I want to talk at some point about the game theory of investing a lot of resources into a lottery that effectively owes you nothing. Two examples of these are a) the Swoopo auctioneering site, where players can have already invested $100 in buying a product and yet have no claim on it yet, and b) endurance contests, such as those in the USA (recently discontinued) where players try to touch a car for the longest and the one who do so wins the car. In the former, if you've invested a $100 in a product should your strategy from then on differ from somebody who has invested nothing in it? In the latter it seems fairly obvious that the best strategy is to either leave early and minimise your losses, or intend to never leave. Any strategy whereby you invest a lot of resources into it and eventually get nothing is a terrible strategy. But clearly lots of people end up doing this. Maybe they were all wrong about something (i.e. they believed they had the ability to last 48 hours and they didn't), or perhaps they knew there was a gamble involved and that they lost the gamble. These are interesting cases, and I think there may be serious justification to ban this sort of event as it tricks players via the Sorites paradox into giving away their net worth, or risking everything. It's a lot like chasing losses, but instead more like chasing winnings. Very curious cases that I think are worthy of discussion. Perhaps the only solution is a Leviathan figure to ban such competitions.
They can be taken to ridiculous extremes as well. Somebody on the 2+2 forum suggested an adaptation of a Swoopo auction. Suppose an item starts at $50, and everytime somebody bids (costing 60c), 10c is actually taken off the price. If the price reaches 0 then it just keeps going, so that the eventual winner could win the item and the cash. The longer these auctions go on the higher the prize actually is. It could theoretically get to the point where the entire world has invested all the world's money and the last person with any money left wins the whole lot. Very curious, and very dangerous.
