Spontaneous Order

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW46V4XNxwY]

Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern

This clip demonstrates that perhaps a crowd of “uneducated” people will be better at predicting futures than the experts.  Intrade, a website which hosts a slue of future markets, has had impressive results.  Intrade hosts future markets which are valued between $0.00 and $1.00.  $0.00 = 0% while $1.00 = 100%.  Users of this website use real money and invest in futures ranging from politics to the predictions of the stock market.  An example of a market follows: A market for Barrack Obama to win the presidency was recently on the website.  If he were valued at $0.80, that means that the aggregation of people believe Obama has an 80% chance to win the election.  This would leave McCain at 20%.  Lets say I invest 100 shares in McCain.  If he ends up winning (which we now know is false), I would profit $0.80 per share.  It’s a neet utility that seems to have some useful applications.  Check it out!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW46V4XNxwY]

This clip demonstrates that perhaps a crowd of “uneducated” people will be better at predicting futures than the experts.  Intrade, a website which hosts a slue of future markets, has had impressive results.  Intrade hosts future markets which are valued between $0.00 and $1.00.  $0.00 = 0% while $1.00 = 100%.  Users of this website use real money and invest in futures ranging from politics to the predictions of the stock market.  An example of a market follows: A market for Barrack Obama to win the presidency was recently on the website.  If he were valued at $0.80, that means that the aggregation of people believe Obama has an 80% chance to win the election.  This would leave McCain at 20%.  Lets say I invest 100 shares in McCain.  If he ends up winning (which we now know is false), I would profit $0.80 per share.  It’s a neet utility that seems to have some useful applications.  Check it out!

“The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future.” — FA Hayek