Prediction Markets and the 2008 Electoral Map 813
Electionwatch submitted a predicted electoral map of the 2008 US Presidential election, based on the bets made by the intrade prediction markets. I'm always interested in these markets and how accurate they end up being. This one calls it for Obama, but then again you probably could guess that by just watching 10 minutes of any TV "News" channel.
Obama will win! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Obama will win! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it just me or is McCain one big senior moment away from totally blowing this thing for himself? 'Beer' instead of 'bill', 'Shiite' instead of 'Sunni', the overall creepiness of his speech delivery ("That's not change we can believe in.... hehehe"), blah, blah, blah.
If he falls off a stage this thing is over with.
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Re:Obama will win! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Count Them [msn.com]
Though this isn't meant to take away from your comment, just to clarify.
Called if for Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Called if for Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
People are easily swayed. Another terrorist attack in the USA I think could sway the elections.
Re:Called if for Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
People are easily swayed. Another terrorist attack in the USA I think could sway the elections.
Re:Called if for Obama (Score:5, Informative)
Not to take any of the blame from the Repubs but I think it's safe to include the Dems in there as well. Any ounce of thoughtful prevention from anyone has been quickly buried by both.
Score one for the politicians, I'm surprised that no one has realized that there really is only one party with two different subsets in America.
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My guess is no, in at least one of the two cases.
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The human party?
Vote Zombie in 2008 to get them on the ticket in 2012!
A donation has been submitted in your name to The Human Fund!
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"don't change the leader during war time"
"democrats are soft on terrorism"
"we have the experience"
etc etc...
Classic Rookie mistake. People are not logical. (Score:4, Interesting)
The book explains that people are not rational or logical especially when it comes to risk assessment. The best recent example (the book was written in 1989) is America's reaction to the 9/11 attacks. More people died of hunger that day than were killed in the attack. The US response to the attacks was totally illogical because people felt threatened and this caused them to stop using the higher levels of their brains. They instead, reverted to their reptilian "flight or fight" instincts.
Another similar (or worse) attack will most likely produce a similar response from the American people. They will stop thinking rationally, which is probably the only way the Republicans can beat Obama on November 4th.
Risk Assessment during Vietnam (Score:3, Interesting)
They chased down every lead, and the most they ever found was a Russian newspaper in a Vietnamese embassy. Their conclusion? Ho Chi Minh was such a dedicated communist client that they didn't even need to send orders. Ho Chi Minh just "knew what to do."
I also recently finished w
Re:Classic Rookie mistake. People are not logical. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, we should NEVER reason with people, only chop their heads off. Perhaps understanding WHY 9/11 happened would have been a good thing, it would have probably have been better to do that before ensuring that more people want to blow us up.
snakes != collections of people
I might remind you that the "intellectual classes" are the FIRST people who are off'd after a military coup. Not because of their intelligence, but because they are quick and easy prey who only realize their mistake when it's too late. Stalin called them "useful idiots." OTOH, those so-called "reptilian flight or fight" instincts have a lot to be said for and have kept our butts alive for millions of years.
Anti-intellectual movements FTW! Look what electing a moron (which is the opposite of intellectual) got us. I don't want "folk" running our country, folk are ignorant, superstitious, illiterate, yokels, with no ability to reason in advance, or ponder consequences of their actions.
No one in power should be common. My experience with the common, non-educated, man is not encouraging.
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Good thing we have groundless conspiracy theories and paranoid speculation to counter the administration's own dire predictions.
We all remember 4 years ago when partisan fanatics were predicting that Bush would declare some kind of national emergency and cancel the election in order to maintain powe
Re:Called if for Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
Never underestimate the power of fear, doubt, and money.
Re:Called if for Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
And never underestimate the power of election tampering by directing poor urban voters to the wrong site... or by undersupplying voting machines in poor urban districts...
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Re:Called if for Obama (Score:4, Interesting)
let me tell you; people in rural maine are still afraid of terrorists. I got my sigs because many rural mainers are also damn near libertarians and luckily this time around realID is an unfunded mandate and mainers hate taxes, but I lost plenty to people who want the government to be covering us all like some big, faceless security blanket.
Re:Called if for Obama (Score:4, Insightful)
You must be a *very* successful person, to be able to say that.
How is it that you find time to post on slashdot?
