So you can probably already imagine I'm completely in favor of this project, but I see two potential problems to it's success:

1. "Draining" of the society if we don't have a full candidacy of participating bidders any given rotation. (Basically I don't want someone to get a tattoo, bid some exorbitant amount that they are technically allowed to, and then be rejected)

2. Potentially being exclusionary to prospective society members without access to a Maker. (Especially in the context of potential solutions to (1))

So I can think of three potential solutions for (1):

• We come to some social agreements to reject candidates who bid above some amount, even with valid Ink. They can rebid with a lower bid until we accept.
• We "crowd" the bidders queue with a "bid ceiling" - we would then reject these bids as they don't have any Ink. This would represent an ongoing "operation cost" to "keep the ceiling up" of 10KSM per fake bidder - which would go into the Society. (effectively, 100KSM per rotation period with no true bidders.)
• We can give the society the right to veto bids (using the voting mechanism) and strongly document that individuals should not get tattoos before they are successfully candidates, and then also having some social agreement around what an acceptable bid looks like.

The second option here is the only thing that does not "change the rules" of the society, but it is also difficult because it would probably represent a substantial cost. I imagine it is doable if the Human Blockchain Project funds went to a non-society account which only has the purpose of maintaining the "bid ceiling" (and hence gradually increasing the pot over time). But then we basically have a treasurer we need to trust :)

edit: this could be an anon proxy with nobody holding transfer permissions.

@jam: on point 1: draining the pot is indeed a danger for the project. the idea on the proposal was initially for the Maker to voucher for each bidder, as you know, agreeing the amount in advance as part of this project. This will result in a cap for each bid. That said, this does not solve point 2, as you mentioned. Option 2 on your solutions seems plausible: the treasury pays out to some account, which just puts in bids repeatedly somehow creating a ceiling, which goes into the society. More to come on this soon, but this should be added to the mechanism. I would prefer not to change the rules of the Society, thats why also I think the first and third solutions are less probable.