Math shall set you free – How to do divorce, divestment, and death properly

http://nautil.us/issue/13/symmetry/math-shall-set-you-freefrom-envy

by amfeng • 12 years ago

41 3 12 years ago

nautil.us

ColinWright• 12 years ago

Although it doesn't appear to be the same thing, this is discussed extensively here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7666501

The related article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7664261

A related submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667325

vacri• 12 years ago

John likes vanilla best, while Jane prefers chocolate. The ideal split is obviously for John to get the vanilla half and Jane the chocolate half. But if John is the cutter, then unless he knows Jane’s preferences, that ideal split will appear too risky to him: He could lose the entire vanilla half.

Given that the introductory commentry is about a couple in an intimate relationship, surely by the stage you're that invested in the cake, you should know the other person's preference. Or, crazy thought, I know, the person doing the splitting can talk to the other party about their preferences. "Hey, I know I'm cutting the cake, but I prefer vanilla - do you have a preference?" would solve the problem at hand in a few seconds.

It's also an example that doesn't feed into the Fair Buy-Sell algorithm (which looks nice for the right circumstances - indivisible items where parties can trade other items of worth (like money) and the parties are not particularly concerned for the welfare of each other). How would you do the 'Fair Buy-Sell' for the cake situation? "This cake is worth X to me and Y to you" means what, exactly?

patio11• 12 years ago

It is not obvious to me that this avoids the main problem with shotgun clauses, which is that they violate intuitive notions of fairness in the case where the two parties have differential access to capital.

Consider the case where two cofounders build $1 million worth of a business prior to having a falling out. One of them has $20k in his checking account and one has $500k of home equity. (While this sort of situation might strike one as uncommon if one assumes that all cofounders are peers N months out of undergrad, it is in fact quite common in the real world.) These facts are mutually known. There's a very degenerate strategy here for the richer cofounder: propose transferring 50% of the equity via either the shotgun clause or "fair buy/sell", then offer a bid of $20,001.

Math shall set you free – How to do divorce, divestment, and death properly

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