Extinction Bounties vs. FIBs: Why the New Name?
Extinction Bounties vs. FIBs: Why the New Name?
Extinction bounties are a deliberately narrow-gauge application of Robin
Hanson’s fine-insured bounty (FIB) architecture.
The narrowest possible gauge that still gets the goods.
They take the part of FIB that works spectacularly—decentralized, for-profit detection and iron-clad payment of enormous fines—and point it squarely at the handful of technological failure modes that could end civilization.
Everything else, by default, is outside of our scope of concern at Extinction Bounties, and therefore left to conventional law.
Below is the logic chain we use when pitching, designing, and defending this keyhole approach.
1. The Enforcement Power of FIB Is Too Strong for Everyday Life
Hanson’s original design turns every citizen into a potential bounty hunter and
makes all criminal penalties payable-on-demand via mandatory insurance.
That is brutally efficient for deterrence, but it also:
- Scales to panopticon levels — universal surveillance incentives push society toward “all crimes discovered, all crimes punished.”
- Flattens moral nuance — trivial offenses (jaywalking) and existential offenses (super-pathogens) are treated identically unless lawmakers carve out exceptions.
- Invites regulatory imperialism — the severest penalties may propagate globally once bounty hunters can prosecute across borders.
For routine social misdemeanors, we want frictions: discretion,
under-enforcement, the occasional warning.
Those frictions are a feature, not a bug—they preserve proportionality, privacy,
and pluralism.
Conclusion: Use the FIB hammer only where a sledgehammer is justified.
2. Existential Risks (x-risks) Actually Need a Sledgehammer
- A single successful catastrophe (runaway AI, engineered pandemic, vacuum-decay collider mishap) wipes out the option value of the entire future.
- Conventional regulation struggles because harms are global, irreversible, and low-frequency: no constituency is alive after a failure to demand better rules.
- The externality is literally infinite. Deterrence—and its parents, detection and prosecution—must be near-perfect.
Extinction bounties satisfy that need:
| Feature | Why It Matters for x-Risk |
|---|---|
| Guaranteed collection via insurer | Ensures even well-capitalized labs or state actors cannot escape through bankruptcy or sovereign immunity. |
| Huge, statutory fines (→ insurance premiums) | Translates astronomical downside into immediate, personal cost for would-be violators. |
| Open bounty hunting | Multiplies the eyes and incentives looking for early warning signs or hidden transgressions. |
| Precise scope | Focuses enforcement on activities whose failure modes are terminal, keeping civil liberties elsewhere intact. |
3. Politically Viable: “One Norm, Many Cultures”
A world-wide FIB regime for all offenses would require near-total legal
harmonization—an impossible, and arguably dystopian, lift.
Extinction bounties avoid that by:
- Targeting a universal negative — nobody wants global extinction; there is no lobby for civilization collapse.
- Respecting domestic discretion — each country keeps its criminal code; only specifically listed x-risk practices trigger the bounty mechanism.
- Minimizing sovereignty clashes — enforcement uses local courts for due process, but evidence gathering and whistleblowing are global and crowd-sourced.
In short, extinction bounties are a lowest common denominator safety protocol:
Every polity can sign on without importing alien moral strictures about ordinary
behavior.
4. Containment by Design
Finally, the brand matters. Calling the mechanism “extinction bounties”:
- Signals narrow purpose — it’s not a back-door for universal surveillance.
- Creates