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I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become

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Re: I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become

#71

Post by jongjong »

hahahaa wrote: post #48
jongjong wrote: post #30

My position is that prediction markets are bad and harmful but so are all mainstream stock markets. They're all prediction markets. People collaborate to pump up the value of specific assets or contracts, leading to undesirable outcomes. It would be dishonest to ban prediction markets without banning stock markets. The best which can be done, under the current system, is to punish unfair information asymmetries, whic…

You could ban stock market trading but the market itself is a very useful vehicle for investment and has democratized wealth and retirement planning to some extent. How to ban trading? You could heavily addon tax profits from short term trading under 3 months at 90% say, tapering to zero as time increases maybe 2 years. With zero ability to offset any losses with other tax forms. Shorts, options et. included unless i…

I feel like democratizing wealth and retirement has become harmful.

Now we have a small number of extremely influential people who are essentially bribing and propagandizing the masses into voting them more money... Each win gives them even more money to buy even more votes at the next election.

Politicians change but the people behind them keep accumulating more wealth.

Democratization of wealth creates massive capital centralization which creates anti-competitive dynamics; the monetary playing field is itself inherently anti-competitive by design.

I often give the example of a skilled coffee shop owner having to compete with a coffee shop 'pet project' of a multimillionaire passive investor who is running their shop at a loss... The person without passive income cannot win no matter how much better they are.

Now extend this metaphor to every aspect of the economy. There will be two kinds of businesses remaining; monopolistic megacorps receiving government handouts and small businesses which would all be some millionaire shareholder's unprofitable pet project.

Also, the biggest shareholders of various companies are using their leverage to find anti-competitive synergies between companies in their portfolios and coercing the executives of certain companies into favoring specific suppliers and clients on that basis.

Re: I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become

#72

Post by hahahaa »

jongjong wrote: post #71
hahahaa wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could ban stock market trading but the market itself is a very useful vehicle for investment and has democratized wealth and retirement planning to some extent. How to ban trading? You could heavily addon tax profits from short term trading under 3 months at 90% say, tapering to zero as time increases maybe 2 years. With zero ability to offset any losses with other tax forms. Shorts, options et. included unless i…

I feel like democratizing wealth and retirement has become harmful. Now we have a small number of extremely influential people who are essentially bribing and propagandizing the masses into voting them more money... Each win gives them even more money to buy even more votes at the next election. Politicians change but the people behind them keep accumulating more wealth. Democratization of wealth creates massive capi…

I think it is the lesser evil where the bigger evil is private trillionaire companies owned by families. Murdochs and asian conglomorates everywhere. No ownership by ordinary people. Or indirect opaque ownership via something closer to SPACs than an open market. I.e. pensions getting scammed.

Re: I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become

#73

Post by fwipsy »

qlte wrote: post #65
fwipsy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we knew the COVID pandemic was coming, we could have prepared better. If we knew what AI would look like in 5 years, we could write laws for that proactively rather than reactively. The Fed could look at prediction markets to decide whether to raise the interest rate. Basically, it depends on there being competent, good-willed people in power using them to inform their decisions. That feels like a bit of a joke ri…

What would the COVID pandemic market have been before COVID existed, and what information would have been available to steer the market towards a useful prediction? “Will there be another coronavirus mutation resulting in a pandemic in 2005, 2006, 2018, 2019…” doesn’t seem like it would have been helpful, except in the like two month or so window after detection and the WHO announcement when alarm bells were already…

Knowing whether a major pandemic has a 2% chance vs. 0.2% chance per year has major policy implications. Just like the difference between a 100-year floodplain and a 500-year floodplain has important insurance implications, even though you probably won't get flooded on any given year.

Re: I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become

#74

Post by fwipsy »

Glyptodon wrote: post #41

This reminds me of how people who worked for Facebook despite it being obvious that nobody with moral fiber should work for Facebook are more listened to when criticizing Facebook than people who realized the obvious to begin with. It's such a farce. But it also reminds me that prediction markets are one of those things that are transparently a terrible idea because they create problematic incentives, and not just be…

The same perverse incentives apply to the stock market too. "I'm short United Healthcare, someone should go shoot their CEO." Or "I'm long defense stocks, I guess I'll vote for someone who will start a war."

People mostly don't do this because most of the things which you could do to move a stock price are highly illegal, and anyways there are laws against market manipulation. And I doubt people vote to benefit their portfolio (except for homeowners) because there's so little chance that any individual person's vote will result in a tangible benefit to the corporation. People mostly vote out of a sense of duty; the chance of your vote individually actually changing a tangible outcome is miniscule.

The problem seems to be in what it's used for. Prediction market supporters never intended it to be used primarily for sports gambling, much less used to override state sports gambling laws at the federal level. That was never part of the original proposal for prediction markets. I can see a legitimate use case for e.g. the Fed using conditional prediction markets to inform monetary policy; in that case, even a small increase in marginal accuracy/certainty could plausibly be worth billions of dollars to society.

Everyone here seems so sure that they knew prediction markets were a bad idea. But it seems to me that most of the harm comes from the CFTC regulated securities loophole. Without that, prediction markets on sports would be limited to states where sports gambling was already legal, and the marginal harm would be minimal. And I didn't see anyone predict that mechanism; if they did, they never got much traction. This is exactly the sort of problem prediction markets, in their ideal form, are meant to solve.

