Trump will commit more than x crimes during his presidency.
This lacks an objective resolution criteria, and ‘number of crimes’ in the US is often a fairly random number because a single act can give rise to multiple violations. Also, committing crimes is very different from being an autocrat—you could be an autocrat and obey the law, and you can be a democrat and break the law.
Trumps secretaries will commit more than x crimes during his presidency
Similar issues.
Trump will attempt to run for a third term
Not as bad, but seems insufficient. Michael Bloomberg ran for a third term as NYC mayor, even though this required changing the rules just for him, but he was not an autocrat.
The winner of the republican primary in the next two presidential elections will be a MAGA
This is subjective, and also insufficient, as whatever ‘MAGA’ is, it is not the same as an autocrat.
In the next x years, a future president or (sufficiently) high up politician will not be convicted of any crimes conditional on their party controlling the justice department
This also seems insufficient to demonstrate autocracy—for example to my knowledge Obama was never convicted of any crimes when his party controlled the Justice Department, but he was not an autocrat.
I think the best thing to bet on is the probability of winning the next election. Unfortunately this doesn’t work nearly as well as it would have a few weeks ago, but I think think it is the best approach.
Completely agree—I think all of my markets are bad. However the direction I’m trying to move in by proposing these questions is to operationalize steps along the way towards autocracy. You could semi replicate this but saying ok well will one of the next 5 elections going to be rigged (if you believe you can operationalize this), but even if you could set up a futures market for it I don’t think you will get all that much market efficiency from it.
Betting on the prob of next election is going to paint a very incomplete picture. There is a world in which we are 99% the next election is not going to get rigged but acts during this admin would credibly increase the chance of future riggings by a lot. For instance lets assume trump himself as no interest in being an autocrat. Then he wouldn’t rig the election purposely right? And yet the fact that we now have a precedent that you won’t be prosecuted for essentially anything if you win the presidency surely changes the incentives of future politicians who are considering meddling.
This is literally my position. I think the next election is >90% to be “relatively fair”, but I also think trump is going to do a ton of stuff that paves the way for a future election to not be fair. Picture below to help explain thesis.
These seem like poor things to bet on:
Trump will commit more than x crimes during his presidency.
This lacks an objective resolution criteria, and ‘number of crimes’ in the US is often a fairly random number because a single act can give rise to multiple violations. Also, committing crimes is very different from being an autocrat—you could be an autocrat and obey the law, and you can be a democrat and break the law.
Trumps secretaries will commit more than x crimes during his presidency
Similar issues.
Trump will attempt to run for a third term
Not as bad, but seems insufficient. Michael Bloomberg ran for a third term as NYC mayor, even though this required changing the rules just for him, but he was not an autocrat.
The winner of the republican primary in the next two presidential elections will be a MAGA
This is subjective, and also insufficient, as whatever ‘MAGA’ is, it is not the same as an autocrat.
In the next x years, a future president or (sufficiently) high up politician will not be convicted of any crimes conditional on their party controlling the justice department
This also seems insufficient to demonstrate autocracy—for example to my knowledge Obama was never convicted of any crimes when his party controlled the Justice Department, but he was not an autocrat.
I think the best thing to bet on is the probability of winning the next election. Unfortunately this doesn’t work nearly as well as it would have a few weeks ago, but I think think it is the best approach.
Completely agree—I think all of my markets are bad. However the direction I’m trying to move in by proposing these questions is to operationalize steps along the way towards autocracy. You could semi replicate this but saying ok well will one of the next 5 elections going to be rigged (if you believe you can operationalize this), but even if you could set up a futures market for it I don’t think you will get all that much market efficiency from it.
Betting on the prob of next election is going to paint a very incomplete picture. There is a world in which we are 99% the next election is not going to get rigged but acts during this admin would credibly increase the chance of future riggings by a lot. For instance lets assume trump himself as no interest in being an autocrat. Then he wouldn’t rig the election purposely right? And yet the fact that we now have a precedent that you won’t be prosecuted for essentially anything if you win the presidency surely changes the incentives of future politicians who are considering meddling.
This is literally my position. I think the next election is >90% to be “relatively fair”, but I also think trump is going to do a ton of stuff that paves the way for a future election to not be fair. Picture below to help explain thesis.
My problem with this is that it’s not falsifiable.
Read a history book?
edit: this was super rude but yea my point is there is lots of literature you can comb through to think about if my graph is accurate.
edit 2: What exactly are you saying is not falsifiable?