You've no doubt heard that the Pentagon had planned to introduce a mock-stock market to enable folks to "bet" on the likelihood of several tumultuous events in the Middle East. Perhaps you also know that it's been abandoned as a plan. What bothers me is that it reflects the sort of intellectual dishonesty that our current administration favors (it's either dishonesty or stupid, so I'm being generous.) Aside from the fact that it provided an incentive for folks to "predict" and then "execute" terrorist activities, and to profit from them...it also reflects people's misinterpretation of the difference between accuracy and precision. A competitive bidding market will likely lead to more precise pricing, reflecting the balanced pricing generated by the market. But it won't generate, necessarily, accurate pricing, as the masses can be entirely wrong.