I really wouldn't call myself libertarian, just to be clear. Actually, I wouldn't subscribe to any kind of ism or declare myself any kind of ist or ian - cos I find this explicit subscription to some ideology or set of preconceived notions, ideas, rules or readymade recipes to be a kind of a lame excuse to not really think about things, while somehow still thinking oneself cool and superior to the peasantry and plebiscite. And not least of all, I am not American (libertarianism being a very American phenomenon in every way) - I am Balkan. But that said, I do find many of libertarianism's fundamental assumptions valid, appealing and even at times almost seemingly getting it right. The right-leaning American libertarianism, I mean, not the original authentic left one. Anyway, since this whole cryptocurrency phenomenon is largely crypto-libertarianism in practice (or at least in its ultimately catastrophic incarnations and cypherpunk origins), I thought I'd elaborate a bit on one of the concepts in that area which I've always thought clever, fascinating and potentially worthwhile/useful/applicable. 

I mean prediction markets here. PMs are the ultimate fulfillment of free market libertarianism and the Hayekian vision of how an economy of efficient markets is to be org... err, I mean, is to organize itself, lol. The basic idea is one of the market functioning as a kind of public oracle - a question with possible answers is asked and a betting market around it (around these answers or outcomes) forms. For this to work as intended, decentralization is a crucial necessity -- only when nobody can fuck around with the mechanisms and when a very wide range of participating agents (with many different kinds of knowledge, domain expertise, geographic localization, motivations, perspective and so on) is allowed (thus, soaking up as much actual information as possible, as information in information theory is quantified in terms of difference, i.e. new information, and not sameness, i.e. groupthink, confirmation bias, etc.)

So, incentives/motivations are aligned, as well as the risks taken (when you lose, it's you that loses, not somebody else, i.e. skin in the game), which eliminates most of the BS (misinformation, deliberate deception, manipulation, politics, etc.) conditioning closer-to-perfect-information, which is in turn a pre-condition for complete markets (where every asset has a price in every possible state of the world). And in such setting (of market efficiency), the market price mechanism functions as a kind of Occam razor for the condensation of diverse information, down to the numerical value of just-what-you-need-to-know-right-now. Acting upon strong economic signals which convey actual information leads to that vision implied in the actual rationale/vision of Austrian economic thinking (not your vulgar Milton Friedman crap, or amphetamine-fueled Ayn Rand "philosophical fiction" with cultist flavor and more than a little bit of intellectual dishonesty in the mix, but the Friedrich Hayek reasoning - and he, unsurprisingly, didn't have much/anything to do with that gang which has since appropriated the term).

Oh yea, the idea of PMs is actually first elaborated and maybe even best captured by Hayek himself in the 1944 essay of his, "The Use of Knowledge in Society" - a highly recommended short read. So, suddenly now, networked p2p crypto-systems of circulating value for the first time seem to make possible the fulfillment of that vision. And Augur, the first project to go ahead with the concept, actually has stated it as their mission to do just that, fulfill Hayek's vision (and it is also the successor of the notorious Intrade, an Ireland-based PM for political junkies which become a little more popular than the puppeteers of American politics liked at the time and which was as a result shut down and the founder died under mysterious circumstances).

The general concept of PMs all great and all, in oh so many ways (as a forecasting meta-tool, as generalizing derivatives across the board, as democratizing finance, etc., etc.), but when we get down to how to particularly design and implement a PM, this is when things, as always, get a little messy. And Augur, given the constraints of its underlying system and protocol (i.e., Ethereum, which is really, really, really shitty, clunky, often non-sensical, often not particularly thought through, extremely amateurish, etc., etc. - but it is, after all, just an experimental playground for ideas and trying out of possibilities, something many don't seem to quite get), has done great! Given that. But dispensing with the reasons and excuses, it kinda sucks. Many valuable lessons learned there and all, no arguing that, and has even been somewhat successful at times. Not to mention that Augur has one of the best communities around it, their Discord is great - one can learn a lot there (and not just confirm the bias of the echo chamber, as is the case with much of crypto).

A number of overlays have built upon Augur, narrowing down on things and simplifying the otherwise kinda complex protocol and UI/UX - also with partial success. Latest one that sounds cool/promising being Flux - a PM that focuses on betting on startups (anything to do with them, including scandals and what not, which in this day and age, of things like Theranos and OneCoin, sounds like not just a great idea, but a necessity). Still, I don't think that in the long run properly functioning PMs (as in, for example, the application of PMs in governance regimes such as futarchy, which use the PM as a kind of advisory in policy-making, etc.) will run anything like Ethereum. I think a useful PM ought to be as simple and straightforward and minimalist as possible. And yes, while the back-end logic of it ought to be general-purpose, the interfaces ought to refine as to be geared for specific purposes. And not least of all, PMs shouldn't necessarily be monetarily/financially driven or incentivized - this may actually even be counter-productive in some cases. Other incentives shouldn't be disregarded either (such as reputation, or the simple troll's joy of arguing just for the fuck of it or just to prove a point, or driven by genuine curiosity and desire to approximate a concrete answer to something as elicited by the "wisdom of crowds", etc., etc.)

