What About Turning Yourself In?

In a Fine-Insured Bounty (FIB) system, criminals fund the very bounties that catch them. But what if someone decides to game the system—by turning themselves in?

On the surface, it might seem absurd. Why confess your own crime just to claim your own bounty? But in certain situations, this seemingly strange strategy actually makes perfect sense — once.

Scenario 1: The Inevitable Bust

Suppose you’ve committed an offense—say, you’ve been quietly running banned AI experiments—but now realize you’re about to get caught. Evidence is leaking, teammates are acting suspiciously, and you can feel the vultures bounty hunters triangulating your position as we speak.

In this situation, turning yourself in first is surprisingly rational:

• You collect your own bounty: The fine you pay goes right back into your pocket, minus administrative fees. Essentially, you minimize your financial loss.
• Reduced penalties: Confessing to your own crime generally means you can provide the highest-quality evidence with the least hassle. Being proactive like this could earn leniency from authorities compared to someone caught by surprise.
• Public relations control: Self-reporting lets you frame the narrative, showing contrition rather than being publicly exposed as deceptive.

The major downside? You now have an official record of wrongdoing. If you self-confessed to littering, prepare for your insurance premiums to spike. If you self-confessed to something more serious, like an actual extinction risk, prepare at the very least to never work in anything remotely close to that industry again — your mere presence would cause the company to suffer its own unacceptable insurance spike. Who needs precogs when past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior?

Scenario 2: The Mole

A much more cunning scenario involves someone deliberately infiltrating a criminal enterprise or dangerous project from the beginning, quietly amassing trust, insight, and evidence, and planning all along to blow the whistle.

Why might someone do this?

• Massive payout: If you’ve positioned yourself at the core, you’ll secure substantial rewards for exposing a large-scale violation. A payout of just $1,000 per person can make you a millionaire if you’re in a thousand-person organization.
• Self-bounty advantage: When you report the crime, your share of fines—paid by your conspirators—can vastly exceed your own losses (especially if you structured your involvement carefully).
• Legal immunity and hero status: Authorities greatly favor cooperative whistleblowers, granting lower administrative fees and leading to speedier trials after all.

But, again, the drawback is significant: the stigma of having been involved at all. Insurers, employers, and bounty hunters now have your name flagged, making future activities subject to intense scrutiny. No matter how loudly you proclaim yourself to be a cunning mole who planned it from the start, it’s very hard to distinguish between a mole and an opportunist. Better aim big — you probably only have one shot!

Society Benefits from a Fast Crime-Justice Feedback Loop

It’s worth pointing out that the crimes we are interested in are fundamentally social harms, and that staying undetected is itself an additional social harm. Think, for example, of the families of loved ones who disappear mysteriously—all of the years, or decades, of agony about wondering whether they’re still out there, living under a different life, or whether the worst befell them—that’s a harm too, and a heavy one.

This isn’t a perspective that we feel is particularly vital to the kinds of crimes Extinction Bounties focuses on, but it is a real and valid one. We as innocent bystanders may often find ourselves preferring systems where criminals of certain stripes elect to turn themselves in as soon as possible, particularly when the crime is of a more abstract nature.

Conclusion: High-Risk, High-Reward

Turning yourself in under a FIB regime isn’t always foolish—or always brilliant. It’s an extreme strategy suited for cases where capture is either inevitable, or where infiltrating and exposing criminal operations promises massive personal upside.

Used wisely, it’s a uniquely powerful tool. Misused, it could permanently damage your professional standing. Either way, the very existence of this option highlights just how intricately balanced the incentives within a Fine-Insured Bounty system truly are.