Trump will be blamed (fairly or unfairly, probably fairly judging from his performance so far) for mishandling the US response, and it seems like there’s a good chance that he’ll lose the election over this.
The current health care system will be blamed (fairly or unfairly) making big reforms more likely.
The Right as a whole (especially Trump supporters) will be blamed and they’ll lose more ground in our epistemic institutions (journalism, academia, K-12 education). With even fewer checks on the Left’s power within those institutions, they’ll become purer forms of propaganda/indoctrination machines for the Left.
It will be easier to convince people that humanity won’t prepare for or handle x-risks correctly by default, even with plenty of “warning shots”.
There was a terrible famine in Russia, in 1891-92. The tsarist government botched the handling of the catastrophe. This deeply undermined public confidence in the political order, and threw fuel on the smoldering revolutionary fire. Do not doubt for a moment how the state’s inability to handle a major public health crisis can shake the political order to its foundations. The American people already have very low confidence in our public institutions. We could be headed into uncharted waters, and indeed, may already be in them, but we just don’t realize it yet.
Trump will be blamed … probably fairly judging from his performance so far
This Twitter thread has a great explanation of what I meant. I don’t understand why prediction markets aren’t reacting to this. (Maybe this particular issue with testing is too hard for voters to understand, but the “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear” quote… Doesn’t the attack ad write itself here?) Is this another failure of market efficiency, or is there some reasonable explanation?
The argument isn’t that saying something inane will hurt him, it’s that his administration will be percieved as poorly handling a major national crisis.
As an heavy predictit user, I’m not 100% sure what’s going on there either. I’ve already bet the max against Trump winning, and it could be a similar story for other top users. Another possibiilty is that the ongoing Dem primary is providing evidence that Trump will be re-elected, cancelling out the effect of Trump’s poor coronavirus response. In particular, turnout has been alarmingly bad and Biden looks both increasingly likely to be nominated and increasingly senile.
Could you say more about this? What is your ranking in PredictIt / what is your track record? In particular, GJOpen, for example, doesn’t expect Trump to win
I’m in the top 25 oracles on the PI yearly leaderboard, which requires having 1m+ [EDIT:shares sold profitably] and an annual return of at least 300%-400%; not sure how much more to share/how best to measure track record. (One caveat on the leaderboard: many top traders delist themselves for various reasons so “top 25 leaderboard” != “top 25 PI traders”)
What does GJOpen say Trump’s odds are? FWIW I just wrote a comment here on why I think Trump is the clear underdog; my general impression is that top traders on PI tend to be long Biden overall as well
I’m don’t know how to update on points 1 and 3 given this recent poll from March 11-13:
But public attitudes about the coronavirus — including President Donald Trump’s handling of it — are starkly divided along partisan lines, with [81% of] Republican voters having confidence in Trump’s dealing with the outbreak, compared with just [13% of] Democrats who agree.
Indeed, 45 percent of all voters approve of Trump’s handling of the issue, which is almost identical to his overall job rating in the poll.
To me, this isn’t much evidence against, since the USA wasn’t really in crisis during March 11-13. But maybe it means something.
I find the third bullet perhaps the most unsettling.
I posed a question about what impact the outbreak might have on adopting block-chain within the global supply chain management (or simply shipping/trade related should be included). That relates to your last point. Perhaps we have a technology that could counter the more psychological “we cannot handle X” view.
[Edit—I also wanted to suggest we should look at the EU in this regard as well. The political ramifications seem to get global as well as the medial and economic ramifications and many of the big political settings seem potentially sensitive to where COVID-19 might take everyone. I’m still not too worried and place most weight on 3 years from now most will have largely forgotten the outbreak.]
Trump will be blamed (fairly or unfairly, probably fairly judging from his performance so far) for mishandling the US response, and it seems like there’s a good chance that he’ll lose the election over this.
The current health care system will be blamed (fairly or unfairly) making big reforms more likely.
The Right as a whole (especially Trump supporters) will be blamed and they’ll lose more ground in our epistemic institutions (journalism, academia, K-12 education). With even fewer checks on the Left’s power within those institutions, they’ll become purer forms of propaganda/indoctrination machines for the Left.
It will be easier to convince people that humanity won’t prepare for or handle x-risks correctly by default, even with plenty of “warning shots”.
From The Politics Of Plague, which I came across just after writing the above:
This Twitter thread has a great explanation of what I meant. I don’t understand why prediction markets aren’t reacting to this. (Maybe this particular issue with testing is too hard for voters to understand, but the “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear” quote… Doesn’t the attack ad write itself here?) Is this another failure of market efficiency, or is there some reasonable explanation?
Betting against Trump for saying something inane has proven unprofitable in the past.
The argument isn’t that saying something inane will hurt him, it’s that his administration will be percieved as poorly handling a major national crisis.
As an heavy predictit user, I’m not 100% sure what’s going on there either. I’ve already bet the max against Trump winning, and it could be a similar story for other top users. Another possibiilty is that the ongoing Dem primary is providing evidence that Trump will be re-elected, cancelling out the effect of Trump’s poor coronavirus response. In particular, turnout has been alarmingly bad and Biden looks both increasingly likely to be nominated and increasingly senile.
Could you say more about this? What is your ranking in PredictIt / what is your track record? In particular, GJOpen, for example, doesn’t expect Trump to win
I’m in the top 25 oracles on the PI yearly leaderboard, which requires having 1m+ [EDIT:shares sold profitably] and an annual return of at least 300%-400%; not sure how much more to share/how best to measure track record. (One caveat on the leaderboard: many top traders delist themselves for various reasons so “top 25 leaderboard” != “top 25 PI traders”)
What does GJOpen say Trump’s odds are? FWIW I just wrote a comment here on why I think Trump is the clear underdog; my general impression is that top traders on PI tend to be long Biden overall as well
Just speculating, but maybe the market expects Trump’s germophobia to cause him to take strong action in the future?
Because prediction markets work far worse than most people here give them credit for, especially for Nassim Taleb style events.
I’m don’t know how to update on points 1 and 3 given this recent poll from March 11-13:
To me, this isn’t much evidence against, since the USA wasn’t really in crisis during March 11-13. But maybe it means something.
I could see any of those playing out too.
I find the third bullet perhaps the most unsettling.
I posed a question about what impact the outbreak might have on adopting block-chain within the global supply chain management (or simply shipping/trade related should be included). That relates to your last point. Perhaps we have a technology that could counter the more psychological “we cannot handle X” view.
[Edit—I also wanted to suggest we should look at the EU in this regard as well. The political ramifications seem to get global as well as the medial and economic ramifications and many of the big political settings seem potentially sensitive to where COVID-19 might take everyone. I’m still not too worried and place most weight on 3 years from now most will have largely forgotten the outbreak.]