The solution to this should be simple. Every n years, domains are put up for auction. To keep the domain, the original owner must pay x% of the top bid, otherwise the top bidder acquires the domain for his bid price, maybe add a year or two of grace period so the original owner can migrate.
What if we did the same with names in general? If someone wanted to be brador on HN, and you didn't out-bid them, they were to get your name. Oh, and your real name, too, of course. If someone pays enough, you have to get a new name. And a new telephone number. And a new house. And anything else you own, really. If someone offers more money than you have, you are forced to sell at that price whatever you have. What could possibly go wrong?
You do realize that anyone who had more money than you could take away everything you have with no recourse? One simple strategy would be to force-buy from you your bed and all your food at a price a little above the market price. Now, you can either accept the offer and thus get paid only about 90% of the market price, or you can reject and pay 10% of the market price. In the former case, you buy a new bed and new food, and the cycle repeats. In the latter case, the cycle repeats directly. In any case, after a few cycles, you won't have anything left.
Also, anything that you own that is more valuable than you have money, will just be taken from you, as people will offer to pay a little more than you can pay, thus forcing you to sell, and then will resell at market value, thus earning money from the difference. So, people without money couldn't own anything anymore.
1. Food and bed are commodities, a domain name isn't.
2.
> Also, anything that you own that is more valuable than you have money, will just be taken from you, as people will offer to pay a little more than you can pay, thus forcing you to sell, and then will resell at market value, thus earning money from the difference.
This makes no sense. The proposal is an open auction. Anyone can bid. The seller cannot turn around and sell to someone else, because that someone else would have bid too if they wanted it, driving up the price. Hence, the price the auction ends at is the true market value of the domain, not $10.
> Food and bed are commodities, a domain name isn't.
Which is relevant how? That you cannot just buy an equivalent replacement, therefore, it's even worse if you are forced to sell?
> Hence, the price the auction ends at is the true market value of the domain, not $10.
1. Per your suggestion, the seller still is ten percent short on the market value, so someone with money can still bankcrupt you simply by repeatedly forcing you to sell (or prevent you from ever obtaining whatever goods/property this rule is supposed to apply to).
2. No, it wouldn't actually discover the market price for an illiquid good, as the seller is effectively prevented from bidding what they value it at. If the thing that they are being forced to sell is worth a million dollars to them, they cannot actually bid that much if they don't happen to have 100000 dollars to spend on top, even though they supposedly own this thing that's worth a million dollars, which should normally be enough to buy that same million dollar thing. The only way to make that work would be if the seller got all of the money. In which case it would be completely pointless, as the seller could simply always bid 10 quadrillion dollars, win the auction, and pay themselves.
Wait.. so I am Ford the car company and I own ford.com. A competitor (Kia?) could bid 100 million dollars for ford.com, and I would have to pay 10 million dollars to keep my own domain?
Not sure this is great.. I could see non-profits losing their domains to porn sites.
Interesting idea, but I think a slight modification is in order.
Like you said, if someone buys and domain for $5 a year and holds it for a few years, and then someone offers $1000 for it during a renewal auction, the owner could pay $100 to keep it. If they decided that it wasn't worth $100, the new buyer would pay the $1000 to get ownership.
In this situation, I think it would be fair that the old owner get $100 of the buyers $1000. The same portion would be returned to the owner as it would have cost to keep the domain.
Although, this could lead to attacks if the price didn't drop back down to $5 a year. If someone owns whatever.com, and someone offers $1000 for it, the owner wouldn't just have to decide if its worth $100, but if it's worth $100 a year in perpetuity.