Guesser.io is one Augur-based PM (Augur protocol overlay) which simplifies things down to just binary yes/no markets with quick resolution and curates a small number of markets under a few categories, such that generate broader interest and liquidity, helping to stir up PMs (as their functioning and how well they function as PMs is a direct function of the market liquidity taking place). Both Augur and Guesser (and Veil, yet another Augur overlay) are included within the Ethereum #DeFi stack.

Prediction markets, to me anyway, embody/generalize the very idea/concept/nature of the markets as such - as a driving force and an organizing principle (but, unlike some free market fundamentalists, I do not assume this to be the only or the ultimate force/principle, nor take it in that vulgar form which assumes that everything tends to kinda magically fix and manage itself, so long as you eliminate all that pesky interfering regulation and assume a kind of market Darwinism as an apologea and excuse for being ethically challenged, i.e. that Milton Friedman gospel which claims that greed is good and everybody should unleash their greed for numerical accumulation without restraint, to the overall benefit and good for society -- I actually get the reasoning, and because of that, find it even more arrogant, insulting and fallacious). PMs, going to say, can be taken as a guiding principle and a generic model in many instances. Can be applied in some broader, composite model or assemblage of something which seeks to implement or tap into said market force, etc., etc.

Either way, why I even began this post was rather to do with one of the more theoretical extremes of what prediction markets make possible. Which also happens to be the most extremely libertarian one (as per the beginning of the post). Some of you may already be familiar with the concept of assassination markets. Usually associated with political assassinations. Idea being that, say, you have this corrupt fuck of an authoritarian dictator or something along the lines of, and he's usurped the state apparatus, all the business and media in your little shithole of a third world banana republic or whatever - and everybody hates him, but he's so embedded himself that he can't be elected out or otherwise dethroned in any legal or legitimate fashion. So, a PM is created with a bet on whether or not he'll die before/until/on a certain date in time. And, say, if enough people want him out/dead put a few bucks & the sum becomes large enough, some professional hired killer (like the ones we got here on the Balkans and all the way to Moldova) may decide it worth his while and actually commit the act, collecting the aggregated sum. That way, nobody can be legally liable or even implicated and it's basically a situation that the State, due to it being the state, is unable to address or deal with within its capacities of the territories it covers (jurisdictional and otherwise).

Helena is another Ethereum-based PM, but one built with the tooling provided by Gnosis and not utilizing Augur. Helena is also an reputation-based PM which is meant to serve as a kind of advisory on relevant things crypto. Instead of ETH, Dai or REP (as with Augur), here network fees are paid with 1$ worth of xDai (sidechain Dai for high throughput dApps) - provided upon registration to the platform, and the tokens used to bet with do not represent any monetary value, but only points. And the first three participants having scored the most are awarded at the end of each month.

The guy who thought this up spent a lot of time in prison just for having thought it up and having published the idea. But I still think it's a really good idea. Naturally the state wouldn't think it's a good idea at all. Since what a state, as a polity, by definition is, is the following: a centralized political organization which exerts a monopoly over the legitimate use of force/violence within a given territory. This, and the institutions it spawns, is really a LOT of power that nobody would so easily just give up. But regular people and regular citizens, in their everyday life? Instead of being beaten over the head and fed all kinds of bullshit and put to sleep with the idea that they, the state and government, really know what's best for us (and should even protect us from ourselves) and therefore this is why we should pay them taxes, cos they problem-solve things we're too stupid to understand and so on.... the situation can really be fairly easily reversed and certain technologies weaponized by the people against the corrupt thieves, crooks, murders and liars, instead of the other way around. And such things will start to take place, when the situation is ripe enough - it seems it has just about started to escalate past the point of possible return to normal now (all over the world), the phase transition seems to have officially began.

And my question here, with the above as basically just one example of what may be possible, is the following: do YOU think about these things in similar ways? And if so, would you care to proceed doing something towards it? Have you ever thought about how could these crypto-technologies, or at least the general concept of it, apply to your local circumstances and situation of where you are and where you find yourself? And if so, feel free to share - I'm very interested in precisely this. We often underestimate the local and regional, seemingly having taken this singularity bullshit of globally absolute for granted and at face value (i.e., the so-called "global village", tho this term McLuhan introduced more as an exaggeration intended to stimulate a kind of epiphany at the time, as with most things McLuhan).

And, far as PMs, do you think there are already better foundations/platforms to build more efficient PMs upon? So far Tezos seems to be picking up, Cardano while promising is pretty slow (understandably) and, well, everything else blockchain - at least far as I can see - is really useless garbage. Beyond blockchain, there's IOTA (DAG) and Holochain (hashchain + DHT => DAG), but I'm not yet sure about the possibility of market-based PMs on the basis of those. Although, if this interests you, check out this Tweet/thread I just made about precisely that.