Re:Called if for Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
6. Teh ghey marriage!
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2. He's okay with civil unions.
3. He's against constitutional amendments outlawing gay marriage.
These are similar to, but still more permitting, than McCain's views. Please do a better job at reviewing the candidate positions.
Re:Called if for Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
Dolt (Score:4, Insightful)
And how exactly is printing more money (in the form of "tax rebate" checks funded through deficit spending) going to increase the value of the dollar? (Source [clarionledger.com]) Doesn't it do the exact opposite?
"4. Percentage of bankruptcies caused by lack of health care coverage"
And Obama would replace that number with the "percentage of Americans completely losing their property rights to socialism", which of course would be 100%. McCain is of course doing the same thing, though possibly to a lesser degree (or maybe he's just better at hiding it).
"5. Number of houses lost to predatory lenders."
I have no sympathy for people who sign contracts without reading them, nor for banks that associate with such shady sources. Companies and individuals that purposely do not investigate the risk of such endeavors will fall. It is not our responsibility to provide a safety net for bad practices - doing so brings the whole system down, because everyone starts thinking they can make mistakes and someone will protect them from the consequences (for free at that!)
As for Iraq, all I see is a lot of empty talk from the candidates. I doubt either has a viable plan that is without dangerous consequences; they will instead elect to do nothing.
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I have no sympathy for people who sign contracts without reading them, nor for banks that associate with such shady sources. Companies and individuals that purposely do not investigate the risk of such endeavors will fall. It is not our responsibility to provide a safety net for bad practices - doing so brings the whole system down, because everyone starts thinking they can make mistakes and someone will protect them from the consequences (for free at that!)
I agree with you in principle. The "predatory" lending was completely laid out in the contracts people signed. However, many people (not the crowd that reads this) don't have even a slight understanding of what any of it means, let alone know how to realistically budget for years in advance or how to prepare for less than status quo times.
Its people like this that lending laws are designed to protect. As uninformed as they may be, most/many of them are productive members of society.
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Re:Dolt (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe one day America will finally reach adulthood and start looking after the people.
We do, we just do it a different way. We believe that you look after the people by giving them choice to do what they want. The belief is that I don't know what you need any more than you know what I need. The government doesn't give money to corporations, it allows them to provide services to the people that the people are willing to pay for.
The current crisis is because someone who doesn't know what they're doing hears about this great new way to make money, so they tried to do it themselves. Instead
Re:Dolt (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason for the current "crisis" (that's what they call everything now) is that people over-bought. They weren't exactly discouraged by the lenders from taking out loans that would have kept them living in poverty, but there was nothing fraudulent about it.
I'm a good example... when I bought my house 10 years ago, the lender looked at my credit history (since vastly cleaned up) and said "With your income, we'd normally approve you up to $300,000, but you look like you have some debt..."
To which I got all bug eyed and said "WHAT? That's ridiculous! I'm looking for, like, HALF that!"
"Oh, OK then."
But how many people would be like "$300k? Really? Wow, I could get a GREAT house for that!" I said that if I bought a house for that much (at the time), there'd be nothing left to buy things to put in it. I'd be a slave to the mortgage company. And it's not like I was experienced in the matter, it was my first house... I don't think it takes much brainpower to realistically figure out what you can pay.
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So why do they sign the contract? Why do they not ask any questions about what is meant by the text they don't understand?
"As uninformed as they may be, most/many of them are productive members of society."
It's fine that they are still productive. But members of the publ
Re:Dolt (Score:5, Insightful)
Externalities (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, you're not thinking clearly. Commercial transactions don't capture all value.
I live in a city. When there are a ton of desperate poor around, it affects my quality of life. I can't go outside at night.
By myself, I cannot do a damn thing to change this: I do not have the resources. If we want to change the city, we require collective action. Government is the means by which collective action is achieved.
If an epidemic spreads through the city, simply having enough money to pay for my own medical bills isn't enough. No: What was really needed was for the first poor schmuck who caught the disease to begin with and started spreading it around to have received adequate medical care before the situation ballooned out of control.
Libertarianism is dogs eating dogs. You might win, but it won't have been very pleasant for you even if you do.
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So why do they sign the contract? Why do they not ask any questions about what is meant by the text they don't understand?
They often times do. Unfortunately, they usually trust the lender or real estate agent to act in their best interest. And, in many cases, the agent will just lie or say that its just there for the lawyers.
