On September 28th an unusual auction is going to begin on eBay. I’m selling my "right to regain weight." Why would anyone in their right mind be willing to pay me cash to buy this right? What does this even mean?
It’s simple. The winner of the auction wins the rights to receive any forfeitures on my stickK weight maintenance contracts over the course of the next year. As I say in the eBay item description:
Following the auction’s close (and as soon as I receive payment from the auction winner), I will designate the winner as the recipient of any forfeiture payments made on my www.stickK.com maintenance contracts for the next 52 weeks.
Any week during this 52-week period where
- I fail to report to stickK my progress on the contract;
- I report that my weight is above 185; or
- My referee, Barry Nalebuff (Yale game-theorist and Ayres coauthor), reports that my weight is above 185 lbs. the auction winner will receive $500.
So, I’m selling the right to receive any and all stickK forfeitures during the next year. I’m auctioning my stickK contracts. Since I’m putting $500 at risk each week, the auction winner will receive somewhere between $0 and $26,000.
I’m predicting that it will not be very much. Even though I’ve had a hard time staying below 200 pounds in the past, I, like Subway’s Jared, have all kinds of incentive to keep my weight in check. I’m probably one of the few eBay sellers who warns bidders not to bid too much:
If I fail in each and every week, the auction winner could receive as much as $26,000. But beware: my weight on August 4, 2010 is about 180 lbs. I intend to make sure that my weight stays below 185 lbs throughout the 52 weeks – so it is possible, even probable, that the auction winner will not receive any forfeiture money. It would be foolhardy to bid very much on this item.
The idea for this auction comes from James Hurman, a New Zealand advertising executive, who in 2008 successfully sold his smoking addiction. You can learn more about James and how you can sell your weaknesses in chapter 3 of my book. Or if you want a more academic treatment of how compensated commitments can be used in all kinds of contexts, you can read this article coauthored with Michael Abramowicz: Compensating Commitments: The Law and Economics of Commitment Bonds That Compensate for the Possibility of Forfeiture.
You can keep track of how I’m doing on my maintenance contract here. On Labor Day, I weighed 181 pounds.
