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Comment by stevage | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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