It's fine that they are still productive. But members of the public should not be forced to give up some of their own productivity (in the form of money) to support such individuals when they become unproductive.
Why would I have to give up any of my money? Giving these people tax dollars isn't the solution. The lending companies are the ones that should be targeted. They can either be forced to remove all predatory practices (like increasing your interest rate by several hundred percent due to one late payment),
Re:Rock and hard place (Score:4, Insightful)
People should always come first, period.
Granted I don't think we should elevate the poor to the level of the rich, or topple the rich to the middle class or below, achievement does have some worth, but there comes a point where too much is too much. Eventually greed begins to cost civilization as a whole, and at that point society should demand it fixed.
Often times libertarianism comes across as sociopathy. I have meet some sane libertarians, but they seem to be the exception, and not the rule.
No, You. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but consider the difference between a one time stimulous check, and an occupation of a foreign country that costs us $341 Million per day and has left us less safe. That is $341 Million of printed money per day. Convenient you would forget about that
4) And Obama would replace that number with the "percentage of Americans completely losing their property rights to socialism", which of course would be 100%. McCain is of course doing the same thing, though possibly to a lesser degree (or maybe he's just better at hiding it).
The only alternative to letting people bankrupt themselves until they die broke, their illness untreated is to scare people with the idea of socialism. If you want to pay through the nose for health "coverage" that specifically excludes the pre-existing conditions you need it for, I support your right to do that.
It is immoral to bankrupt people for getting sick and any society that has the ability to prevent this has a moral duty to. All other industrialized nations provide a health care system to their citizens that actually treats their conditions rather than just extracting as much money while providing as little healthcare as possible.
5) have no sympathy for people who sign contracts without reading them, nor for banks that associate with such shady sources. Companies and individuals that purposely do not investigate the risk of such endeavors will fall.
Falling home prices hurt everyone, not just people who took out bad loans - often while being tricked in to thinking they were agreeing to different terms. If you need to move for a job and find that your home is now worth significantly less than you paid for it, you are screwed.
At that point do you give thanks to a regulatory system that let some slimey, deceptive, piece of shit make a buck at everyone else's expense?
Re:No, You. (Score:4, Insightful)
The start voting against God. Life's a bitch. People get sick and it can take a tremendous amount of resources to even mitigate that, and even that isn't reliable.
No society (yet) has the ability to keep illness from happening or from being expensive. But maybe some day we'll be able to climb into our autodocs. I'm all for encouraging technological development, and making government stop actively doing things that cause health care to be even more expensive than it would naturally be.
But shuffling around who pays for what, doesn't fix anything. All that indirection can accomplish, is create opportunities and incentives for irresponsibility and fraud. You can't have billions of dollars filtered through the government without having a lot of it disappear, and you can't have government encode how it will be spent, without removing human judgement.
If you say other governments have done it successfully, fine. I'm very skeptical, but even if I accept that, I know my government (USA) is too irresponsible and corrupt to do it. Show me they can handle a small project where the stakes are small, and maybe I'll trust them with something more important. Every time a Democrat criticizes the war in Iraq, they need to realize they are also criticizing universal health care. They're talking about having the exact same kind of people who handled one situation, handle the other.
I don't own a house. Personall, falling prices are the best news I've ever heard. The price of houses are starting to approach the value of houses. What's wrong with that?
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1) Pay for expensive treatments that your insurance has decided (arbitrarily) are not covered
2) Die
That's the very definition of "under duress".
You pretend that there is a continuum of medical care available at varying prices and efficacies. That's simply not true.
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All it really does is spread out the dose so they don't get it all in one shot.
Well, the dog chewed this plastic tube, and I had t
Re:No, You. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is "bankrupting" who? If people opt for expensive treatments, then they should pay for that treatment. Or, if they can't afford it, they should choose a less expensive treatment. If the government is preventing less expensive treatments from being available to the public (which is at the root of your concern), then such laws should be overturned, allowing less expensive treatments to exist.
How much would you pay to alleviate your own suffering and avert your own death?
For most people the answer is, "Everything I have."
And also, for most people, the response to that is, "That's a good start, but it still isn't enough."
Money is just a tool. It's an abstract representation of a civilization's capacity to solve problems, and only an indirect symbol of Liberty, not Liberty itself. There's only a small subset of society such as yourself who treat it as the Ultimate Goal. Keeping people alive is the ultimate goal.
