforcement that the endeavor takes up.
So is this simulacrum level 3, or is it something different, or a combination?
In this case, I’d guess that for many parties, signing an assurance contract is about as expensive up-front as signing a contract, since they need to set aside resources to fulfill their commitments—e.g. banks need to earmark some cash, a contractor needs to not accept alternative jobs, or a renter needs to not sign another lease.
Mmm. So maybe part of the thing is the contract needs to be an exploding contract (i.e. gives everyone maybe a week to read and sign, so they don’t need to tie up their resources too long), but then also exploding contracts are super annoying and everyone hates them and also institutions literally can’t move that fast. So you’re back to square one.
Regarding the “tell everyone that everyone else has signed”, is this an issue that can be solved with assurance contracts, or is there vague politics involved where you’re not even willing to sign your name to a thing if you’re not confident it’s going to succeed?
I’d expect a fair amount of optimization to have gone into finding assurance contract solutions if they actually worked in this instance.
I have seen this in real life in small: Getting a startup off the ground. Investors want to see a business plan, capable team, and prospective customers. Employees want to work for a company that has a chance to succeed and is able to pay their salary. And you need customers who want a supplier with a track record and great products. Assurance contracts wouldn’t work even less than in the real estate developer case because the volume is too small, and even worse, you often don’t even know what your product or customers will be in the end. How does this work at all? It is not blatant lies. It is more like coming up with a great future state that appears doable and positive and getting some tentative commitment. With this, you go to the next person(s) and grow the vision. And include the latest tentative commitments. Repeat until you succeed. This will only work with participants that are sufficiently risk-tolerant (angel investors, students, people open to experience, etc.), but for these, this can create a sufficient positive reinforcement that the endeavor takes up.
So is this simulacrum level 3, or is it something different, or a combination?
In this case, I’d guess that for many parties, signing an assurance contract is about as expensive up-front as signing a contract, since they need to set aside resources to fulfill their commitments—e.g. banks need to earmark some cash, a contractor needs to not accept alternative jobs, or a renter needs to not sign another lease.
Mmm. So maybe part of the thing is the contract needs to be an exploding contract (i.e. gives everyone maybe a week to read and sign, so they don’t need to tie up their resources too long), but then also exploding contracts are super annoying and everyone hates them and also institutions literally can’t move that fast. So you’re back to square one.