I always thought the the problem with prediction markets is you have the incentive to make the prediction come true. And that gets ugly fast. But hell, I guess that's what all this is at the end of the day.
The fat goalkeeper ate a pasty whilst sitting on the bench, and was promptly banned for a couple of months even without any evidence of financial gain for "intentionally influencing a betting market"
The host got wind of it and, for fun, changed ties at least five times throughout the evening.
https://twitter.com/sportsbetcomau/status/749219697359396864
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/federal-election-201...
If players in the market have ways outside the market to significantly affect the outcome that the market is betting on, then it isn't a prediction market. The whole point of a prediction market is that there is no such feedback mechanism.
For example, the article discusses prediction market bets on Trump winning the election. The underlying assumption of such markets is that no player has more than one vote in the actual election, out of some 150 million or so votes, so each individual player's ability to affect the outcome is negligible.
But this is not necessarily true. In the extreme case, a bettor could be one of nine Supreme Court justices. Or a participant in some sort of fantasy vote-rigging conspiracy. Or even a political insider tanking their candidate's own chances and betting against themselves. There's a pretty wide range of people who could plausibly (or not-so-plausibly in the conspiracy example) have more than a one-vote influence over the result of the election.
This is even more relevant outside of the US. In the US vote rigging conspiracies are impossible for some inexplicable reason, perhaps related to magical soil, but outside of the US they are a real concern.
Ah, that makes sense. They would require evidence to believe something. So for example, in an election where there was no evidence of fraud, they would not believe there was fraud. Such as the one which occurred in 2020 in the U.S.
But if the evidence is not available, then there is no good reason to believe it. You have to explain why people claiming it have enough evidence to believe it, but the courts don’t have enough evidence for it to be even claimed in the courts, if you want to claim that the reason is that courts don’t have access to the evidence.
Based on this statement, I am guessing you are an American, and are therefore accustomed to all relevant hard evidence always being available. What you may not know is that in the rest of the world, sometimes some hard evidence is not available, so those people have adapted other mechanisms for forming beliefs about what is true. One such mechanism is the use of reason to draw inferences from other relevant facts.
For instance, in those countries, if a man who has professed a strong desire for wealth is tasked with guarding a large pile of money, and the money disappears, people in those countries will infer that the man likely took the money, even if no one saw him take it and the money is not later found in his possession.
The “other relevant facts” are called “evidence”. An observation is evidence for a proposition when the posterior probability for the proposition, after updating on the observation, is greater than the prior probability of the proposition, before the observation.
Ok, so I guess you are saying that the evidence is not __legally considered__ evidence, or isn’t “evidence” in the legal sense of the term, and that that is why it wasn’t presented it court?
I have to admit that I’m not particularly clear on what kinds of evidence are and aren’t considered “evidence” in the legal sense admissible in court. Are you familiar with the criteria that make the distinction?
I was talking about hard evidence specifically -- think a smoking gun with the suspect's fingerprints on it. According to what I have been lead to believe, if election fraud happened in the US, sufficient evidence of said fraud would be discovered and presented to American courts, though that is not the case in other countries.
Therefore if I have not been mislead, when a person considers whether there was election fraud in the US, they should only consider whether sufficient evidence has been presented to courts or to the media, not whether there exist other lesser forms of evidence.
No, they aren't, which is why our most recent ex-President (who also was notorious for inventing fantastical vote-rigging conspiracies out of no evidence in the same election) is currently at the center of a criminal investigation for one based on fairly hard evidence, and his political party is trying to change the Georgia State Constitution to derail the investigation.
There's a difference between “That vote-rigging conspiracy is an unsubstantiated fantasy” and “Vote-rigging conspiracies are impossible.” Pretty much no one in the US has ever argued the latter.
Have I been mislead? If it is possible to carry out election rigging conspiracies in the US, then how can we be so confident that no such conspiracies were carried out by people that viciously hate the former president? Surely if it is possible for conspirators to get away with it in other countries, and there is no magical means of preventing it here, then it's possible for them to get away with it here as well. They have courts and investigations and evidence in other countries as well, and that has seemingly not prevented election rigging there.
Some motivated people have spent a lot of time and money trying to find proof of those creatures, and come up with nothing but some blurry pictures (including some known to be intentional fakes) and conjecture. So there's not much reason to take them seriously.
And also kinda like how Kim Jong Un might be the preferred candidate of 100% of North Koreans, and we'll never really know for sure, but most people conclude that he is almost certainly not.