Re:No, You. (Score:5, Informative)
You didn't address it. You 'offered' this:
Do you really think the sole reason that health care is so prohibitively expensive is the Government preventing less expensive treatments from being available? Might it have anything to do with drug patents and pharmaceutical companies that spend more money on marketing than they do on research and development?
That right there has always boggled my mind. Why the hell should drugs need to be marketed? "This is what our drug can treat, this is when you would prescribe it and these are the contraindications" seems to me to be the extent of the "marketing" that should be required for prescription drugs.
I don't see any of the examples I cited as an "unjustifiable rights violation".
Is that why the cost of text messaging has increased from free to $0.02/ea to $0.10/ea to $0.15/ea to $0.20/ea? Is that why my cable bill goes up each year even though they face competition from satellite and even the telco (in some areas)? Is that why nearly every major credit card company adopts fee increases and draconian policies like universal default at the same time?
I admire your faith in the free market but history doesn't seem to justify it. It seems to me that smaller more nimble companies will be focused on providing the best service at the best price but that eventually they grow to a size where it becomes easier to just gobble up most of the competition and establish a oligopoly with those that are too big to buy out. The cellular industry is the perfect example of this. We are now down to just four major carriers all of whom have the exact same anti-consumer policies. None of whom have any incentive to change them. All of whom are using their riches to buy up spectrum to stop anyone new from entering the market.
I'll grant you that in some cases the Government deserves some blame for this (cable franchise agreements come to mind) but I just don't share your faith in that things would be any different under a true laissez-faire type system.
Re:Dolt (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one side, you have people who believe that social safety nets bring down the whole system--because they are a burden to everyone (even those who are able to do without), and they allow people to be lazy.
On the other side, you have people who believe that social safety nets bring up the whole system--because they limit the formation of a highly disenfranchised class (who then turn to crime, etc.), protect everyone (even those who have, so far, been lucky enough to not need them), and they allow people to take "risks" (like getting an education), which often leads to progress.
Both viewpoints have some merit. On the balance, I think that a well-run social program can lift society more than the distributed burden it engenders (e.g. I think libraries do more good in educating than the cost we must communally bear to fund them). I do, however, agree that people need to take responsibility for their actions (e.g. irresponsible borrowing of money).
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What "bullet points" are these. I'm going simply on the definition of socialism. Take a service, prevent private organizations from providing it, and have the government provide it instead, funded through forced taxation. That is what Obama wants to do with healthcare, and I'm sure McCain will support it when it's politically profitable too.
"Just a matter of values, oh, and McCain is devoid of them."
Agreed. Obama's only value is altruism, wh
Re:Dolt (Score:5, Insightful)
If socialism is so evil, I'm sure you'd like to do away with socialized armed forces, police, fire departments, roads, sewers, electric companies and all the other evil socialist practices America currently has?
Where is Obama against privacy? Where is he against personal, as opposed to corporate property rights? You are simply scare mongering, not presenting a rational position.
Re:Dolt (Score:5, Insightful)
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Libertarians in no way forget the value that society has contributed to their own success, and they absolutely believe in providing benefit to society. They just don't recognize government as the agency that should be allowed to determine how those societal benefits are distributed.
Libertarianism is also unstable (Score:4, Interesting)
In a libertarian country, who would prevent the Mafia from taking over? Certainly not the government, which would be so tiny it may as well not exist. Most libertarians have never even considered this vital question. The question is of primary importance because it directly addresses the stability and therefore the durability of a libertarian society.
A few might offer up the feeble answer, "hire a private security firm against the Mafia", but this is not looking far enough ahead. Nothing would prevent these firms from merging with each other or with the Mafia, and growing ever more powerful. And as history teaches us again and again, power corrupts. Eventually, some sufficently merged security firm would become your lord and master, and you would be at its mercy.
Isn't it obvious how easily a libertarian society could descend to feudalism or fascism?
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2. Competition among private services gives private companies an incentive to provide the best possible service at the lowest price. Because there is only one provider for a public service (and no competing providers are permitted to exist), there is no incentive for public services to provide the best service or the cheapest service.
