Hanson’s Folly: How to (Actually) Achieve Futarchy

Butter argues that futarchy, a governance system where voters choose goals and speculative markets choose policies, is most likely to spread by first building a network of conditional markets that traders use for hedging, rather than by selling futarchy directly to institutions. The essay says futarchy has failed to gain mainstream adoption because decision-makers, decision-takers and traders each demand the others move first. Its proposed solution is a Conditionals exchange where traders price assets across event outcomes, such as BTC conditional on a Fed cut, hold or hike. Organizations could later opt in by pointing their decision rules at those prices. The essay is presented as part one of a two-part series.