# kaal:claim:3782214-014

**Claim.** When currency is the entire proximal goal of a transaction, all participants naturally behave as selfishly as possible and exploit any opportunity for individual profit at the group's expense, which makes cash profit a bad immediate incentive for both business and government.

**Type.** mechanism  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- anonymous members staking currency on rigid smart contracts

**Source quote.**

> If the entire proximal goal of a transaction is currency, all participants will naturally be- have in the most selfish manner possible, exploiting any opportunity for individual profit at the expense of the group.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *Decentralized Governance* (2021), Decentralized governance with new IT tools, page 8

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Decentralized Governance (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782214

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `ba892bb200c1455447c0014f5067a501a93ea9ec413c31942d95952eb3bdfd9d` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202021%20-%20Decentralized%20Governance.pdf

**Failure mode.** currency as proximal goal  (family: staking-and-incentive-misalignment)

**Topics.** risk-and-incentives, smart-contracts

**Keywords.** incentive-design, profit-motive, smart-contracts, collaboration

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.