Re: I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become

#75

Post by runarberg »

satvikpendem wrote: post #67
runarberg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they ever served such a function, they no longer do so. Today’s risky ventures are funded by venture capital and the results are disastrous. I propose an alternative system where you fund your risky venture by taking out a loan at your local credit union, by crowd-sourcing it, or better yet, just don’t. I think we can give risky ventures a brake for 20-100 years. Maybe concentrate our efforts on undoing the damage…

Good luck with that pause. Things like the climate disaster require risky ventures these days like carbon sequestration at scale, you can't undo it just by doing the same things as today, which is basically what you're advocating for, upholding the status quo, for 20 to 100 years. You'll probably say that's not what you mean but that's what the outcome will become.

Please just stop. Capitalists have already caused way too much damage with your “risky ventures”. After a thousand of these risky ventures with each one of them making the climate disaster worse actually, I think it is time that you are just stopped. “Just one more risky venture bro“, is just gonna cause more damage on top of the damage already being done.

What we need are boring and proven solutions. Lets start with boring old regulations, maybe boring old taxation, on top of boring old infrastructure build out (using proven technology; none of these modular small nuclear power plants; they don‘t exist and won‘t save us). And Finally boring old international agreements, this time without capitalist polluters polluting the agreements, just like the one which saved us from nuclear proliferation and the ozone layer depletion.

As for the status quo. The status quo is currently that the interest of the rich trumps everything. Climate inaction is the status quo because rich capitalists benefit from polluting, so governments simply allow them to continue. Risky ventures do nothing to stop that.

Re: I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become

#76

Post by satvikpendem »

runarberg wrote: post #75
satvikpendem wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that pause. Things like the climate disaster require risky ventures these days like carbon sequestration at scale, you can't undo it just by doing the same things as today, which is basically what you're advocating for, upholding the status quo, for 20 to 100 years. You'll probably say that's not what you mean but that's what the outcome will become.

Please just stop. Capitalists have already caused way too much damage with your “risky ventures” . After a thousand of these risky ventures with each one of them making the climate disaster worse actually, I think it is time that you are just stopped. “Just one more risky venture bro“, is just gonna cause more damage on top of the damage already being done. What we need are boring and proven solutions. Lets start wit…

How will you sequester carbon already out there with boring solutions? It literally doesn't exist, hence why those new companies are there in the first place. IMO there are a lot of risky ventures you directly benefit from, such as mRNA vaccines just to name one recently, that you don't even register them, instead going off about Trump this and capitalism that. It's capitalism that got you these solutions in the first place, which, sure, has issues too, but don't act like you have a utopic idea of a system without issues.

Re: I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become

#77

Post by runarberg »

satvikpendem wrote: post #76
runarberg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please just stop. Capitalists have already caused way too much damage with your “risky ventures” . After a thousand of these risky ventures with each one of them making the climate disaster worse actually, I think it is time that you are just stopped. “Just one more risky venture bro“, is just gonna cause more damage on top of the damage already being done. What we need are boring and proven solutions. Lets start wit…

How will you sequester carbon already out there with boring solutions? It literally doesn't exist, hence why those new companies are there in the first place. IMO there are a lot of risky ventures you directly benefit from, such as mRNA vaccines just to name one recently, that you don't even register them, instead going off about Trump this and capitalism that. It's capitalism that got you these solutions in the firs…

> How will you sequester carbon already out there with boring solutions?

I don‘t care. First we need to address the urgent problem which is new carbon being released. Lucky for us that is also the easy problem. All we have to do is stop constantly catering to the interests of the rich. Let polluters become bankrupt if we have to.

mRNA vaccines were initially studied and developed in good old boring state funded universities, the stock traded research labs which did later develop them got state funded research grants. The stock market came nowhere near funding them until they were already proven. In fact publicly traded companies held patents and prevented a fair distribution of essential vaccines, leading to more people dying from COVID. Without the stock marked I am sure this technology would have been shared and lives would have been saved. Trading stocks in companies with mRNA patents was not about funding risky ventures, but about pandemic profiteering.

Re: I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become

#78

Post by satvikpendem »

runarberg wrote: post #77
satvikpendem wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How will you sequester carbon already out there with boring solutions? It literally doesn't exist, hence why those new companies are there in the first place. IMO there are a lot of risky ventures you directly benefit from, such as mRNA vaccines just to name one recently, that you don't even register them, instead going off about Trump this and capitalism that. It's capitalism that got you these solutions in the firs…

> How will you sequester carbon already out there with boring solutions? I don‘t care. First we need to address the urgent problem which is new carbon being released. Lucky for us that is also the easy problem. All we have to do is stop constantly catering to the interests of the rich. Let polluters become bankrupt if we have to. mRNA vaccines were initially studied and developed in good old boring state funded unive…

> I don‘t care.

Alright, not worth discussing further with someone who doesn't actually have any solutions to issues, much less care about them in the first place. Have a good day and good luck with your philosophy.

Re: I Championed Prediction Markets. Look What They've Become

#79

Post by runarberg »

satvikpendem wrote: post #78
runarberg wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How will you sequester carbon already out there with boring solutions? I don‘t care. First we need to address the urgent problem which is new carbon being released. Lucky for us that is also the easy problem. All we have to do is stop constantly catering to the interests of the rich. Let polluters become bankrupt if we have to. mRNA vaccines were initially studied and developed in good old boring state funded unive…

> I don‘t care. Alright, not worth discussing further with someone who doesn't actually have any solutions to issues, much less care about them in the first place. Have a good day and good luck with your philosophy.

You are probably not going to read this, but this is bad faith argument. Giving me a difficult question which does not have an easy answer, and then when I am unable (or unwilling) to solve it, disregard my opinion about the easier problem.
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