[UA] Hello, and Merchant Godwalker war

[Niall Sweby]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aaron Harmon [mailto:aaronmharmon at comcast.net]

> 
> Hello all, first posting, Hi, Howdy, How ya doing?
> 
> OK, no joke here, the US goverment is going to allow people 
> to buy futures
> in events in the middle east. Look at www.policyanalysismarket.org.
> OK, so the Godwalker of the merchant is making a power play 
> to switch the
> world into a more information based market than a capital 
> based market. No
> longer do you trade in pork-bellies, or the florida orange 
> crop, now you
> trade on whether the government of jordan will fall, or whether Yassir
> Arafat will be assasinated.


What most struck me about this is the UA style contradiction inherent in
the process. As I understand it (and I could be wrong) the stated
purpose of this trading is to apparently improve the intelligence
gathering and analysis ability of the government (from www.bbc.co.uk
news) so that is is better informed in making decisions. 

However if the market indicates an event that the government does not
like (i.e. the overthrow of the king of jordan if the Iraq conflict
dragged on) will the US government then change its policy to stop this?
The system seems to allow for traders to hedge their bets based on their
own lack of knowledge in certain areas, but this seems to penalise
traders who do have all the relevant knowledge and can make confident
predictions without hedging their costs, but who then loose money when
the government intervenes. For example if you bet in January 2001 that a
major terrorist event would happen in the US sometime that year, and
this was the warning sign that triggered security agencies to prevent
september 11th, you would in fact lose your money even though you were
right. 

For UA this might mean

-Insider trading on the futures market has a whole new meaning. Adepts
can make predictions but wait until the very last moment to trade their
options. You might not get as much but you could realy make a killing.  

- Great source of charges for rumourmancer adept on the UA site. 

- If an event is being traded, does that make it less likely to happen
or more so? Adepts could use the trading as a form of contagion/tilt
ingredient to push reality into that direction, so that the event
becomes more likely. 

- Of course avatars reveal themselves in the chance interplay of action
and belief. If you are at war with the avatar you might find the odds of
your city being nuked creeping up. 

Niall

> 
> Aaron Harmon
> 
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