[chasingthewind]

A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was essentially revulsion.

I get that the rationalist community is really trying very hard to figure out novel ways to solve difficult problems and I am very supportive of that goal. I love reading Marginal Revolution for one, and I'm highly susceptible to the argument that there are likely to be surprising ways we might shift our thinking about difficult issues.

However private enterprise has so many unpredictable incentives that I simply would never want to subject myself to a system like this unless it had been proven to work for a long time someplace else (color me a private crime fighter NIMBY).

My view is that we need to improve our traditional government run justice and law enforcement systems, not privatize them.

[tboyd47]

Yeah. I upvoted the story just because I thought the fact that it was such a spectacularly awful idea made it worthy of discussion. But when I saw the snarky comments all downvoted, I upvoted the snarky comments too.

You can only come up with truly innovative solutions to old problems once you've understood the history of the problems and reasons behind the old solutions. Otherwise you're just starting over again on the old problems while adding a few more problems of your own.

[fao_]

> A lot of the snarky comments are getting downvoted but I must admit that my first reaction to reading even a few paragraphs of this article was essentially revulsion.

I'm not sure to what degree describing one's first impressions honestly consists of snark.

> However private enterprise has so many unpredictable incentives that I simply would never want to subject myself to a system like this unless it had been proven to work for a long time someplace else (color me a private crime fighter NIMBY).

And even then, you would have to have a deep understanding, and be able to replicate the exact cultural quirks that allow such a system to "work" in the first place.

[RobinHanson]

If an existing system works badly, one shouldn't be too eager to understand and replicate all of its details.

[RobinHanson]

Public enterprise also has many unpredictabl incentives. And many of the more predictable ones are pretty harmful.