As usual these arguments never really end, but thanks to prediction markets, this time the people who believed the possible-but-highly-unlikely outcome, "Trump actually won", ended up donating lots of their money to the people who believed the much more simple and plausible scenario: "No, he didn't".
No, that's not what happened. People who believed the odds of the courts ruling in favor of Trump made the payout worth it gave their money to people who believed the odds of that not happening made the payout for that scenario worth it.
Of course, courts only have access to the evidence which is given to them by either side, so really we only know that the evidence Trump's legal team was able to get its hands on on short notice was not sufficient to convince the court to take the very significant step of overturning election results. We do not know who "actually" got more legitimate votes.
I'm not convinced that it is. Sure, election rigging happens, but that's not the “getting away with it” that would be at issue. Either people who get away with it undetected in the very short term are so good that they manage to suppress all evidence completely and it never comes out (which seems an implausible binodality in outcomes), or it usually is quite evident in even the very short-term, and either fails to do enough to change results, does enough to change results but is corrected by institutional processes, or it does enough to change results and is allowed to stand by corrupt institutions despite being widely decried.
There's not a whole lot of modern cases where election fraud is discovered only long-after the event rather than virtually in real-time.
Is vote rigging and conspiracy to rig votes possible in the modern world? Yes. Is it ever both significant and not immediately evident? It's not impossible, but it doesn't seem to be the case. If it were, you'd expect there to be examples of cases undetectable in the short-run but later discovered.
Why do you think that's implausible? What evidence of election fraud would you expect to be left behind that would be difficult to dispose of?
>is allowed to stand by corrupt institutions despite being widely decried.
By whom?
>If it were, you'd expect there to be examples of cases undetectable in the short-run but later discovered.
Why would that be expected? Many crimes are much harder to prove if the perpetrator is not caught in the act. Why would you not expect election fraud to be among them?
It involves thousands of people directly and an extreme amount of information collecting and statistics analysis.
Happens only in the ghettos tbh
This is about the likelihood of something occurring with no evidence left behind.
It’s not Impossible I’ve murdered someone, doesn’t mean I should be presumed a murderer.
1. https://voterprotectionprogram.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/0...
"Furthermore, in an election conducted in the midst of a pandemic, each of the 159 counties was required to balance the close presence of poll watchers to election workers against the requirements for social distancing essential for the protection of public health."
"As Trump-appointed federal district court Judge Grimberg found, there is no legal “authority providing for a right to unrestrained observation or monitoring of vote counting, recounting, or auditing.”
"Second, there is no right under federal or state law for observers to stand at a particular distance or have a particular view of ballots. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court and the Third Circuit have rejected such claims. As the Third Circuit noted: “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that the Election Code requires only that poll watchers be in the room, not that they be within any specific distance of the ballots.” Id. (citing In re Canvassing Observation, No. 30 EAP 2020, 2020 WL 6737895, at *8-9 (Pa. Nov. 17, 2020)). Similarly, there is no federal right protecting the location or view of observers. Id. (noting that the Campaign “cites no federal authority regulating poll watchers or notice and cure.”). As long as observers were allowed in the room, which they were, complaints about minor deviations in the location and view of observers are legally insufficient.66"
In other words, the restrictions that were placed on observers were consistent with the law, and that is what the courts have ruled. I am willing to accept for the sake of argument that the restrictions were legal, but that's not the point. The point is that no one disputes that there were such restrictions. Nor do I see anyone disputing that the restrictions would have made it harder or impossible for election observers to detect fraud. The defense they put up is just that no fraud was detected, and that the restrictions were legal.
See: "The Trump Campaign and its surrogates have tried, unsuccessfully, to equate an alleged lack of observer access with fraudulent results. There has been no credible evidence of significant voter fraud presented in any form. The suggestion that the Trump Campaign and its surrogates were prevented from detecting fraud, and that is tantamount to evidence that there must have been fraud, is absurd."
I don't think that suggestion is absurd at all, and neither do tens of millions of other Americans. Members of the Democrat party viciously, bitterly hate Trump, and everyone knows it. Why would we not suspect them of cheating, if they made it difficult or impossible for anyone to tell?
Because they've been propagandized to think that way by a president with a conflicted interest. The number of people who hold an opinion has no bearing on whether it is factual.
Again, all you've done is to reiterate the same conspiracy theory without any evidence.
