Warner says Pentagon threat-bet program to be canceled

Associated Press ^ | 07-29-03

[Quick1]

It's amazing no one can even see the moral implications of this idea.

1. Government A wants Leader B assassinated.
2. Private Investor C bets huge sum that Leader B will be assassinated.
3. Private Investor C takes it upon himself to assassinate Leader B.
4. Government A pays Private Investor C, not for assassinating Leader B, but for winning the dead pool.

And secondly, even Republicans are against this idea. Tehy realize how dumb and immoral it is. The dems are right to be opposed to it (even a broken clock is right twice a day).

[billbears]

The idea is not for the US to make money off of terrorism, but to tempt the folks who are privy to terrorists' plans.

Sheesh!! That's not the point. The point is that it's immoral. The way the plan was laid out is not that there is going to be a lot of money made on this. They were mentioning small amounts of money, not what a terrorist would be interested in but what a citizen of a respective state may be interested in. Say you pick the assasination of Arafat and you get $100.

[Drago]

Down with Tom Daschle and company...play anyway:
http://us.newsfutures.com/
http://www.fatdogexchange.com/

[TBall]

Glad they don't have this betting system in place. A few months ago I would have bet big that an attack would have occurred in July. Although there are two days left in the month, my bet would have most likely expired worthless. The bad moon cycle combined with a specific dream I had made July seem like a lock.

[Rifleman]

You DO realize that these bettors (investors, whatever) are NOT going to be anonymous don't you? And that any such huge bet will boost the price of "dead B futures", a fact which Leader B will find out about rather quickly.

There are some moral hazards in this idea. Maybe as bad as the moral hazard found in fire insurance. That does not mean that it is a bad idea...any more than fire insurance. Think about it for a while instead of emoting hysterically at a novel idea.

[Poohbah]

In the annals of dumb government ideas, it is difficult to top this one.

Actually, it's a damn good idea--because it has worked.

Back in 1968, the US Navy had to find the wreck of the USS Scorpion, a nuclear submarine. She went down near the Azores. But WHERE, exactly? Finding the wreckage would not be easy.

They had a starting location (with some uncertainty).

The head of the project announced a simple plan: for each of the major variables that would affect the sub's location, one could make a guess.

But the guesser had to wager a bottle of Cutty Sark on his guess being right.

The project director simply reviewed which way the bets were going on any given variable.

They wound up picking out a small area of the ocean floor to search. It would still take a while to search it--but without the Cutty Sark-wagered estimates, the search would have been too big.

They found the Scorpion--and it was damn near in the center of the search area.

[dfwgator]

I must admit that I dismissed the idea originally as stupid, but now I see, that if done right (big if), it actually might have some validity. Many times people give information just to make themselves heard. By forcing people to put their money where their mouth is, it seems to be a good way to filter out all of the noise.

[krb]

she was appalled to hear of plans to set up "a futures market in death."

Ha...I guess she'd hate viaticals then.

[Poohbah]

By forcing people to put their money where their mouth is, it seems to be a good way to filter out all of the noise.

Just think--if we had required all of the IPO touts that were like kudzu across the news and finance shows in the 1990s to actually put their money where their mouth was, nobody would've put cash into WebVan.com or pets.com.

[dfwgator]

Amen brother!

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The Dead Pool is cancelled???

[Poohbah]

This would have worked on two levels:

Those who pay attention to the news and understand their fellow human beings could bet on something like "I think there's going to be big trouble in Saudi in six months."

Those who are knee-deep in terrorism would be willing to place bets--and get themselves SO busted :o)

If I were a government intel analyst, and I saw a bunch of the former bets suddenly indicating that people are betting $100 apiece on trouble in Saudi, I'd start looking over all the info on Saudi Arabia.

If I saw a big bet on a very specific event, I'd have SpecOps visit wherever the bet was placed from for a more..ahem...detailed discussion of the wager with the bettor.

[RedQuill]

That is EXACTLY what I thought of when I read this! The book "Blind Man's Bluff" went into the details of this. The method of statistical analysis was called Monte Carlo, and has proven successful in weird endeavors like finding underground petroleum reserves. How to quantify a hunch--fascinating!

[Poohbah]

It's not really quantifying a singular hunch. It's a way of seeing what a large group of (most likely) knowledgeable people are thinking in a relatively BS-resistant fashion. Those who are not particularly strong in their view won't put up a wager. So the number of wagers is important, and so is the breakout on each of those wagers.

[windchime]

Greg Jarrett just interviewed the creator of this project on Fox. He is Robin Hanson, George Mason University Economics Professor. His theory is called the 'efficient market hypothesis'. The collective intelligence of all exceeds the knowledge of one. 'Out of the box' thinking for sure.

The market would use investors' info to stop terror attacks.

[StriperSniper]

All the Democrats are against it, so it must be a good idea.

I don't know where I heard it, but one of the ideas behind it was to flush out terrorists. Maybe it would only work with dumb terrorists, but it is even dumber that it was publicly 'outed' before anyone even asked those responsible for it's creation if that was the real plan. All this outrage may end up costing lives.

[ThinkDifferent]

Markets are almost miraculous at gathering information (including hidden information) and making it usable. It might not work as I can think of a couple of ways to spoof it that might be effective, but it is well worth trying. The 'rats are both stupid and ignorant to oppose it.

Well said. It's a clever idea that unfortunately had little chance of surviving overblown criticism by demagogues.

[RedQuill]

You're right. I think it's advantageous to have people willing to try unorthodox methods, and ThinkDifferent hit the nail on the head: The 'rats are so antsy to attack everything the administration does, that we need to be more proactive in presenting these ideas, and less cordial in public discourse with our disloyal opposition. The gloves have simply got to come off.

[dr_who_2]

If it is a way of removing some of the politics from decisions being made in various parts of the executive branch concerned with national security, this idea isn't entirely bad regardless of whether it's called "market-based" or not. Insurance companies and investors will probably need to more along these lines in the future. Remember that when Clinton was in office, his number 1 national defense issue was allowing gays into the military. Congressmen are good at grandstanding, and sometimes that's all they're good at. I don't think they have better ideas, particularly since Democrats tend to have a herd mentality (and elected Republicans do as well, actually).

That said, I'm not wild about Mr. Poindexter and glad TIA got its wings clipped.