I’d like to continue the idea of creating a decentralized gambling and insurrence app here. I realize we may already have a gambling app somewhere however for the life of me I can’t find it. I’m focused less on casino style wagers and more on betting on probabilities and crowdfunding collatoral for said wagers over time. This would allow participants to bet on events. One of the reasons big inssurence companies dominant the sphere is they’re the only ones with enough cash to cover if someone were to get sick or not, or if your car were to get in an accident, or if there would be a freak hurricane blow through your town and demolish your house or any number of tragedies. But imagine if instead of having one centralized entity dishing out cash you have a lot of smaller people placing smaller wagers on whether or not something will happen to you? All they really need to know is the statistics of the situation (just like the insurence company). If you like you could release the specifics which may or may not influence their decision but all they NEED to place the bet is the raw numbers. What’s the risk of a new driver with a drinking habit crashing an old cheap used car compared to an experienced driver with a history of not drinking crashing a car he just paid a fortune for? If you live in a flood plain what’s the chances you’ll be flooded compared to if you live in the high mountains? Again vital statistics. But the difference being corporations don’t like taking risks. But gambling is all about taking risks. Hence where decentralization would shine. If you’re only risking a small amount of money yourself you’d be more inclined to take a risk right? And with more people out there putting money down the pot could grow based on the amount of people contributing rather than the amount each gave. Basically the principle of crowdfunding. Deadlines could be set so that one could wager on the probability that an event would happen by x date or within y timeframe. Then people start putting their money down. If your wagering someone won’t get sick within a given timeframe then you collect if they remain healthy and the time runs out. But if they do get sick within the allotted time you need to pay up. Sound familiar? Conversely however one could place a bet that they would get sick which would give a whole new spin on the health insurrence scene. Instead of wagering for one’s health one would wager against it. Sounds crazy but if they’re basically saying “I believe you’ll be dead in a week so my money will be useless to you anyway.” and your retort is “You wanna bet! I’ll survive and I’ll beat this thing.” Then it makes more sense.
All this could be applied to any subject. Agriculture, starting a new business, gambling on the weather, stocks, anything. With it all we’d need some statistical analysis data And we’d probably need a way for people to enter data or release data safely to the system. Also a way to verify that the data they entered was TRUE. I mean you could claim you’re a single mom with a $10,000 a year income when in fact you’re a rich single male CEO of a fortune 500 company. If the SAFE network doesn’t know Dick from Harrieta then neither does anyone else. Ergo information verification of some kind.
This already exists its called Wall St and the supposedly innovative financial instruments where everything is hedged, shorted and packaged over and over again. Its part of why health care in the US is so expensive. Its part casino part Ponzi scheme with gains extracted and risks socialized and no skin in the game. You won’t be allowed to go bankrupt but you will pay for all their losses and go into debt over it. This miracle of idiocy was made possible by sponsorship aka puppet media.
Frankly I think gambling on your health is kind of silly but there seems to be a market for it. What really gets me is doctors that charge ridiculously high fees for their services or hospitals that charge $100 for salt water IV bags. Medicine should first and foremost be about healing people. Yes there are costs and people need to have a place to stay but when you overcharge at exorbatent levels that’s not healthcare or medicine, that’s exploitation. Which is another reason I think the whole process needs to be decentralized. Knowledge needs to be decentralized so people can educate themselves and start healing themselves and eachother, thus creating competition for pharmasutical houses and “doctors.” And if people are to use “insurrence” then the gambling industry needs to be decentralized so big corporations don’t capitalize on the whole affair.
Health care prices are nutty high because there are 3 layers of people spending other people’s money and as a result it isn’t a very true market.
It has little to do with Wall street-- If you have a product and somebody is willing to pay x for it, you charge x for it, and you sell as many of them as somebody is willing to pay for.
Insurance policies and contracts make it very clear that x will be paid under y conditions so every time y comes up x will be prescribed and consumed. Insurance only has incentive to reduce unexpected costs – regular costs don’t hurt their bottom line any.
@warren Not really. If I am running a farm, and I am dependent on Rain, why shouldn’t I be able to hedge?
How does that corrupt anything? It reduces my risk, which allows me to focus on what I do best, without having to worry as much about what I cannot control.
Explain exactly how that is going to corrupt the world?
Because quite frankly you are wrong. The hedging isn’t why the markets are corrupt – Government meddling, gatekeeping and cronyism is.