That's their claim (which is already suspicious considering their obvious motivations), but it's not the objective truth. And even if it were, it's certainly not actually evidence of fraud.
I'm genuinely surprised to hear someone claim this. The election centers handed out papers to observers telling them what the restrictions were. There were livestreams from various facilities during the process where workers were clearly seen handling election materials far away from where the observers were. There are pictures where observers are sitting impotently behind a line, watching 5+ election workers each from far enough away that they would never be able to read what's written on the materials that the workers are handling. The claims that restrictions were placed on observers which did not exist in past cycles and which would make it more difficult or impossible for observers to detect fraud were never denied in court. Instead, the defendants claimed that those restrictions did not prevent observers from being anywhere or seeing anything that they had a legal right to be or see.
>it's certainly not actually evidence of fraud
In combination with the undisputed hatred of democrats for Trump, it provides good reason for a person to believe that there was election fraud in those areas. Therefore it is evidence of fraud. It is not conclusive evidence, of course, but it is evidence.
This is ridiculous, regulate prediction markets like any other financial market (in particular, your identity should be traceable) and then all your clever plan does is get your funds frozen pending a very thorough investigation.
Would this cause Tesla stock to rise or fall?
See https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/life-insurance/dead-peasa... for an overview of current regulations that resulted from that.
No, Walmart was doing it since they thought the policies would be tax deductible. They ended up losing money and eventually ended up bringing up a case against their insurance companies:
>...Discount retailing giant WalMart cannot sue its insurers just because it gambled and lost $1.3 billion on getting a tax break from thousands of insurance policies it took out on employees, according to a brief filed by the insurers in the Delaware Supreme Court.
>WalMart is contending in an appeal that it was entitled to rely on its expert insurance brokers to warn the company of the inherent dangers of buying COLI policies. WalMart has asked the high court to revive its bad-faith and breach-of-duty claims against its insurers, which the Delaware Chancery Court had dismissed.
>Such policies lost their attraction for corporations long ago but disputes over liability for the tax consequences continue for companies in a position similar to WalMart’s.
As to your case, Walmart thought that it could deduct the premiums. It turns out that it could not. Walmart also thought that it could create and collect them under Georgia law. It turns out that it could not. Walmart also has been forced to pay families of workers some of the payouts. None of which it expected.
All of these things affect how profitable the policy is for Walmart. But they don't change the fact that once the policies are taken out, Walmart has a financial incentive to treat workers poorly. Which is why many states had banned the practice. And is why federal law currently only allows companies to take out life insurance on approximately their most highly paid third of employees. (Who also have to consent to it.)
Back to the suit. Walmart sued its insurers in 2002 for fraud for failing to explain these risks. The brief quoted in Snopes is as filed by the insurers in 2005. They lost that judgement, but the case continued on. As of 2009, per http://www.contingentfeeblog.com/2009/05/articles/corporate-..., the Delaware Supreme Court ruled for Walmart a 3rd time. I don't know the final outcome of the case. But it certainly wasn't as open and shut as the insurer's brief made it sound.
>...Concrete example, Walmart took out life insurance on its employees because they were betting that their horrible working conditions made people more likely to die than the insurance companies thought.
I have seen no evidence that is why Walmart instituted the corporate policy of buying life insurance on their employees. If any evidence of that sort had come out in the various law suits, it would have made headlines all around the world.
Even today many companies buy life insurance on their key employees - that doesn't mean their plan is to treat their key employees so poorly that they have an earlier death.
Insurance is a regular payment in return for a large payment upon catastrophe. The insurer sets the price such that they expect to make money. That means that it should be a money losing proposition for the insured. The insured is willing to pay for insurance either because it is required by law (for example car insurance), or because they cannot afford the risk of catastrophic losses.
It therefore makes sense for companies to take out insurance on valuable assets that they can't easily replace as a risk mitigation strategy. Valuable assets, including key employees. But if everything is priced correctly, insurance is still a money-losing proposition for companies. And therefore anything that companies can cover by keeping sufficient cash reserves and credit lines, they should. In particular for low-level employees, death is merely a minor contribution to normal turnover, and companies should find that they save themselves money by self-covering that cost without using insurance. And furthermore companies should only seek necessary insurance for real risks. Which means that valuable assets, including key employees, should only be insured for the company's expected loss.
