Yeah, one explanation for manipulating the market in Trump's favor is to
provide evidence for the coming election challenges/lawsuits. I've heard some
talking heads suggest that much of the polling is done just to argue for a red
wave. And those are purposefully biased toward Trump to help with the
challenges.
w.r.t. free markets: I agree. I don't think such a thing exists. But there is
some freedom in there. It's a bit like information, I guess, where one might
say that a random thing has more information than an ordered thing. The
justification for markets, as I understand it, is to manage uncertainty. If
you're completely ignorant of some referent process, an *open* market helps
incorporate and reduce a bunch of [non]sense into something actionable. So
(hearkening back to Nick's question) if you feel you must act prior to any
rational result, a market is a way to facilitate that. But if you think you
have low uncertainty, a preponderance of justified signals, the market for that
should lose its freedom.
But that argument implies that I would have to answer "yes" to my 1st question. The
market would "have" more information than the polls. And even though I'm using my own
argument, here, I'm not sure I believe that conclusion ... it feels more like the markets have
different information than the polls. I'm just too ignorant to have an idea of what that
information is for each.
Anyway, yeah, I hold some Ada for the same reason you do ... just to keep me
aware. It's the same reason I hold tiny bits of stock in Evil organizations
like Wells Fargo et al, not for the investment, just to keep up. As fun as it
is, reading https://www.citationneeded.news/ isn't adequate. But with the
Kalshi, I've made the prediction Harris will win exactly twice, now, once to
some Canadian lesbians we met at a pub in Glasgow and once to a lefty friend
who is *really* distraught. I wanted to be sure I couldn't post hoc edit my
memory later. What better way than to bet actual money?
On 11/4/24 12:45, steve smith wrote:
I think both polls and "markets" have a lot of self-selection bias... what motivates folks to
answer a poll and what motivates them to "buy in"? Supposedly pollsters *can* try to wash that
bias out, but their "washing method" seems likely biased as well.
I am inclined to believe in the dynamics of "free markets" on principle, but in this
case, the self-selection bias likely overwhelms the "efficient market hypothesis" aspect?
Why would "wealthy bastards" want to manipulate these markets with high buy-ins? Firstly, wealth
is exponentially distributed so no matter how much I influence a market with my "vote", someone
else can overwhelm it with their own. If the true meaning of a market is truly speculative based on likely
returns from the market, there are dynamics around manipulation, but if the real goal is to influence opinion
and confident, I can see why "wealthy bastards" might want to contribute to the illusion of a Trump
Supremacy/Ascendency, most especially if it only involves spending one drop of sweat off of their suntanned
scrotal pudenda.
Mixing the two, in a no limit stakes market, why not run Trumps bias up with you spare
change, then place more significant bets "against yourself" late in the game,
either evening out the stakes/rewards to gain advantage or to break even up to whatever
influence their offerings generated?
As an aside, I'm not sure what a *true* free market looks like and given the range of human motivations and desires,
I'm not sure we want to let he raw id (or worse, amplified by mob-entrained dynamics?) run free. I'd claim
sub-?sapient? (think Swarm dynamics) life runs on whatever the equivalent of the collective coupling of ids might be in
non-human/non-sapients? Once we started "self-regulating" at a higher level than personal id/collective id
we started a habit that while perhaps highly adaptive, one we can't backslide on too well without being at huge risk?
We are addicted to "governance" for better or worse, and I'm hopeful that we might be able to make a phase
transition from Churchill's "worst form of government except for all the others we have tried" (i.e.
Democracy of some stripe?) to something more better (not sure what the fitness function "more better"
actually describes though).
I find these markets vaguely interesting (moreso when they were new ?20+ years
ago)... and I'm glad to see you (Glen) putting some skin in the game, I do
think that shifts my perspective when I do so. I bought into Blockchain
through Cardano/Ada because I like the aspirations of the project
beyond/outside-of CryptoSpeculation... and my (small) stake helps me be
reminded to follow it's evolution even when it feels a little boring. I can
imagine doing the same with the voting markets... but they vary enough I don't
know which to buy into. The Trump-leaning ones seem like a fools-game to me
(for Tump Fools), but I would have bet on Hillary 8 years ago (even if I didn't
vote for her). The one clearly unknown factor in Trump's favor is that he is
hugely more likely to arrange to get inaugurated without winning either the
popular or the electoral college vote... is the variance from 50/50 in the
markets perhaps reflecting that?
Both Kalshi <https://kalshi.com/markets/pres/presidential-elections> and PolyMarket
<https://polymarket.com/elections> skew heavily for Trump. I'm like ... 51% confident that Harris will win (barring
legal shenanigans). I figured I'd go ahead and participate. So I bought $50 worth of Harris "yes". And I've
heard that there may be some rich people manipulating the market. It's not clear to me why they'd do that. But like Musk
buying Twitter, it's clear that "disposable" income takes on a deeper meaning when you've got so much of it.
But barring market manipulation: a) do y'all think the markets have more "information", whatever that means,
than the polls? And b) are y'all participating in any of these markets?
--
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