Quote from: americanpegasus on September 17, 2015, 02:34:17 AM

Quote from: ArticMine on September 17, 2015, 01:26:34 AM

The solution is the senior pirate distributes one coin to each priate, except the second most senior pirate gets no coins and he keeps M+2-N coins for himself.

There are 7 billion pirates (sorry, I meant n pirates) who all are using silver coins with different Gods drawn on them to transact with. Pirate #1 wants all n-pirates to adopt new and improved gold coins with no Gods drawn on them. Luckily, he is an idealist and isn't necessarily looking for maximum profitability in this game; his only goal is to convert as many of the pirates as possible to the magical gold coin standard. Right.... I forgot to mention that these are magic gold coins which can be instantly teleported to anyone on the planet, and no one has to know about it. Despite the advantages though, this might be an uphill battle. Most pirates are deeply religious and deeply value their silver with Gods drawn on it. These new magical gold coins might be superior, but they also use witchcraft (which is untrusted and considered dangerous by many).

Overnight millions of magical golden coins begin to appear in Pirate #1's lair. This is because he is the first believer, and after all: they have to go somewhere. The power of these coins is such that anyone who makes a statement of faith: "I believe in the power of the magical gold coin." will also be able to share in the miraculous appearance of gold coins in their lair (although the total amount that appears will slowly decrease over time to a minimum). To compound the problem, it is possible to compete for a greater share of the magical gold coins by building ornate altars in your lair, the materials of which can only initially be bought with the holy-stamped silver (because no one accepts the magical gold as money yet).

Assuming that Pirate #1 has the ability to immediately contact up to 1% of the pirates (of varying dispositions towards the witchcraft that these coins use, and who also have varying connections to eventually contact the other 99% of pirates), and his goal is to convince as many as possible to value the magical golden coins over the holy silver coins, what is his ideal strategy? Historical precedent?

bravo.