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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

I know this is a joke, too, but I worry that you aren't seeing the joke if you think there is something here. This is a setup to take in dollars from everyone and arbitrage the sentiment difference across the userbase, effectively meaning they don't have to pay anything and just take the dollars home. That's the joke. And anyone who actually would put in dollars are who the joke would be being played upon were it real.

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The joke is that there is something there. For example in a presidential election, I'm indifferent between my preferred candidate having $1 more and the opposing candidate having $1 less. If it were possible to honestly negotiate with my counterpart who supports the other candidate, we could either save our money or agree to both donate to a mutually agreeable charity, and everyone would be better off.

The US certainly spends a lot on elections, and one might debate whether that's too much or not. But what is certain is that campaign money contributes to the GDP. It funds a lot of salaries.

I'd rather that money go to people instead of a faceless cryptofund. I think that's the joke.

But what is certain is that campaign money contributes to the GDP. It funds a lot of salaries.

This is the broken window fallacy. If you have two groups with diametrically opposed goals, giving them each more money to spend "increases GDP" in a local sense, but the result is that a bunch of people spend a lot of effort for a net result of zero, when it could have gone toward something useful.

I'd rather that money go to people instead of a faceless cryptofund. I think that's the joke.

Yeah, the crypto piece is just for additional silliness. For a real version of this you'd need, like, a spreadsheet with two columns.

Yeah but imagine if there was something like this for real, only the dollars weren't greedily kept, but spent in some way that people on both sides support. Like, maybe pro-choice and anti-abortion supporters would both support the excess money going to support new mothers or adoption programs.

Then imagine the incentives for campaigners to skip the two-sided prediction market and just spend their money on advertising directly to voters and lobbying politicians.

Or the implications of implementing the only way to make this actually work by taking the pesky voters out of the decision process altogether and just letting the money decide the outcome...

> letting the money decide the outcome

some people call that data driven decision making and they like it

others call it “skynet” and they fear it

or they'd just shift the debate to why you shouldn't give money to the opposing party's cause: "they say the money is for ___, but really they do ____ with it".

There is a similar game that distributes more of the money to causes where people vote with their dollars and antidollars and the winning side gets 1-epsilon of it because the operator of the game requires vigorish.

It's like poker with no cards. Ideally the winner puts in just a dollar more than the loser and they nearly double their donation. If the winner can't get enough information to do that and has to spend too much for the pot they end up making a huge unmatched contribution.

The game makes sense to play if you're sure you will win but you don't want to start it if you think you won't.

I believe I know this game. Strange how wording it this way makes way more sense.

That's a business model, not a joke.

A business model includes a transaction where one side gets value in exchange for returning value to the other side. When it is a one-sided transaction like this, where one side gives money and the other just pockets it... that is more often referred to as a "scam"

No, both parties get value. Suppose a user would receive 1 utility for donating $1 to some cause in a traditional fashion (e.g., giving the charity money directly). Using this platform and with an OmniMatch of 25%, the user will effectively donate $1.25 for the cost of $1 and accordingly get 0.25 extra utility. The user gets surplus utility no matter what. The platform, on the other hand, needs to be careful in what markets it creates and how it sets OmniMatch, in order to make money.

One side gives money, and a fraction of that money goes to the intended cause, is referred to as "fundraising". One of the more dubious aspects of donating to a charity is that some of their resources are spent persuading other people to donate to them, in what looks like a strongly zero sum game for the sector as a whole. I think there's a credible chance the system outlined here would end up at a higher effective efficiency than the current state of the art of charity fundraising.

I know but I was referring to just the concept of dollar vs anti-dollar. Not the payout or anything but just the idea that companies get X dollars where X is the sum of users who voted for them. Let the people decide.

The reality is humans will find a way to make this corrupt.

But that doesn't let the people decide. That lets the people with spare dollars decide.

Sure, fair point, replace dollar with vote point…

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