Pentagon terror futures market
The Pentagon's experiments with a futures market to organize information on future terror acts wasn't as hair-brained as sometimes portrayed. Arnold Kling links to several bolg postings or newspaper columns that are relatively favorable, here: "Terrorism Futures". A link to a Hal Varian column in the New York Times may not last long, but here is a link to the same column on Varian's home page: "A Good Idea With Bad Press". Mark A.R. Kleiman is disappointed in the politicians who demogauged this idea to death, and points to the chilling effect this will have an innovation in the office that developed the idea:
- "But even if the proposal had been more flawed than it was, using the laughter which is as the crackling of thorns under a pot, plus fake moral outrage, to shut it down was a terrible mistake. The proposal came out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. As my friend remarked, "This might or might not have been a stupid idea, but if DARPA isn't doing some stupid things it's not doing its job." The next DARPA whiz-kid who comes up with an off-the-wall idea now has to worry about his boss saying "No, we don't want to get burned again the way we did with terror futures." "
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