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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

#71

Post by jkubicek »

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…

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.

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

#72

Post by magpi3 »

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.

The bill also prevents senior government officials from betting on prediction markets if they are participating personally in the event on which they are betting.

https://www.merkley.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/End-Predic...

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

#73

Post by pottertheotter »

nomilk wrote: post #35

I recall a few finance papers saying (paraphrasing) "approximately all private info is reflected in stock prices". The same is obviously true of prediction markets. If government officials are banned, they'll just give a little wink to a relative or friend, and the prediction markets will reflect the private information. On a personal note, I find these markets incredibly useful in day to day life. There's been a jok…

I think you're thinking of the efficient-market hypothesis. The hypothesis is that prices reflect all available information, and "available information" is the key part. The "strong form" includes private information, but research has not found support for this. And even the "semi-strong form" falls apart. For instance, the market for small cap stocks is not as efficient as the market for large cap stocks.

You need a market that has enough people paying attention and doing the work, and you also need a market that has enough liquidity.

Source: I have a PhD in capital markets.

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

#74

Post by avaer »

Insider trading has been a staple of making money in US politics for a long time, it's just more transparent now.

I don't believe a targeted ban on participating in prediction markets would do much to weed out corruption while "predictions" hide behind government officials pumping memecoins, buying stocks, using proxies, or simply sharing war plans over messaging apps. The floodgates are already open, prediction markets are just the most honest and obvious version of the corruption.

This approach to legislation is an interesting contrast to the CCP's supposed 2.3 million people prosecuted for corruption, if you believe Wikipedia [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-corruption_campaign_under...

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

#75

Post by tomhow »

idle_zealot wrote: post #25
literatepeople wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bot account

What's the HN policy on LLM-generated comments and linked content? There's so much of it on the front page and in threads that I feel increasingly like I'm in a crowd of machines chasing karma points rather than seeing what people think or care about. Is the engagement also botted? Or can people just not tell? Or do they not care and reply to the obvious robot anyway?

Downvote it, flag it and if you want to be super-helpful, email us about it (hn@ycombinator.com).

We want HN to be free of generated articles and comments, and will kill such submissions/comments and ban accounts that do it repeatedly.

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

#77

Post by reverius42 »

hephaes7us wrote: post #68
SteveNuts wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like you’d get a secondary proxy market popping up overnight. Like domain privacy for degenerates.

Domain privacy isn't for degenerates.

They didn't say it was?

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

#78

Post by malfist »

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.

I guess we shouldn't do this then. If it doesn't completely solve to problem.

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

#79

Post by noosphr »

lukev wrote: post #11
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 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."

Sounds like a lot of second cousins are going to make amazing predictions.

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

#80

Post by CrossVR »

samlinnfer wrote: post #66
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."

And maybe you can start by mandating age verification?

It's always a good idea to disguise your identity collection as "age verification".
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