Why would someone sell their soul to this business? I can see the novelty of buying souls, but not of selling. What would the seller get from this?
Money.
From the radio show I linked to above:
DUBNER: And what about Bruce, the seller? On the central matter here, the existence of a soul, Bruce and Caleb disagree. Caleb believes in the soul and thinks it’s worth something; Bruce doesn’t believe in the soul and therefore was happy to sell at any price. But as to how the market should work, even for souls? Well, on this point, the two men are in complete agreement. I asked Bruce if he cared that Caleb would resell his soul …
DUBNER : Let me ask you this, just between you and me now, if I offered you sixty bucks for Bruce’s soul would you resell it to me?
CALEB : I probably would.
DUBNER : Really?
CALEB : Yeah, certainly.
DUBNER: Tell me again exactly what you do for a living.
CALEB : I am a bond analyst for a bank.
DUBNER : So you’re familiar with markets, how they work, when they work, and when they don’t work, when they fail sometime.
CALEB : Generally, yes.
DUBNER : Do you … have you considered establishing some kind of a soul market?
CALEB : It might be if I have the technical guru, it might be something indeed that I could do, yes.
The seller would be told who the buyer is, and vice versa. It could be a gimmicky way to get strangers to get to learn about each other.
Hmm, can you trade partial souls, I wonder? How about options?
But remember you’re up against a firm with a much longer track record on this one…
I am interested in Trump’s soul, or an affordable portion thereof. But I think its value will likely go down in the future. Do you offer any futures or other means of monetizing my guess?
You cannot buy what is not for sale already…or does not exist in the first place.
Maybe there is an embryonic stump that you could expose to bebop?
I think it’s really very creepy. The star registry while BS, is kinda cool. There are comets named after their discoverers after all.
I wonder who claimed good 'ol Sol? Or if anyone thought about it. I’m sure I could ‘buy’ land on the moon or mars If I wanted to part ways with my money.
But your soul? While not tangible, it would just creep me out.
Bill Willinham’s and Paul Guinan’s Proposition Player dealt with this exact scheme.
Unless you recorded at Stax Records; I’m not interested.