Veganomics

My brother sent me an e-mail today. He is finding it quite hard to spend enough time studying so is thinking about using an online contracting website called Stikk

The way in which it works is that he puts in a certain amount of money in the website (say £900). Then if he does 6 hours of work, he will get £15 back, if not the money will go to me and I able to do whatever I want with it (ideally give it to a good cause, but I could do something evil like donate it to the Rupublican Party or BNP).

The site is certainly a good idea, and is a step forwards towards helping people achieve their personal development goals such as not smoking or to do more exercise. However, it is still far from perfect as it misses out one massive thing – a truth revealing mechanism.

Once my brother has put money on the site, he always has an incentive to lie about how much work he has done to try and get the money that he put on the site back. If the money goes to a bad cause, the incentive to do the work is higher but the incentive to cheat is higher, but if the money goes to a good cause, it may not be a good enough incentive to ensure that he does his 6 hours of work a day.