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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

But aren’t there substantial organized political groups dedicated to uncovering and promoting the best policies, no matter whose ox they gore? Apparently not.

Just thought of these people (admittedly in the UK):

http://www.instituteforgove...

I gather they have been working with the Conservatives and their Chairman was a Labour minister, which in the UK would suggest they are about as non-partisan as you could reasonably expect.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Well, companies certainly spend millions on lobbying, and influencing budgetary prediction markets could have a pretty high ROI if the prediction markets are small.

I don't know how big you think these prediction markets will be... my single data point is that a few hundred thousand dollars was enough to boost McCain's chance of winning the presidency by 10% on Intrade (see link), which makes me think they'd be pretty small.

http://bit.ly/RLtAe

So I'd think of it as lobbying spend, not speculation.

Brings up another interesting question - what would happen if the legislation in question never passed? If contracts were simply canceled, the cost to lobbying companies in that case would only be their cost of capital.

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