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Harry Browne had a technique for splitting up assets: One partner does the splitting. And the other partner gets to choose who gets which pile.

(He also has a more elaborate one, where the partners do a virtual auction of all items among themselves, to account for cases where particular items are worth a lot more to one of them. I believe it’s in his book “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World”).



The first one is a very common technique among siblings too, let one of them split a cake and the other one gets to pick the piece. Applied game theory.


Do you happen to know what this is called in game theory? I’d like to read about it.


"You cut I choose"


My grandma called it "part and pick."


Seems like a subset of the prisoners dilemma.


There is a rather surprising amount of research about these kinds of approaches [1]. The various strategies and extensions are an interesting read.

^[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_cake-cutting


When I cook I usually have a portion I prefer. I always try my living hardest to let my wife pick which portion I have as to make it fair.


This is how my mom avoided fights about the fair sharing of cakes and pies between me and my siblings :D It works well!




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