Futures Contract on Pentagon Executive

The current events section of Tradesports.com is now offering a futures contract on how long Admiral Poindexter will stay in his current job. Poindexter was spearheading the Policy Analysis Markets project so loathed by numbskull Senators. Wanna make some money Senators?

Comments

[Zathras]

Look, no matter how great an idea Policy Analysis Markets might be, you cannot expect Congress or any other group of people to respond with enthusiasm to having it dropped into their laps. This is especially true when it is dropped into their laps by someone -- John Poindexter -- with a long and richly deserved reputation for being personally untrustworthy.

Most ideas, like most products, need to be marketed. If they don't sell you can always call the intended customers idiots and numbskulls, but in business at least that response is for losers. Anyone want to defend the way PAMs were marketed to the people who had to approve funding them?

[Plutarck]

You mean Poindexter, Mr Criminal and Total Information Awareness (I don't care what they changed the name to) mastermind - if I recall correctly, actually might have been in charge of something that ain't such a terribly bad and horrifying sort of idea?

I'm genuinly surprised.

[Andrew Lynch]

Oy, I already posted my thoughts on the futures trading business in the first post on Mr. Bailey's article.

Curious about his reasoning, I got another cup of coffee and started poking around. Looks like Glenn Reynolds has collected a few links that point to intelligent alternative or supporting arguments. He includes a link to Mr. Bailey's article.

[D.A. Ridgely]

A fascinating topic. A couple of questions for the more economically sophisticated among you:

Given the likes of Tradesports.com, etc., the question occurs to me why such a market should be government instituted? That is, is there a market for this market? If so, shouldn't it be a private entity and, if not, could it be a viable non-profit entity?

[Keith]

I guessed that one of those numbskull senators or their underlings actually thought a futures market might be created for their policies, which might embarass them.

Then again, they wouldn't understand how a market works, or what a financial market does.

[Bernard Baltic]

This innovative idea was NOT dropped into Senators' laps. The concept, rightly credited (by Ron Bailey) to George Mason econ-professor Robin Hanson has been investigated by him for at leasr since 1996.

When one sees the likes of Sen. Warner quickly diss this novel concept, it's the best sign that Hanson is ahead of the curve (not E. taylor's curve).

Bernard Baltic

This is the stuff which attracts Nobel metals and George Mason Univ. will likely get its 3rd soon.

Bernard baltic

[Zathras]

Whoopee for George Mason econ-professor Robin Hanson, but the length of time some academic has examined any policy idea means precisely nothing. No one elected Hanson to anything, and if you are expecting Senators to follow his work on their own you are confusing them with people who have nothing else to do.

If Policy Analysis Markets are such a great idea -- and I can't speak to that at all -- they will be back, provided their supporters don't assume that brilliant ideas sell themselves. If PAM backers within the government are as smart as I think they are, they are spending their time now trying to figure out what they did wrong.

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