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So of course we need armed forced and police to uphold our rights. I'm just saying that such taxation is only justified if it is voluntary. Just as you freely choose to pay some amount for insurance against emergencies, you would also freely choose to pay toward upholding your rights (and the rights of everyone else).
That doesn't work.
Imagine you are a wealthy landowner in a country where law enforcement is funded voluntarily. Do you get more bang for your buck doing your civic duty by contributing to the police force and national military, or hiring a private army to protect your interests?
Re:Dolt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dolt (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose you could have a private interstate that you could charge toll on, but how the fuck would private roads operate? If you own the downtown roads, there's no way to build more without tearing down city blocks, not to mention the insane amounts of overpasses it would require to have separate road networks.
Private sewage might work in rural areas, but try patching up a few city blocks with multiple independant sewage systems, particularly if some of them are asshats and won't let you pipe through even if you don't want their service all while keeping a downward flow in all pipes.
None of these are going to happen, instead you'll create private mini-monopolies where there's no competition whatsoever. That is if you seriously want to privatize all that, not have the government hire private companies to run it (which would mean competition, but still paid for by tax dollars).
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When the government (or anyone else) starts forcefully taking away that property, that right is being violated.
No, that's called Taxation. It's why you have Representation in the Government. If you don't like the Government's taxation of you, contact your house and senate members and lobby them to introduce new legislation or vote on legislation that better suits your desires. This is a common practice most of us here in America call "Democracy", you might want to try it some time.
I'm just saying that such taxation is only justified if it is voluntary.
I can see that argument, but it only has to be voluntary by society as a whole, not by each and every individual. Individuals have the
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
One of a few things could/should happen:
1. An organization backed through donations provides the service.
2. An unfunded organization provides the service (could not last).
3. The service provider permits the individual to pay back through a loan (and if the provider does not offer that, the individual finds one that does).
4. A friend/family member covers the cost (permanently or temporarily)
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I certainly hope there's an option #5 out there...
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Sorry, but I don't think that's such a swell idea. Now, I don't want to link Mr. Perot to any criminal acts, but imagine some organized crime ring declaring they'll pay the national debt when elected, do you think they should be?
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Would you be kind enough to explain how compulsory (but not necessarily universal) healthcare implies losing property rights? AFAIK, pretty much the rest of the first world has publicly funded universal health care, and yet people still own homes, cars, and other possessions.
Compulsory means that I no longer have a choice but to pay for health care. If the government takes away my right to keep my money, by forcing me to pay for care I possibly don't want (and I currently deliberately have no health care plan since $6000 a year for a healthy, single 30 year old male with no children that has been to the doctor twice in 7 years is obscene. NY is the worst of all models for attempting to buy insurance. Forget what you want to buy, you have to buy what the nanny state says you're
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Number of houses lost to predatory lenders - this is what deregulation is all about
Please provide some concrete numbers differentiating the people who are the victim of "predatory lending" from those who were greedy and signed up for too large a house (along with the two SUVs and the new 52" flat screen they couldn't afford either -- all while saving nothing) -- I'm sure we'd all really like to see those.
When people with no / bad credit can't get mortgages, they sue the government. When the government
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The problem isn't so much that these greedy wankers decided to
ingore old and well established rules just to make a little more
money. The implications of their avarice don't just stop at the
people who were given a false impression of their means.
When magnified across the whole population, this had a whole
range of consequences including accelerating urban sprawl,
escalating the size of cars, increasing energy usage, escalating
home size, escalatin
Re:Called if for Obama (Score:5, Insightful)
So when you pit an individual with a 100 IQ, working a full-time job, who has had one, maybe two mortgages before in his/her life, against an army of investors, lenders, brokers, lawyers, etc., whose only job is to create create and tweak these "instruments", that is a level playing field? At the very least, the borrower should have been able to trust that the lenders were looking out for their (the lenders) own best interest. Even that safeguard didn't exist.
When I closed on my loan, I had a stack of about 400 pages of documents to be signed and initialed in a few dozen places. These papers were not given to me until the hour of the actual closing. The language (much of it) was legalese. I checked the interest rate and the length of the loan. Most of the rest was taken on faith (this is just how it's done). Note: I have a simple, fixed-rate, 30-year loan; I'm not complaining because I got bit (I didn't), but don't feel disdain for people who got screwed by predatory lending practices.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you have a faint idea what it would mean for the USD if oil (or any internationally traded commodity that you have to import) was suddenly handled in EUR instead? Or what this would mean for the US economy? I doubt Ford can prop up that disaster!
