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This happens all the time. People close to any administration "leak" plans to the media to see how they land. Not good? Just deny it. Good? Guess we go ahead.
by apexalpha 4y ago
This happens all the time. People close to any administration "leak" plans to the media to see how they land.
Not good? Just deny it. Good? Guess we go ahead.
- mpeg 4y ago"The Thick of It" should be a mandatory watch to understand UK politics.
- ShredKazoo 4y agoInteresting! I think the reason I'm excited about prediction markets in particular is because I think the average voter, justifiably, does not have the time necessary to familiarize themselves with all the details of a proposed policy and related research on its likely economic ramifications. I see the kind of in-depth analysis of financial assets that hedge funds currently do as being somewhat wasteful. I would prefer that they switch to policy analysis in the public interest, by betting on which policies will deliver for voters.
- SilasX 4y agoThere's a term for it: Trial balloon, and Wikipedia lists "kite-flying" as what it's called in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balloon
- Havoc 4y agoYeah especially in UK gov this seems to be standard operating procedure now
- IshKebab 4y agoThat's not the same as what he's suggesting though is it? He's suggesting a market based approach where you present possible policies to the market and arrange it so that the best one for your metric (e.g. reducing inequality) is also the best one to invest in. Then you enact the policy with the highest price. Essentially you enlist the modelling skills of all those extremely highly paid quants to figure out which policy is the best. I imagine it would be quite hard to set up - especially in a way that keeps the incentives you want intact - but I think it's a very interesting idea and deserves to be tried.