Progressive Politics

Except these markets were usually more accurate then polls.

What Good Are Prediction Markets If Nobody Can Agree on What Happened? Polymarket’s epistemic trap

(archive.is)

To avoid submitting entirely to the logic of prediction markets (one of the many challenges facing the political media in the coming year, I think), we should be clear that this isn’t really an argument about what happened. Rather, the sheer weirdness of what actually ended up happening — and the haze of uncertainty and mis- and disinformation that surrounded it, including from principal actors — overcame the predictive powers of whoever had written Polymarket’s rules in the first place.

The fundamental problem with any "predictive" system is that once you can generate a financial return on a result, you have a financial incentive to influence the result. Consequently, a betting app that allows you to reap an enormous windfall by betting contrary to the current trend will produce bad-faith actors willing to realize the results in defiance of the democratic system.

Imagine, hypothetically, if everyone participating in the Brooks Brothers Riot had bets outstanding on the way Florida's EC votes would be awarded. Or, even more sinister, imagine a Supreme Court Justice betting on the results of a SC decision.