Weblog entry:
- Who needs faith in humanity, anyway?
-
Well. I was initially going to blog about this eWeek article anticipating a second set of browser wars, but this definitely needs a bit more attention:
The market would work this way. Investors would buy and sell futures contracts essentially a series of predictions about what they believe might happen in the Mideast. Holder of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of investors who put money into the market but predicted wrong.
A graphic on the market’s Web page showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown.
ABCNEWS.com: Pentagon’s Futures Market Plan CondemnedThat is it. I’m moving to goddamned Norway while whatever the hell’s in our drinking water gets cleaned out. While there are some interesting predictive implications of what they’re doing (
to use market forces to predict future events
), this is horribly inappropriate as a state-funded activity — even more so as a militarily-funded one.I mean, what the hell is this:
Wyden said $600,000 has been spent on the program so far and the Pentagon plans to spend an additional $149,000 this year. The Pentagon has requested $3 million for the program for next year and $5 million for the following year.
As a taxpayer, I’m officially requesting a refund.
Update: And sanity is restored, for now.
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