Check out the episode:

You can find the transcript through this link.

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Are you interested in a governing system based on betting?

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Our debate today works with the article titled Shall we vote on values, but bet on beliefs? from 2000, by Robin Hanson.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Robin Hanson in episode 390 talking about the opportunities in the betting markets for governance.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how this new form of governance could work. This article presents the revolutionary governing system where the public votes on values but bets on beliefs, with design challenges and opportunities within the system.

Find the article through this link.

Abstract: A key question to ask about any social institution is how well it generates, aggregates, and distributes information. Speculative markets seem to do well at this, while familiar democratic institutions, relying in part on academic institutions, seem to fail in many ways. So perhaps we should consider “futarchy,” a form of government where betting markets become our primary common source on matters of fact. Democracy would say what we want, while speculators would say how to get it. That is, elected representatives would formally define and manage an after-the-fact measurement of national welfare, while market speculators would say which policies they expect to raise national welfare. If we are willing to recommend policies that macroeconomic data suggest are causally related to GDP, it seems we should be willing to consider futarchy. Using an qualitative engineering-style approach, this paper considers thirty design issues with futarchy, and then presents a relatively specific proposal which responds to those concerns.

Connecting episodes you might be interested in:

• No.022R – CryptoCities
• No.369R – Liberland Blockchain Whitepaper

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