Ira Cogan

Adventures in Unemployment by Alex Gendler. This is a bummer of a read but totally worthwhile. That’s his most recently published thing to my knowledge and you’d be doing yourself a favor by checking out more of his stuff.

The case against political prediction markets by Ian Bremmer. A fantastic read start to finish that I stumbled across thanks to the above mentioned Alex Gendler, here’s a quote:

The national security dimension is where this crosses from corrupt to dangerous. When odds on an imminent strike or an election outcome move sharply and media outlets broadcast that movement as the informed market consensus, that reported signal starts influencing how journalists frame events, what the public sees as likely and legitimate, and even how adversaries perceive intent. Iranian intelligence was almost certainly monitoring Polymarket before the February strikes. A state actor wanting to manipulate crisis dynamics could move a thinly traded geopolitical market for a few million dollars – plausibly deniable and far cheaper than mobilizing military assets – and manufacture the appearance of insider knowledge about imminent action. Cable news now quotes odds as if they were poll results. The odds become the story, never mind that it doesn’t take much to make them flip.

^Now, this quote doesn’t do the article justice, you gotta read this thing.

-Ira