Extinction Bounties

Policy-based deterrence for the 21st century.

Policy-Research Disclaimer (click to close)

Extinction Bounties publishes theoretical economic and legal mechanisms intended to stimulate scholarly and public debate on catastrophic-risk governance. The site offers policy analysis and advocacy only in the sense of outlining possible legislative or contractual frameworks.

  • No Legal or Financial Advice. Nothing here should be treated as a substitute for qualified legal counsel, financial due-diligence, or regulatory guidance. Stakeholders remain responsible for ensuring their actions comply with the laws and professional standards of their own jurisdictions.
  • Exploratory & Personal Views. All scenarios, numerical examples and opinions are research hypotheses presented by the author in an academic capacity. They do not represent the views of the author’s employer, funding bodies, or any governmental authority.
  • Implementation Caveats. Any real-world adoption of these ideas would require democratic deliberation, statutory authority, and robust safeguards to prevent misuse. References to enforcement, penalties, or “bounties” are illustrative models, not instructions or invitations to engage in private policing or unlawful conduct.
  • No Warranty & Limited Liability. Content is provided “as is” without warranty of completeness or accuracy; the author disclaims liability for losses arising from reliance on this material.

By continuing beyond this notice you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and accepted these conditions.

Our 2-minute elevator pitch

01. The Hook - What if Wrongdoers Paid for Their Own Busts?

Imagine a new law is passed: If you toss a candy wrapper on the sidewalk you instantly owe a $1,000 fine. But that fine doesn’t flow into government coffers - it goes straight into the pocket of whoever reports you first.

How would your behavior change? Well, you’d probably be a lot less likely to toss candy wrappers on the street in public places (not that you do!). You would be very careful indeed if anyone else was around to see it, even a close friend.

Is that enough? Plenty of places have security cameras - if litter is found it would be trivial for whoever watches the camera to rewind and find the person who threw it down. So even on deserted streets near buildings, it’s not in your interests to give J. Random Security Guard a $1,000 windfall.

Now that you think about it, a $50 IP camera pays for itself many times over if it catches even one litterbug. Who’s to say people aren’t setting up cameras anywhere they think they might get a hit? You might think e.g. a secluded beach would be immune, but not so fast - private watchdogs might prefer out of the way places so that they have less competition for the race to be first to report!

Suppose you’re in a flat field, then, far away from everyone, without a power line in sight - are you safe then? Consider: Basic fingerprinting kits can be purchased on Amazon for just $25 apiece, and even professional ones are under $500 these days. True, you don’t know exactly how reliable this is, or how long such fingerprints last. But why take the risk? After all, there’s nothing in the law saying that it matters whether you threw that candy wrapper yesterday, a month ago, a year ago…

You see where this is going. Much like how an old lady might cruise her block for cans and bottles to recycle en masse, so here does the fine create a new market - a market you quickly realize is probably more clever and more all-seeing than any police department could hope to be. Someone specialized in finding and prosecuting litterers could make a six-figure income with less than ten successful busts a month - pretty good for a gig with flexible working hours, little upfront investment, and no need for a high school diploma.

You solemnly vow to never litter again. When a local business reaches out and offers you a policy, $5 a year in exchange for covering 90% of your first littering offense that year if it happens, you figure it’s a worthwhile trade for some peace of mind. After a few months, you suddenly wake up to the realization that you haven’t seen one piece of litter in town since the new policy began.

This isn’t fiction. It’s at the heart of the Fine‑Insured Bounty (FIB) concept of criminal justice, popularized by economist Robin Hanson in his landmark essay Privately Enforced and Punished Crime. Under an FIB regime, committing a crime puts you on the hook for a hefty cash-based penalty, and that penalty funds a healthy reward for private whistleblowers.

Let’s generalize a bit: We pass a fine-insured bounty law on crime X. What happens next?

  1. Behavior changes almost immediately. Would-be offenders think twice before committing crime X. We didn’t have to spend any taxpayer money or hire any new cops to get this - it’s already working!
  2. Entrepreneurs move in.
    • Anti-X liability insurance firms pop up soon after, selling coverage and learning to vet low‑risk customers - because their profit margins depend on it. (You can only afford to insure a $1000 fine at $10 a year if less than 1% of your customers commit it.)
    • While at first the bounties are reclaimed by ordinary citizens, bounty hunters specialized in the detection and prosecution of crimes quickly emerge as well.
  3. Self‑financing enforcement. X-committers fund the very network of watchers who catch them, and some of these watchers become very skillful indeed at their job. In aggregate, these bounty hunters quickly drive the detection rate of crimes close to 100%, while also trying to minimize false accusations that take up valuable resources without a payout.

That feedback loop is immensely powerful. As we’ll see, it can apply to much more than roadside trash.

We at Extinction Bounties think it might even be able to save humanity from itself.

In upcoming posts, we’ll dive into how this same mechanism could turbo‑charge AI safety, turning every engineer, auditor, and competitor into a potential whistleblower. We’ll explore the economic logic, the game‑theoretic twist that makes conspiracies unstable, and the real‑world hurdles—from collusion to global coordination.

Ready to see how the idea behind a $1,000 anti‑littering fine can help prevent runaway AI development, dangerous gain-of-function research and more? Continue on to The Gist - Using Economics and Game Theory to Stop Criminals Before They Start.