I believed Obama should win for his message and apparent integrity. I believed he would win because he had a ton of innate advantages over McCain going in (running against Bush, populist in a recession, comfortably charismatic, etc.), and Palin plus the bailout grand-standing convinced me McCain would flame out early. Someone with a different political analysis could have come from either party: a Democrat more familiar with push-polls and less familiar with crowd-sourcing could have assumed very different priors for the "get out the vote" capabilities of each party. Vote ideals, bet beliefs.
My winnings in a mature market would come from two places: areas where I had more accurate information and could thus predict ahead of the curve, and market makers who intentionally lose money to increase trading volume for its external predictive value. That's only redistributing wealth in the way any knowledge work is only redistributing wealth. And wealth redistributed to people who can predict more accurately will almost certainly create new wealth, even if it doesn't do so directly.
Plus, I never said my bets were safe. I'd probably have been far more conservative on the voter turnout bet if it'd been real: unless things reverse shortly, it looks like I may take a simulated bath on that.
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Date: 2008-11-06 10:22 am (UTC)My winnings in a mature market would come from two places: areas where I had more accurate information and could thus predict ahead of the curve, and market makers who intentionally lose money to increase trading volume for its external predictive value. That's only redistributing wealth in the way any knowledge work is only redistributing wealth. And wealth redistributed to people who can predict more accurately will almost certainly create new wealth, even if it doesn't do so directly.
Plus, I never said my bets were safe. I'd probably have been far more conservative on the voter turnout bet if it'd been real: unless things reverse shortly, it looks like I may take a simulated bath on that.