Beware the Ides of March

If you want to understand why political "futures markets" are so--how shall I put this delicately?--fucking dumb, first watch this, courtesy of my man La_Rana:

The ideology that underlies the "wisdom" of markets is pretty kooky. Hell, downright nuts. The idea that agglomerations of human beings necessarily choose wisely is roundly disproven by human history. Like, all of it. Hell, Easter Island ought to be enough.

Now I am not in the least opposed to the idea of public ownership. Joint-stock ventures? Rockin. But these multiplying futures markets are just plain, old-fashioned speculations. Rather like our own perverted "markets," no? Believing themselves to be predictive, they are in fact reactive. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but rather than reacting to the old "fundamentals"--strength and popularity of brand; profit margins; bottom lines; balanced budgets; public reputation; etc.--they react to a collection of ineffable perceptions largely held not by customers but by fellow speculators.

In the case of these political futures markets--again, just as in any other speculators' market--participants are informed by external data. Polling numbers, for instance. And so their predictions are rarely wildly deviant from other attempts at the same. In fact, they're often wrong in the same direction as conventional predictions. Witness the Democratic race in New Hampshire, where the market made the same error as the major polling outlets. The idea that speculative investment produces unique insight into future outcomes, though, is pure nonsense. Any reasonably informed individual can make intuitive predictions about political outcomes with the same or better accuracy than the "market."

One misses the days of augery.