Hi, Paul. Welcome to the list.

>
> Tom,
>
> This is not my area of expertise at all, so if the question I am about
> to propose is foolish I apologize in advance.
>
> Why can't we simply design the rules of futarchy to minimize such
> issues such as those posed in your post below? I am guessing you
> picked an extreme example to make your point -

That's a discussion I was trying to have and mostly didn't get. So
thank you. But I'm going to answer your next bit first.

> but if my memory serves
> correctly the original Futarchy whitepaper described a variety of
> potential safeguards that seem to be well equipped to handle issues
> like this, yes?

I've read it (them, actually). I'm skeptical. The first paper was
what led to me defining the opacity problem. I don't recall any
safeguard in either paper that struck me as bearing on it, and in
discussion, Robin did not point to any.

I would be interested in hearing what safeguard you believe defeats
the opacity problem and why.


[Again]
> Why can't we simply design the rules of futarchy to minimize such
> issues such as those posed in your post below? I am guessing you
> picked an extreme example to make your point

Yes. I did it in order to distinguish clearly between two
separate issues:

* Can a proposer in fact make an opaque proposal?
* Furthermore, can he do it in such a way that it can't be
mechanically singled out to be rejected or placed at a
disadvantage? That was the discussion I wanted and never got.
* Given that an opaque proposal be made, can it succeed in the
market?

My positions are as follows:

* "Can a proposer in fact make an opaque proposal?" Yes.
* "Can he do it in such a way that it can't be mechanically singled
out to be rejected or placed at a disadvantage?"
* Under obvious fixes like forbidding crypto, still yes. Opacity
is plentiful. People are very creative at inventing new ways to
obfuscate.
* Under any rules whatsover? Maybe not, and therein lies the hope.
I've proposed two complementary approaches:
* Controlled language
* Market rules that disadvantage opaque proposals, where opacity
is measured by market behavior.
* "Can it succeed in the market?" Yes, by mixing opaque clones and
opaque gimmes and revealing them at certain times.


I'm not entirely sure what you are proposing with "simply design the
rules". Can you be more specific?

As a preliminary answer I'm going to quickly rehash a bit of old
stuff:

I draw a distinction between a decision market and an advisory market.
The distinction is where the final decision power resides. For an
advisory market, it lies outside the market. For a true decision
market, it lies in market behavior, mediated by predetermined rules.

Proposals along the lines of "someone vetoes the crazy ones" belong to
advisory markets. The natural comeback is, "Then why not have only
advisory markets?" Answer: because your vetoer can still exploit the
Opacity Problem. You prevent the man in the street from exploiting
his gimme proposals, because your vetoer will presumably want to veto
other people's gimmes them whether they are opaque to him or not. But
your vetoer can still make his own opaque proposal to give himself $1
billion and not veto it. If you must trust him to not do that, then
you are simply trusting him - I'd call that monarchy (for simplicity;
adapt the term to whatever person or group holds the veto).

This holds no matter who the vetoer is, barring extreme approaches
like imprisoning him incommunicado so that he can't propose anything
even by proxy. Even distributed veto mechanisms like mass voting are
susceptible to this exploit.

Tom Breton (Tehom)