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Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

merkley.senate.gov

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Re: Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

#101

Post by NiloCK »

brucehoult wrote: post #81

Making insider/true expert information public more quickly in the form of influencing prices in a toy market is THE ENTIRE POINT of prediction markets. Read the original papers on them. http://li.mit.edu/Stuff/CNSE/Paper/Hanson90.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/3216893 https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/insiderbet.pdf

This may be the purpose of a prediction market for an outside observer. But the outside observer and the US government (or any org that holds private information) have different purposes - it's an adversarial mechanism.

In particular: the government is free to just publish any insider/true information that it wants the public to know about. If it shared that purpose then the market wouldn't need to exist.

Re: Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

#102

Post by rangestransform »

MadnessASAP wrote: post #69
salawat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Its not transparent to me? What are they trying to do?

Deputize prediction market providers to force people to self incriminate à la KYC/AML laws today

Re: Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

#103

Post by rangestransform »

bee_rider wrote: post #63
ralph84 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was a NOAA meteorologist I'd be making bank insider trading temperature prediction markets.

Maybe this could be an alternative funding source for weather prediction, haha.

How can prediction markets be priced with continuous instead of discrete predictions?

Re: Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

#104

Post by chromic04850 »

toss1 wrote: post #56
lukev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're not going to ban prediction markets, we could at least make it a requirement that all bets are public and associated with a real identity. That'd go a long way towards curbing the corruption of these things, while preserving (or even greatly enhancing) their "predictive power."

THIS — make it transparent, not try to ban it. And the transparency must be real-time and MUST include the full dox on beneficial owner of the contract/bet, with steep jailtime for falsification/fronting, etc.. They can even say it is for tax purposes — they win that bet, they should pay income tax (and be able to deduct the costs of their losing bets against that specific income type). I want to know if a bunch of s…

[dead]

Re: Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

#105

Post by chromic04850 »

ralph84 wrote: post #59
staplung wrote: post #5

Unfortunately, it's not just elected officials that are problematic for prediction markets. The Secretary of War, for instance is not an elected official nor are leaders of the armed forces and there is definitely a prediction market for war. Multiply this by every powerful appointee and every career bureaucrat and see what kind of picture that paints.

If I was a NOAA meteorologist I'd be making bank insider trading temperature prediction markets.

[dead]

Re: Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

#106

Post by jmye »

jkubicek wrote: post #71
toss1 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THIS — make it transparent, not try to ban it. And the transparency must be real-time and MUST include the full dox on beneficial owner of the contract/bet, with steep jailtime for falsification/fronting, etc.. They can even say it is for tax purposes — they win that bet, they should pay income tax (and be able to deduct the costs of their losing bets against that specific income type). I want to know if a bunch of s…

Knowing who is making the bets doesn’t prevent mildly corrupt officials from driving the outcome that’s going to win them some cash. Knowing that high-level DOD official were betting on us invading Iran does us no good if the only reason we invaded Iran was so they could win their long-odds bet. Sure, we can try and shame them, but now they're rich and we're fighting another middle-east war.

> Knowing that high-level DOD official were betting on us invading Iran does us no good if the only reason we invaded Iran was so they could win their long-odds bet.

Of course it does, if we’re willing to do ever-so-slightly more than jerk off on TikTok about it.

Re: Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

#107

Post by jmye »

ting0 wrote: post #67

Prediction markets should just be globally illegal. Nothing good can come from them. Public identity is not a solution, proxies would be used.

> Prediction markets should just be globally illegal.

100%. But you’ll get yelled at by the “freedom to do literally anything I want, no matter how detrimental to everyone else it is” crowd.

Re: Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

#108

Post by Retr0id »

yieldcrv wrote: post #95
Retr0id wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might've been the original purpose but in practice prediction markets have turned into a tool for gambling. It also creates weird incentives. If I want to pay a politician to do something, bribing them would generally be illegal. But what if I instead bet lots of money that they won't do it?

> a tool for gambling they require liquidity from people that are not in the know for adequate price discovery and exit liquidity worthwhile for participation

You need liquidity but there is no requirement that it comes from gamblers

Re: Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

#109

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Anyone in the financial industry is required to report their brokerage accounts to their employer.

Elected officials, servants of the public, should be required to make public their trades in public securities and on prediction markets. Public servants, elected or not, should have to disclose this to their relevant inspector general. (Yes, I know. We fired them.)

Re: Effort to prevent government officials from engaging in prediction markets

#110

Post by JumpCrisscross »

brucehoult wrote: post #81

Making insider/true expert information public more quickly in the form of influencing prices in a toy market is THE ENTIRE POINT of prediction markets. Read the original papers on them. http://li.mit.edu/Stuff/CNSE/Paper/Hanson90.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/3216893 https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/insiderbet.pdf

> Making insider/true expert information public more quickly in the form of influencing prices in a toy market is THE ENTIRE POINT of prediction markets

American taxpayers pay a lot of money for a military and intelligence advantage. It's not clear it's in our interest for that knowledge to be made "public more quickly."

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