There is one major exception to this pricing rule. And that exception is when the entity (person or company) seeking insurance believes that they have more knowledge than the insurer. Then they may buy insurance as a bet against the insurer. The history of insurance is filled with examples. And there is a constant cat and mouse game where insurers try to protect themselves against this risk, while still providing insurance at a competitive price.
One famous example is that unscrupulous ship-owners used to buy ships in bad condition, overload them with a valuable cargo, insure it to the hilt, then set them off into the sunset knowing full well that the ship was likely to sink with all hands on board. The fabled insurer Lloyds of London got was the first insurer to solve this problem. They would draw the "water line" around a ship that was loaded and quoted insurance rates based on where that line was. Which meant that they didn't sell insurance to unscrupulous ship-owners, and could offer much better rates to scrupulous ones.
Another example is that people really do buy insurance on a spouse, then try to kill said spouse for the insurance. Therefore insurance companies have convinced governments to pass "slayer rules" that allow them to not pay out life insurance if there is any hint that it might have been murder.
Now back to dead peasant policies. Whatever the details of the tax breaks that made Walmart think it could be profitable, if insurers have correctly priced the insurance policies, then Walmart is virtually guaranteed to lose money on those policies. The reason why is that insurance is a zero sum game, and insurers are in it to generate a profit for themselves. While the loss of low-level workers is a tragedy, Walmart has the reserves to cover its own financial risks. And certainly should not have an incentive to over-insure those workers to the tune of a decade of full-time pay. (And then maintain said insurance after the workers had stopped working for Walmart and there was no possible loss to Walmart from their death.)
Therefore the only logical reason for Walmart to buy all of those policies is that Walmart believes that it has more information than the insurers on the likelihood that its workers will die. And therefore the only logical reason to buy that insurance is as a bet that insurers are systemically mispricing those policies. If they don't have that information, why else would they spend billions on what is supposed to be a money-losing proposition? Insurers knew this, and that is EXACTLY the gamble that insurers were describing in their brief.
The various laws against dead peasant policies were passed on this theory. They exist for the same reason that slayer rules exist. Because insurers convinced politicians that it is a bad idea to give people a financial incentive to see other people die. And politicians agreed that this made sense.
The lawsuit that Walmart filed was not because Walmart disagrees with this characterization of its behavior. It is because Walmart was not informed by the insurers of tax laws that meant that it went from a straight bet about who better knew the statistics on Walmart's workers, to a guaranteed money-losing proposition for Walmart. (Because whether or not Walmart won the bet, it wasn't going to win to the tune of how much it had to pay in taxes.)
>...Therefore the only logical reason for Walmart to buy all of those policies is that Walmart believes that it has more information than the insurers on the likelihood that its workers will die.
No, as I stated before, all the evidence indicates this was mostly done due to perceived favorable tax treatment:
>…Under a typical arrangement, buyers of the insurance pay a fraction of the premium up front and borrow the rest from the insurer. The insurer profits because the interest rate on the loan is higher than the rate of return credited to the buyer on the policy’s cash value. The buying company profits by deducting the interest payments from its taxable income (if eligible to do so under the 2006 law) and because life insurance proceeds are not taxable. Left holding the bag for those profits is Uncle Sam.
https://www.cfo.com/tax/2014/01/dead-peasant-insurance-still...
Of course this could be profitable for a corporation with a large number of workers if it was allowed. Little up-front money, deduct the interest costs and no tax on the death benefit at a time when corporate tax rates were about 35%. The IRS went after these insurance policies and congress also changed the law.
The cases against Walmart have been tried about this use of insurance in many jurisdictions and you haven't shown any evidence of Walmart making a business decision based on a calculation that "...their horrible working conditions made people more likely to die than the insurance companies thought".
Opening a market on when they will die that goes to the person who is closest to the right date, now any would-be assassin can place their bet and try to win. And the target may know that people are hunting for them, but won't be forewarned of when.
Plus this ignores risks outside the market, like the risk the would be assassin gets caught and sent to prison.
So if I want Donald Trump dead and am willing to pay a million dollars, I start the market and put a million dollars in for tomorrow. Eventually he dies and someone collects. Almost certainly not me, and not necessarily an assassin.
But any would-be assassin who wants can place a bet and now has a million dollars riding on whether they succeed.
This is not novel, the idea has been around for a quarter century. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market for more.
Disclosure: I work for one.
You could manipulate the dogcatcher election (or, more profitably, a bond initiative) but a presidential election is probably too hard, especially in this case (amount of money you'd need to spend is much larger than the amount you could make on these markets).