Re:Depends on where you work. (Score:4, Interesting)
Let them. Let the price of European and Japanese goods rise so high that they do not export to the USA any more. I've got ten million US manufacturing workers ready to go back to work, and the unions to back them.
Do you have a faint idea what it would mean for the USD if oil (or any internationally traded commodity that you have to import) was suddenly handled in EUR instead? Or what this would mean for the US economy? I doubt Ford can prop up that disaster!
If worse comes to worse, the USA has 150,000 men sitting on top of 200 billion barrels of oil in Iraq. Do you really think it prudent that they leave at this time?
But, be that as it may, its US corn and US wheat and US coal that are really driving exports right now. If the asian countries do not want to accept US dollars, than, certainly, we can demand that they pay for food in gold.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, you do not own a house.
When that house down the block sells for 30% less than it was purchased, that then becomes a 'comparable' for judging the value of YOUR house. Even though you have made perfect on-time payments, and have never been late with any bill ever in your life.
Now your bank is calling in your home equity loan, that you have also never been late on, all because the bank now has to write down its balance sheet. When that happens, the results spread to EVERY member of the bank, not
Pretty close to CNN (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/10/electoral.map/index.html
Re:Pretty close to CNN (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pretty close to CNN (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the giant, sucking gap that you're noticing is a vacuous, superficial, talking-point centered discussion of *policy*.
Race not a factor ? (Score:3, Interesting)
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I, for one, welcome our new Votemaster! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I, for one, welcome our new Votemaster! (Score:5, Informative)
Right before the 2004 election, electoral-vote.com called the election for Kerry. Oops!
I appreciate his sentiments and his methodology but it seems he doesn't have a great track record for picking winners
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
nope. Here's the page from the day of the election:
http://electoral-vote.com/evp2004/nov/nov02.html [electoral-vote.com]
He gives Kerry 262 electoral votes. Since you need 270 to win, you can't really say he called it for Kerry.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A few days ago there was one line on his page that hinted at who he had preferred for the Democrat nominee (after Obama had already won) and it struck me that through all these months of coverage I previously had no indication of who he was going for.
Some of those predictions seem overly confident (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unsurprising, really -- these markets are populated by people who read the same news as everyone else. There's no "insiders" in politics that control vo
Best election site (Score:2, Interesting)
They use an amalgamation of national and statewide polls to show the current feeling of Americans on a wide variety of races. Including a national map with a current tally of the electoral votes right at the top.
Go with the money (Score:2)
This map isn't as interesting as... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh no! The dreaded 'E' word! Cuz lord knows there are no rich snobs in rural parts of the country.... only in the urban centers.
Don't read too much into this (Score:2)
Just like sports betting, where folk put money on their local team regardless of whether they're any good, or back a horse because they like the name.
Cool Wired Article on the Problems w/ Predictions (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-06/st_essay [wired.com]
It's a good piece on some of the challenges prediction markets have: small trading populations, mostly community insiders trading on things they care/know a lot about, small stakes. It's an interesting read!
My predictions (Score:4, Funny)
Wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Iowa State has a good election market too (Score:3, Informative)
You can see it here. [uiowa.edu] . they have 2 differenent election markets.. one is winer take all and the other is vote percentage..
This is to be expected (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem comes in when no one really knows the answer. People will buy and sell these prediction securities on hunches or what not, but the actual price will not truly be reflective of the outcome of, say, an election. Case in point, a month after John McCain had secured the Republican nomination for President, his likelihood of becoming President was still trading at around $.39 (Intrade works on fractions of a dollar). Any reasonably intelligent person should have been able to forecast this price would shoot up to at least $.45 or better once the Democrats chose a candidate - Consider that presidential elections are usually around 50/50.
The question was: why weren't people snatching these securities up like hotcakes? I still haven't been able to figure that out. But personally I think it proves the notion I heard someone else mention a while back. To paraphrase: these aren't prediction markets, they're extremely recent history markets.
Dunno about the South. (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, no one seems to notice that there are plenty of black voters in the south. Contrary to what many in the media would have you believe, black voters aren't afraid to go to the polls; Sheriff Cracker hasn't been at the polls with his shotgun in a long, long time. The problem is that they, like every other voter group, seldom have a reason to go.
