Why bet only imaginary money? (wasRe:[extropy-chat]SETI:Firstradio signal from alien)

[Chris Hibbert]

> Wait a minute, its coming back to me now.  We have been
> over this ground before.  Either that or I am having
> deja vu, that strange feeling you sometimz get...
> 
> This is such an obvious idea, it is inconceivable that
> it hasn't already been done.  We concluded at the time,
> about 4 yrs ago, that someone somewhere was already
> running a real money IFX.  Then one of our absent ExIers
> posted me offlist asking if I wanted to join a real
> money IFX.  I was busy with a graduate class at the time
> so I declined, and never got back with it.
> 
> Whoever is running a real money IFX or knows who is doing
> so, please contact Brett offline and invite him to join,
> thanks. 

I helped run a real money Idea Futures market for members of the 
Foresight Institute that ran for a couple of years several years ago. 
The hard part is deciding in what manner you are going to attempt not be 
too visible to some overzealous politician or prosecutor.  The main 
problem isn't that it's clearly illegal, the problem is that it's not 
clearly legal.  It doesn't matter if it's inside a private organization: 
if you allow it to be visible, then a prosecutor can go after you if he 
wants, and he gets to use taxpayer funds, while you have to defend 
yourself at your own expense.

There are local laws all over the US that make gambling illegal, and for 
the most part, they're broadly written.  The only safe approach is to 
not attract the attention of those who might benefit from starting a 
prosecution.  I think there are good arguments why a well-run IF market 
wouldn't cause the kind of social ills that make detractors want to shut 
down all gambling (or all gambling that competes with state-sanctioned 
gambling) but it appears to take more than that to convince people with 
money that it's a safe investment.

The Foresight IF market was shut down when Foresight hired a new 
Executive Director (since departed) who wanted to get everything 
ship-shape and have a serious audit.  He couldn't figure out how to 
categorize the money they were holding for the IF market so it wouldn't 
raise questions with the accountants, so he asked us to shut it down.

Chris
-- 
Currently reading: Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action
    On my Clie: Alexandar Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Chris Hibbert
hibbert at mydruthers.com
http://mydruthers.com