Markets are interpersonal. Not so much relational, they are the transactional potential and realization of agreements over time. And unlike the individualism of emotion, more than one person must agree on a price to make it real, which is why the market mechanism and the price information it yields can be so valuable in informing public policy.
Jesse Livermore gives me that deja vu all over again:
But this "yuck" factor is intangible, and these markets can produce material benefits. It is vital that policymakers get correct information about what will happen in the world. Prediction markets could send strong signals that swine flu was about to spread wildly, or that Mugabe's regime was about to collapse. These markets are far from omniscient, but they often represent quite a good way of pooling collective knowledge. These merged individual intuitions can provide an additional piece of information about what will happen in the future.
I'll take knowledge and a queasy feeling over sitting and hoping.
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