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TruthCoin, Prediction Markets, and Anarchy with Zack Hess

This episode of Economics Detective Radio features Zack Hess. Zack is working on a project called “TruthCoin,” a decentralized prediction market based on the technology behind bitcoin.

Prediction markets are a highly effective way to bring together dispersed information and insight into prices that reflect the likelihood of any future event. However, recent attempts to create centralized prediction markets have been thwarted by governments under antiquarian anti-gambling laws.

Enter TruthCoin. TruthCoin is a prediction market (currently in beta) that will not depend on any central server or organization. This online market will be dispersed among all the participants and thus more difficult to shut down.

Furthermore, TruthCoin will not depend on a central arbiter. The main difficulty faced by the creators of TruthCoin is in creating incentives for human arbiters to judge the outcomes of bets correctly. The solution is for judges to be set against one another, for each judge to get a higher payoff when other judges are wrong. Then any attempted collusion between arbiters falls apart.

Zack is an anarchist, and he sees a proliferation of prediction markets as a potential end run around the political class. Prediction markets where people could bet on the outcomes of given policies could force politicians to do what the prediction markets indicate is best. If, for example, a politician proposing a war claims it will have few casualties, a prediction market in “the number of casualties given that war is declared” could contradict the politician’s claim and make the war politically impossible.

You can find Zack on github, as well as the TruthCoin project itself. There is also a TruthCoin forum.

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The post TruthCoin, Prediction Markets, and Anarchy with Zack Hess appeared first on The Economics Detective.

Vampires, Zombies, and the Dismal Science with Glen Whitman

In this episode, Glen Whitman discusses Economics of the Undead: Vampires, Zombies, and the Dismal Science, a book he co-edited with James Dow. Glen is an economics professor at California State University and, unlike most academic economists, he moonlights as a TV writer. He first wrote for the TV show Fringe and now writes for the soccer spy drama, Matador.

The book’s website provides the following description:

“Whether preparing us for economic recovery after the zombie apocalypse, analyzing vampire investment strategies, or illuminating the market forces that affect vampire-human romances, Economics of the Undead: Zombies, Vampires, and the Dismal Science gives both seasoned economists and layman readers something to sink their teeth into.

Undead creatures have terrified villagers and popular audiences for centuries, but when analyzed closely, their behaviors and stories—however farfetched—mirror our own in surprising ways. The essays collected in this book are as humorous as they are thoughtful, as culturally relevant as they are economically sound, and provide an accessible link between a popular culture phenomenon and the key concepts necessary to building one’s understanding of economic systems large and small. It is the first book to combine economics with our society’s fascination with the undead, and is an invaluable resource for those looking to learn economic fundamentals in a fun and innovative way.”

Among the topics covered in the discussion are helpful hints such as how to meet the vampire man of your dreams, to choose what to bring on your trek across the zombie-infested wastelands you once called home, and to rebuild civilization after the undead apocalypse.

Human capital will be particularly helpful in the zombie apocalypse; it has immense value and goes wherever you go. Doctors are often depicted among the survivors of the zombie apocalypse, possibly because survivor groups would rather recruit a doctor than kill him. There’s an analogy to pirates, who would press valuable seamen like surgeons or carpenters into service rather than killing them (for more pirate economics, check out Peter Leeson’s The Invisible Hook).

Among the more unexpected chapters of the book is “Killing Time: Dracula and Social Discoordination,” by Hollis Robbins. Robbins connects the infamous Transylvanian villain’s ability to distort his victims’ senses of time to date- and time-keeping standards that some nations had adopted while others had not at the time the book was written.

You can find Glen online at econundead.com where he posts about the latest in undead economics news or on twitter as @glenwhitman.

Download this episode.

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The post Vampires, Zombies, and the Dismal Science with Glen Whitman appeared first on The Economics Detective.