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In this system there's an agreed-on concept of "better", and this is standard one-person-one-vote with no money involved. If these "smart, effective rich peopl

by cbr 12y ago

In this system there's an agreed-on concept of "better", and this is standard one-person-one-vote with no money involved. If these "smart, effective rich people" then bet that certain policies will be better, but in fact these policies turn out to only be better for them and are worse for everyone else, they will lose lots of money for betting wrong.

notahacker 12y ago
You seem to assume the incentives are always correctly aligned, and agreed on concepts of "better" are immutable. They're not. Simple example: Country X decides to do something dastardly against the interests of Futarchy Y. Confidence in the economic outlook wavers, as happens in any country where there's an anticipated reduction in trade and maybe even war. Country X, could have made a lot of money shorting "future GDP per capita" on the Futarchy prediction exchange prior to their dastardly act though. It gets worse because not only is Country X able to directly profit from making the lives of Futarchy Y worse, but the futarchic system actually makes retaliation impossible. Much as the government of Futarchy Y talks tough, and would like to take action, like sanctions, but when they actually put their sanction policy to the test, these proposed sanctions probably have a negative impact on "future GDP per capita", which is one of a perfectly reasonable set of metrics Futarchy Y has chosen. Despite the man on the street tending to agree that sanctions would be a just and moral cause of action Futarchy Y is forced into retreat because a priori metrics matter more than what the government and the public actually want to happen, and there's no way the market agrees that sanctions are going to help them achieve the given goal of growing GDP. Smart people outwit crude algorithms in simple games like Go if they have an infinitude of possible outcomes. Now imagine that crude algorithm is calibrated by simpletons voting on parameters they don't really understand
- cbr 12y ago
  You seem to assume the incentives are always correctly aligned, and agreed on concepts of "better" are immutable. They're not. No, I agree with you. I'm not very confident futarchy would work out in practice. I can theorize about how you need to set up your metrics so your country doesn't get exploited by others, but getting the metrics right is very important and they're going to be constantly under attacks to separate them from what they're actually trying to measure.

by cbr 12y ago

notahacker 12y ago

You seem to assume the incentives are always correctly aligned, and agreed on concepts of "better" are immutable. They're not. Simple example: Country X decides to do something dastardly against the interests of Futarchy Y. Confidence in the economic outlook wavers, as happens in any country where there's an anticipated reduction in trade and maybe even war. Country X, could have made a lot of money shorting "future GDP per capita" on the Futarchy prediction exchange prior to their dastardly act though. It gets worse because not only is Country X able to directly profit from making the lives of Futarchy Y worse, but the futarchic system actually makes retaliation impossible. Much as the government of Futarchy Y talks tough, and would like to take action, like sanctions, but when they actually put their sanction policy to the test, these proposed sanctions probably have a negative impact on "future GDP per capita", which is one of a perfectly reasonable set of metrics Futarchy Y has chosen. Despite the man on the street tending to agree that sanctions would be a just and moral cause of action Futarchy Y is forced into retreat because a priori metrics matter more than what the government and the public actually want to happen, and there's no way the market agrees that sanctions are going to help them achieve the given goal of growing GDP. Smart people outwit crude algorithms in simple games like Go if they have an infinitude of possible outcomes. Now imagine that crude algorithm is calibrated by simpletons voting on parameters they don't really understand

cbr 12y ago
You seem to assume the incentives are always correctly aligned, and agreed on concepts of "better" are immutable. They're not. No, I agree with you. I'm not very confident futarchy would work out in practice. I can theorize about how you need to set up your metrics so your country doesn't get exploited by others, but getting the metrics right is very important and they're going to be constantly under attacks to separate them from what they're actually trying to measure.