From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Aug 10 2003 - 13:31:20 MDT
--- Robin Hanson <rhanson@gmu.edu> wrote:
> On 8/6/2003, Adrian Tymes responded to Mike Lorrey:
> > > While I agree that it doesn't necessarily need to be
> > > sponsored by the government, ... they might make it
> > > illegal to do in the private sphere as well.
> >
> >Doubtful. The calls are for the government not to
> >fund PAMs. Trying to make them illegal would run into
> >trying to make certain forms of betting ... illegal,
> >which certain jurisdictions will not tolerate, even to
> >the point of prevention of enforcement disobedience if
> >necessary. (Nevada, for example.)
>
> Information markets *are* effectively illegal in much
> of the private sphere in the US, including Nevada.
> Nevada only allows betting on sports. The CFTC allows
> people to create markets for gambling on commodities,
> if risk-hedging functions are served and lots of money
> will flow through it. The only apparent safe place to
> do private info markets is entirely within a particular
> corporation.
>
> The idea of info markets is that someone wants to know
> something so they create/subsidize a market whose prices
> will tell them what they want to know. On the topic of
> military/political instability in the Mideast, the US
> government is one of the biggest potential customers,
> since they should get great value from knowing. Thus
> losing them as a customer is a big setback to selling
> that info product.
Furthermore, to counter the claims by others that government support of
PAM is a waste of money and furthering the nanny state, if it can be
proven that the PAM is a more effective intelligence gathering
instrument than the CIA/NSA/DIA/FBI humint expenditures, then it would
present a net savings to the taxpayer and would therefore be a very
libertarian thing to do.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com
Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/
Pro-tech freedom discussion:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom
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