Money...it's a crime

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three scoundrels claim to be the smartest in the country. So you decide to give them a challenge. Suspecting that the thing they care about most is money, you give them $100 and tell them they are to divide this money observing the following rule: they are to discuss offers and counter-offers from each other and then take a vote. Majority vote wins.
Sounds easy enough... now the question is, assuming each person is motivated to take the largest amount possible, what will the outcome be?

Note: careful... if the answer were that they split it 50% / 50% / 0%, or 1/3 / 1/3 / 1/3, it wouldn't be a riddle!

Note: careful... 96.6523544 % of people who send answers to this have not thought about it for even 1 minute. I guarantee you won't solve it in a minute. (96.6523544% of the time this guarantee is correct.)

(Don't forget to say WHY! Mr. Green

)

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Type: Discussion • Score: 1 • Views: 1,396 • Replies: 12

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$100, $100 and $100. Wink

They exchange the US$100 for a currency that trades for 300. They each end up with 100. Wink

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ok, assuming they want to stay with united states currency =P

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I suppose that if they are all extremely good, they would never agree on something. But the most reasonable does sound like 50/50/0. That way, two would get half each. And only 2 is required for the vote.

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zex, And that third guy that got zero? He has a gun, and walks away with the $100. Wink

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It seems to me that if A and B decide to 'stiff' C and take $50 each, then C can offer, say, A a deal whereby A keeps $55 and C takes $45. In fact there does not seem to be any situation where the 'loser' cannot offer one of the others a better deal.

But we are told that they are smart, so I figure that if they are smart enough they will agree on a three-way split as being the only way they can come to any agreement.

But then again, If A and B are smart enough they would make that 50/50/0 deal and stick to it. It is all a matter of how scoundrelly they are, as balanced against how greedy they are, as balanced against how smart they are IMHO, and we aren't given the relative degrees of each.

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Don't forget the title; "Money.....it's a crime."

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That has nothing to do with the riddle...i just love the song "Money" by Pink Floyd.

I like Mungo's answer.

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On further consideration and thinking out of the box:

Suppose that I were one of the three. The second best option seems to be that I agree with one of them, say A, that I take one cent and A takes $99.99 - on the condition that he buys the coffee later. As long as I stick to the agreement this deal cannot be bettered.
A and myself vote for it and it is carried.
On the way to get the coffee I bop him on the head - I am a scoundrel after all - and take the money.

That is the second best option I think. The best option is that all three of us bop Tetsuo on the head when he is handing out the $100 on the grounds that anyone who can give away $100 is probably carrying a lot more than that. (We are, after all, scoundrels AND clever AND greedy)

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If they're really that smart, they will realize that offers continue to be countered until two of them gang-up on the 3rd and agree to stiff him. Again, it only takes two of them to rule out the third, so they either have to agree to split it as evenly as possible or to stiff one of them.

Is there some other solution?

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pstone

Yeah; but suppose A and B agree that they get $50 each and C is cut out. C can offer A that A gets to keep $60 if C can have $40. So A and C have a better deal by A ditching B and going with C.

But then B can offer the deal where C gets $50 and B takes $50 which is now a better deal for B and C with A being cut out.

There is no 'good' answer because no matter what the deal, there is always another deal that improves things for two of them by making things worse for the third.

There is no way around this unless their brains beats their greed and villainy, and we are not told which is strongest.

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I agree that there is no real answer to the riddle, just that if they're really that smart they would also discover that there's no way out of the room with a decision that all three like. Unless they realize that they could do better things with their time, rather than argue endlessly over a measly hundred bucks.

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If they're that smart, they'll not spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out how to stiff the other two out $100.

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Money...it's a crime

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