The Wisdom of Profiteers: Prediction Markets and Democracy

Despite the ever-present abundance of contrary opinions on what various markets will do (Should you short sell gold this week? Is bitcoin a bubble? Is there a bond bubble? Is the Euro safe? Is my financial fly down?), there’s one thing we know for sure: speculation itself never goes out of style, and any market inevitably consists of a collection of investors who are “in it to win it,” whether they aim for internal profit through a boom or collapse or external profit through market manipulation. Where the assets on which stock markets trade are businesses, prediction markets (also called information markets) trade on an information asset: they query investors about the likelihood of …

“A Citizen, Not an American”: Obama, Santa Claus, and the Language of Identity

I like to tune in to talk radio from time to time to see what Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Neal Boortz have to say about the issues of the day.  This was of particular interest in the aftermath of the election, as liberals were jubilant and the mainstream media was consumed with chatter about demographics and a new Democratic coalition: the left won with minorities, women, and white professionals (aka yuppies, because obviously these are three discrete groups), and the coalition on the right (which still made up nearly half the vote) was “too old, too white, too male.”  Limbaugh was bound to have a field day with this. When I checked in with Boortz, though, he seemed to be …

What Will Be Revealed Today?

The latest most-important-election-of-our-lifetimes is upon us.  Almost every election seems to get spun this way, although in 2000 many Americans did not believe that it mattered which Tweedle Dee/Tweedle Dum party got elected (including several of us at ToM who voted for Nader [audible hissing]).  We saw how that turned out. At least since the terrorist attacks of 2001, each election has appeared to be an epochal battle for the soul and the very destiny of America—from liberals who could not conceive of the war-mongering, civil-liberties-trampling George W. Bush winning reelection, to conservatives who find it impossible to understand how America can endure another four years of the …

Long Island Ice Tea: Immigration, Gender, and the 2012 Presidential Debate

How in God’s name did we end up here?  Who decided to hold a presidential debate in the lobby of the Hempstead Holiday Inn?  And what are we to make of the two grey haired alpha males battling over who gets to sing “My Way” to this oddly accented (“Govna”) crowd of Long Islanders? Thank God moderator Candy Crowley handed out Mr. Goodbar-style beat downs on time management; Philadelphia’s Andy Reid ought to take notes. Once again, ToM’s editors found it in their narrow little hearts to throw me a bone.  Admittedly, I’ve never been one for town hall meetings, especially ones featuring questions from the most nebulous of all beasts, the “undecided voter.”  I have my …

Post-Modern Debate: The VP Clash in Poetic Form

[Editor's Note: Psyched about about Mittens and Barry this evening? As an homage to American political culture, Pavement, and poet John Ashbery, ToM's Clement Lime offers up his poetic take on the Biden-Ryan fracas.  Constructed from gchat conversations about the VP debate and in the style of Ashbery's legendary work The Tennis Court Oath, the poem will hopefully spark the inner politico in all of us.] What channel are you watching the debate on? CNN PBS CSPAN bitches, Biden leads with the grin! White, long haired, erotic. I speak for myselves, post-sober, or mice elves. I'm drunk on Paul Ryan workout photos! You all mind if I just listen to DJ Screw records all night …

A Fool Such as Biden: Point Break, Wayward Teeth, and Man Love in the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate

“This is a bunch of stuff!”  I couldn’t have said it better myself…. Wait, of course I could have. So the good people at ToM (I use both terms loosely) asked me what I thought of last night’s hellacious, knockdown, by-the-book, paint-by-the-numbers, firecracker-of-a-parent-teacher-conference. Let me tell you, this couple has fire! The way the one pretended to dismiss his younger (and better looking, mind you) partner with that scenery eating grin and broad armed expressions of dismay, while the fit one blinked those pale blue-green eyes like the emo-loving student-government-vice-president he always strived to be.  The passion between these two feels like Point Break-era Patrick …

Why Big Bird Matters

Though placing a distant third behind Mom and apple pie, there’s still not much that’s more American than Big Bird.  Sesame Street represented a do-gooder legacy of the 1960s, proposing that mass media could do more than titillate, distract, and sell soap—it could educate our children and inculcate values of decency, respect, and mutual tolerance that commercial media neglected in the pursuit of profit.  Indeed, the widespread popularity of characters like Big Bird and Elmo represented a triumph of government—something publicly funded could be just as popular as anything privately produced, if not more so.[1]  It could even be the toy of the year, sought after by harried moms and …

Contesting Citizenship

The rise of indigenous movements in Latin American in the latter third of the 20th century has marked a significantly striking historical phenomenon. While the indigenous people of Latin America have organized to redress grievances in the past, they have rarely done so as part of an expressly Indian or ethnic enterprise. Indeed, Latin America has largely been viewed as an anomaly in the cultural pluralist literature because of the relative paucity of ethnic-based mobilization. However, this former perspective is no longer tenable in light of the manifold indigenous movements - many of which have achieved important successes - that have been operating within Latin American politics. In …

Our Path-Dependent Future: What Happens When Change and Habit Collide?

In 2007 and 2008, then Senator Barack Obama ran on a campaign slogan: “Change you can believe in.” Obama’s campaign asserted that his election would rectify the metastasizing wealth gap between the rich and the poor, address the high unemployment rate, and restore America to the “shining city on a hill” that it once was. While one can debate whether or not Obama used cynical sloganeering or if he earnestly intended to implement such change, the study of change in political science could have served President Obama well. Within the political science discipline there are several schools of thought regarding institutional change. Mahoney and Thelen and the broader rational choice …

What Google Can Tell Us about the 2012 Field

People used to be Rockefeller Republicans, and now everyone wants to be a Ronald Reagan Republican. Will people some day be bragging that they are Michele Bachmann Republicans? Not if the number one things she is associated with continue to be chutzpah and slavery. Chutzpah and slavery -- not a good combination. One also wonders how "Michele Bachmann hot" is a major search term. Most people use search engines to find out stuff. How do you change a tire? Is it bad to drink bleach? Is Michele Bachmann hot? Then again, "Michele Bachmann Jewish" is another common query on Google. This could be because she "considers herself Jewish." She worked in a kibbutz, and she loves Israel more than …