A new market for blog posts?

Kim Krawiec is on top of the taboo trades game, and has some new ones to suggest: I particularly like the idea that if you have some fact that requires a citation, maybe we could arrange that...

Selling The Starred Footnote

I’m late to the game in blogging about this, but I just found out about it on Friday at a conference on the Ethical Limits of Markets hosted by the Institute For The Study of Markets and Ethics at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business (about which I’ll have more to say later).  Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski are selling acknowledgements in the preface of their book Markets without Limits, which will be published by Routledge Press, most likely in late 2015 or early 2016.

The book answers the question “Are there some things which you permissibly may possess, use, and give away, but which are wrong to buy and sell?” in the negative, in contrast to the numerous books already written on the topic which take the contrary position.  Brennan and Jaworski are selling three tiers of acknowledgements: Silvermint Tier, Platinum Tier, and Gold Tier (The Silvermint Tier is so named because philosophy and women’s studies professorDaniel Silvermint is paying to have the highest tier named after him.)

Wish I had thought of that!  But no reason I can’t adopt it going forward.  In addition, I’ve decided to sell links to and mentions of your work in my blog posts and tweets.  I’m still working out the exact fee schedule, but will charge extra for highly positive mentions and even more for highly negative mentions (as controversy is always an attention getter). Finally, if those pesky law review editors won’t stop bothering you for support that you can’t find, just let me know and I’ll sell you a blog post setting out the needed statements, to which you can then cite. 

We often complain that student editors demand support for obviously correct statements of common knowledge – indeed, it is sometimes the case that the proposition is so widely known and accepted that it is difficult to find discussion of the point in print.  For example, you may want to reference the uncontroversial view that “professors of market regulation are considered smarter and more interesting than professors of constitutional law,” yet struggle to find something in print to that effect (in contrast to the faculty lounge and hallway conversations in which this assertion is frequently found). Problem solved!  Just let me know the statements for which you need a citation and I’ll post them here for a fee.  The profit possibilities on this one are nearly endless.