Re:Go Obama!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Go Obama!!
Don't you mean Ron Paul?
No, because I've actually studied economics (as opposed to reading a few Ayn Rand novels).
Yes, of course, and Ron Paul hasn't studied, for example, Ludwig Von Mises, Frederik Hayek, and other noted economists...
Just because he doesn't subscribe to your Keynesian theories (or whatever other current fad they taught you) doesn't mean he's wrong.
I think you'll find that many people who've actually studied economics seriously also agree with much of what he says - it's not as if he's invented a new economic theory, he is an advocate of the Austrian school of economics. Nothing to do with Ayn Rand
Re:Go Obama!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why McCain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully we can avoid disco this time.
Re:It's not just the economy...... (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean like that PRO-IP Act a few stories down, the one that turns a civil matter into a felony and gives the feds the right to confiscate your computer if they think you might have maybe downloaded something illegal? The one that was introduced by a Democrat and voted against by only 4 Democrats (and only 7 Republicans, don't worry, I fully acknowledge that they BOTH suck)?
Re:Why McCain? (Score:4, Insightful)
Last time I checked, Obama doesn't want American soldiers in Iraq to hold up white flags and then allow themselves to be help captive by insurgents. If you have legitimate reasons for not voting for Obama, then be my guest and vote for the candidate that will continue the policies that have brought the U.S. to where it's at now. However, you look like a complete, biased idiot when you use inaccurate and sensationalist words like "surrender" to describe a candidates policies.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Name one important piece of legislation Obama has contributed to
How about a few?
1) The Lugar-Obama Cooperative Threat Reduction [senate.gov]
2) Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 [wikipedia.org] (check out this [usaspending.gov] site)
3) Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (here's a story [washingtonpost.com] about it)
He's not suited for leading a government - he doesn't have the spine to stand up for himself and pursue what he thinks is right
He's had the spine to stand up for himself quite well against the HRC and Republican attack machines. He's also one of the few politicians I've ever seen that can retain some semblance of class while going on the offensive. I rather enjoyed "I honor John McCain for his achievements,
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why McCain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about what "lower taxes" basically means. Lower taxes means less money in governmental pockets. Thus less governmental spending (or increasing the national debt, either way you're fu..ed). Less fed spending means less money for public schools, less money for roads, less money for wellfare, less...
Wait, you don't care about wellfare you say? Doesn't affect you? It does.
Allow me to tell you something about my country, in Europe. We pay taxes that would make your head spin. All in all, when my buck is spent, only about 30 cents thereof go to some sort of good or service, the rest is siphoned away in taxes, directly or indirectly. Wage tax, healthcare tax, VAT... pretty much the only thing not taxed is taxes. And you pay extra tax on alcohole, fuel, housing, you name it.
In other words, my country has quite a bit of cash to spend. And they do. Wellfare checks are about a thousand bucks a month. You can easily live on that. If you have family, you get more. And your rent is paid as well.
Why does that affect me, when I have to work so that moocher can sit on his lazy ass and get fat? Because people have something to lose. People who don't have anything to lose don't care if they have to bash your head in for the 20 bucks you have on you.
Our crime rate is low. Incredibly low. I live in the capital, still a murder makes the evening news, and is certainly the headline of tomorrow's papers. It happens once a year, so it's quite some event!
What I want to say is that you have to pay for what you want, one way or another. When you're done paying for healthcare, security (which includes living in a "good" neighborhood, buying some alarm system and maybe even hiring security goons), retirement and other insurances, you're probably where I am.
Though I'd guess, you have less money on your hands than I do. Despite paying about 30% of my income directly in taxes, and another 50% indirectly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
will have a strong negative effect on the economy, on quality of life, military preparedness, and job growth.
I'm curious why we need "militar
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hillary dominated him with average American citizens: working class Americans who love the country, lean slightly right, but have no affiliation whatsoever with either party
Umm, I don't know where you are getting this from. Hillary had her best showings in states with closed primaries. Obama did much better in states with open primaries where independents could vote. I won't argue with you over working class voters but you lost me at "no affiliation whatsoever with either party" because Obama did much better among Independents than Hillary did.
BTW, I don't think that Obama's appeal is underestimated like the GP. I think McCain's appeal is overestimated. The Conservati