Individual profit-sharing?

post by ioannes (ioannes_shade) · 2019-02-13T17:58:41.388Z · LW · GW · 8 comments

This is a question post.

Contents

8 comments

Here's a sketch of an idea:

Two motivations for signing a contract like this:

  1. Diversify one's career & earnings risk by "investing" in admired peers.
  2. Deepen one's relationship with the other signee (signing isn't a thing to be taken lightly); signing signals intimacy & desire to build a longterm relationship with the other person.

Of course there are lots of ways something like this could go awry.

Has anyone heard of people doing something like this?

What are existing mechanisms that do something like this? Examples I've encountered already include marriage (50% profit-sharing indefinitely, at least in the US) and Kibbutzim (100% profit-sharing during one's tour of duty).

Answers

8 comments

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comment by SonnieBailey · 2019-02-20T01:35:03.768Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Fun fact: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas entered into an arrangement like this in 1977, swapping 2.5% of their stakes in relation to Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It seems like Spielberg received north of $40 million from the deal. (Source)

comment by PeterMcCluskey · 2019-02-14T03:49:59.760Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Universities have tried something like this for tuition. See these mentions from Alex Tabarrok. They have some trouble with people defaulting.

Replies from: ioannes_shade
↑ comment by ioannes (ioannes_shade) · 2019-02-14T16:16:20.201Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Interesting.

My intuition is that this would work better without a bureaucratic intermediary administering it.

comment by Douglas_Knight · 2019-02-17T03:48:51.830Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Usually this comes up in the context of financing education, where they are sometimes called human capital contracts. This was previously discussed [LW · GW] on LW. I left a comment there giving several of education (England, France, Yale) and another example more like this post: "360 deals" in the music industry, where instead of touring existing to promote the album or vice versa, the record label owns a proportion of everything musician does, so that their interests are more aligned. I think that the most famous example is Lady Gaga, who signed such a deal fairly early in her career. (The wikipedia article I link gives as examples even more famous musicians Madonna and Jay-Z, but those were late in their careers and, I guess, maybe in the opposite direction, where the tour promoter buys a chunk of the record.)

comment by ike · 2019-02-13T21:12:08.176Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Poker players do this sometimes, see e.g. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/jun/26/buying-in-whats-in-it-for-pokers-big-money-backers/

Replies from: ioannes_shade
↑ comment by ioannes (ioannes_shade) · 2019-02-14T00:20:15.251Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Very interesting – professional poker didn't occur to me!

I wonder if these agreements are enforced by legal contract? Sounds like it, from the tone of the article.

comment by habryka (habryka4) · 2019-02-13T22:51:40.031Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I've also thought about this, and would also be interested in seeing examples of this. I would also be interested in someone talking about the legal obstacles to doing this in the U.S. or Europe.

Replies from: ioannes_shade