Archive for 'Applications - Political Science Fiction'
Hanson’s Futarchy
Using text-authoring markets to write encyclopedias or to determine the final content of open-source software packages are relatively plausible applications of prediction markets, though these may not exist in the next few decades. Let us now turn to the least plausible proposals, those that could fundamentally remake the legislative core of democratic governance but seem […]
The Market-Based Legislature
The market-based legislature would be a text-authoring market charged with the task of drafting bills. The bills, if enacted, would be legislative acts, and these in turn might amend a codified text, much as in the United States public laws typically amend the U.S. Code. The central question is, who would constitute the pool of […]
Prediction Markets for Dictatorial Regimes
Given concerns about the compatibility of prediction markets with democratic self-government, prediction markets might well be more plausible as decision making devices in nondemocratic countries. Markets could, after all, be designed to strengthen totalitarian regimes. One difficulty that a dictator faces is an inability to monitor the many decisions that must be made by other […]
Market-Based Executive Power
The possibility that undemocratic regimes might use prediction markets to improve a head of state’s ability to monitor decision making shows that prediction markets can assist in executive as well as in legislative and judicial decision making. But could prediction markets in principle supplant executive decision making? Surely they could perform some tasks commonly viewed […]
Federalism and International Coordination
One challenge of designing markets for governmental tasks that does not have a straightforward analogue in the private sector is the need to manage the interests of people in different states. The federalist system in the United States, for example, preserves separate though overlapping spheres of control for the state and federal governments. Meanwhile, international […]