Because its zero sum for ever winner a loser. And because it breads stupidity and encourages risks that shouldn’t be taken. If the actual costs of risks were reflected (which often isn’t possible) people would insure the catastrophic possibilites as before, the very ones the corrupt insurance industry tries to avoid and change behavior on the rest like they used to. Instead they insure for pay off if their neighbor’s house burns down. No, derivatives are stupid and world is at risk over this stupid gambling addiction. Trying to put this even more out of reach of social control is idiotic. Crypto currency is supposed to attenuate the evils of banking not amplify it. We can’t just blame everything on regulation.
Not really. A farmer has good reason to hedge against drought, but somebody else may have a good reason to hedge against rain. If it evens out all is good. If it rains, the farmer loses a bit - but they win by selling more crops. If it is dry, the farmer wins the bet, but doesn’t have a good crop — But somebody in construction or the like may have the opposite risks. Less risk is a win win.
Hedging is not the reason for corruption. It’s like a siphon. Risk balances because the benefits and risk must equal in order for a deal to be made.
Anyway. There is now absolutely nothing you and your socialist friends can do to stop it. Hallelujah! You and your statist regulatory friends are going to hate this revolution.
Its what tanked our economy in 08 and its set up to do it worse.
We’ve been over this before taxation just shifts to the points of egress and a more tangible basis. Its not going to help capital flight or tax evasion. If it can’t do that it won’t escape regulation.
is a massive oversimplification. Diversification of risk isn’t a bad idea. Doing it blindly on faith is — If there was cryptocurrency running the participation markets instead of secret backroom deals, How would the same result have ensued. Please explain. Remember that crytpocurrency markets don’t allow debt.
You always hod that the system is corrupt then urge the system to fix the problem. Governments break the siphons within the economy and the result is exactly what you hate. Accumulation…
Gambling/insurance apps will be difficult to build without decentralized/trustless computation. I think Texas Holdem is at least possible on MaidSafe (via Samir’s Secret Sharing algorithm, security deposits at the start of a hand, and a ‘database’ of priority order of winning hands). But creating a whole insurance app will be quite the feat if not impossible, unless we’re willing to trust a central party.
I think the strategy of the prediction markets is that they can police themselves as falsehood becomes a darn bad bet eventually.
If people are forced to put their money where there mouth is, putting you money on a losing candidate after the ballots have been counted is essentially giving your money away, because 99.5 percent of people are going to be happy to take the .5 percent’s money…
Obviously this only works on rather well known issues with binary answers…
Insurances and gambling (hedgefonds) are two entirely different things macroeconomically. Hedging against rain may (!) effectively be anything but a bet, but usually they induce behavior that effects everyone - insurances do not. Farmers rather hedge on markets that can be manipulated such as corn markets. Its not anymore a pure insurance, its a business and kills people in other regions of the world.
The difference between an insurance and a hedge fond is that you can’t trade risk. Otherwise insurances wouldn’t be affordable and wouldn’t afford the insurance company to calculate risk responseability. Really, mixing the two things rather shows a mayor misunderstanding of both.
Then perhaps since you seem to understand what a hedge fund is you should attempt to educate us. Please clearly define what a hedge fund is and what a hedge fund is not. And how is it distinctly different from insurrence (gambling).
I did read carefully and what might be obvious to you is not obvious to everyone else. Please elaborate and give examples. In short what do you mean? You are not being clear.
[quote=“Artiscience, post:15, topic:5804”]
The difference between an insurance and a hedge fond is that you can’t trade risk. Otherwise insurances wouldn’t be affordable and wouldn’t afford the insurance company to calculate risk responseability.
[/quote] Meaning? Please clarify.
It’s not that I didn’t read your explanation. It’s that your explanation did not make sense.
Aha. What part of ‘hedgefonds are tradeable -insurances are not’ doesn’t make sense to you? Do you understand how health/life insurances work? Do you understand why they are not tradeable?
In short the health insurence firm wagers you will remain healthy and the client wagers that they will get sick and need the benefits. As the client appears to be more sickly, have more health issues, the risk for the insurence company goes up because it becomes more likely that yes indeed the client will win the wager and therefore they increase premiums, that is the bet being played. Does that about sum it up?
Actually no.
And aside from the fact that hedgefunds are tradeable and insecurities are not what defines the two?