The mathematics of this seem sound. The ideological overhead ("cooperation is good"), however, seems wrong. The same outcome that the author achieves with pooli

The mathematics of this seem sound. The ideological overhead ("cooperation is good"), however, seems wrong. The same outcome that the author achieves with pooling in a group can be achieved by an individual just splitting their wealth into N pools, and then playing the coin-toss individually with each of those N pools. Also, I suspect an even better outcome for an individual would be achieved by essentially using the Kelly criterion, which means that you wager a certain fraction of year wealth on every coin-toss. The optimal fraction that should be wagered on each toss can be calculated with pretty basic math. For the lefties: this doesn't mean that cooperation is bad, of course. It just means that the argument in the article can not be used in support of your ideology.