Honor Among Thieves: Anja Shortland and Ransomware

I think that's the worst thing I've ever heard.

How marvelous.

The reason I like that is that it's clearly about transaction cost.

One of the things that Adam Smith talks about is increases in dexterity and tool use, learning to use the hook.

That's really a big transaction cost.

Which brings me to the second joke, although this is really more like an exercise than a joke.

This is from Alex Danco's newsletter, February second, twenty twenty-one, and it's called The Pirate Problem, and it's a riddle, although I said it's more like an exercise.

I will just read it, and I'll put up a link to it in the show notes.

Quoting now from Alex Danco's newsletter.

Here's a riddle I think about quite often.

It just might be of interest to people who think about games.

Five pirates, who used to be hedge fund managers before they gave up their life of sin and looked for a more honest profession, attack and board a ship.

While plundering the boat, they uncover a chest filled with one hundred identical indivisible gold coins.

Before parting ways, the pirates must decide how to divide the treasure.

They commit to the following scheme.

That is a way of deciding how to decide.

Pirates rank themselves one through five by ascending seniority, that is youngest to oldest, or maybe longer time being a pirate.

Most junior pirate, number one, goes first.

He proposes a split of the treasure.

The treasure can be any five-way split that adds up exactly to one hundred.

So it could be twenty, twenty, twenty, twenty.

Could be forty-five, thirty, twenty-four, one, zero.

A five tuple where each of the elements is the allocation to that pirate and the sum has to be one hundred.

Once pirate number one submits his proposal, all the pirates will vote.

If a majority or at least a tie of the pirates vote in favor, the pirates split the treasure according to the proposal and they go their separate ways.