Here’s Why Prediction Markets Aren’t Used For Anything Important

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Tyler Cowen has a question:

Why doesn’t business use more prediction markets? They would seem to make sense, right? Bet on ideas. Aggregate information. We’ve all read Hayek.

Hal Varian’s answer is that the most valuable predictions are very sensitive, and you don’t want those to be public. My answer is different: prediction markets are too easy to game. They work decently as long as no one really cares about the answer, but as soon as someone does care—i.e., someone can make a lot of money from influencing the results—then the prediction market will be rigged. The only way to stop that from happening is to make the market expensive, but then you lose almost all your players.

It’s hard to rig the actual market because the cost of rigging it is usually higher than the amount of money you can make from rigging it. But as soon as that cost drops so much as a nano-penny lower, someone, somewhere will decide to screw with it.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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