'Betting on bird flu'
terça-feira, dezembro 13, 2005

A growing market allows investors to make money off of disease and natural disasters. And so far, their predictions have been dead-on. (...) Jack Marshall, president of Pro Ethics, a consulting firm used to educate organizations on ethical dilemmas in the workplace, agrees that futures markets -- and betting on things like the bird flu -- may be more beneficial than hurtful to society. "It would be different if, say, after 9/11 people are betting on where the next person's remains would be found, but this is far less sinister than that," he says. "In postmodernist America we have a black humor and a detachment from a lot of catastrophe anyway. Betting on an abstract event, buying futures in abstraction doesn't necessarily make things any worse." Marshall argues that even the New York Stock Exchange allows people to profit from other people's misery. And Marshall says he loves the whole "wisdom of crowds" aspect of futures markets. He says these types of markets offer valid projections about events and do so without any sort of bias -- and he finds more credibility in these markets than any kind of scientific facts. "I'd love to have a doomsday market. If people are betting on when the world is going to end, I'd pay more attention to that than what so-called experts are predicting." (...)

para ler na integra aqui (salon.com)

Publicado por Manuel 19:02:00    

1 Comment:

1. António said...
   8:22 da manhã, dezembro 14, 2005  
   nao, nao tem qualquer sentido comparar o mercado de futuros com o mercado de opiniões. No primeiro os ganhos dependem dor ealismo da hipotese, no segundo é (quase) ao contrario. artigo explica ate porque pessoas normais (os tais ratos que acertam 60%) conseguem superar os especialistas nas suas previsões.

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