background

Manifold Markets is a website that allows its users to create and resolve prediction markets with play money. Market authors determine the resolution criteria, allowing for a great deal of flexibility.

Model UN is an activity where ordinary people simulate the United Nations to learn how it works; usually, high school and college students are the participants, and they research their countries and the rules of the UN. This proposal seems pretty different, actually, but it's at least somewhat related. Also, I've never actually participated in model UN — maybe it's more similar than I think?

premise

Several "countries," each with their own decision-making strategy, will be formed. Countries will, according to their decision-making process, propose policies. When a policy is initially proposed, the organizer(s) will determine the probability that it will affect certain metrics. These metric are tracked in a spreadsheet. For instance, a policy to encourage the mining of precious metals might be predetermined to increase GDP by a factor in the range [1%, 12%], but also increase pollution levels by a factor in the range [3%, 8%].

If a policy is enacted, the organizer(s) roll a random number in the predetermined range, and update that country's metrics accordingly. (It might make sense to use a normal distribution instead, to give policies a small chance to fail spectacularly or succeed dramatically, but I think FairlyRandom doesn't support that.) This being Manifold, everyone is encouraged to make markets on how countries will grow and which forms of government will do best.

decision-making strategies

There are three main forms of government, each with their own method for making decisions:

• dictatorship: one person just enacts policies that they think will be good, without directly making markets on them
• democracy: citizens write and approve constitution that allows them to vote on policies (which could be proposed by an elected official, or perhaps any citizen should be able to propose them? it's up to the citizens of democracies to decide!)
• futarchy: anyone can propose a policy, but the futarchy council decides which policies to implement based on prediction markets
  • the futarchy council should periodically chooses a new citizen randomly to replace one of its members

Players should probably get to change forms of government to broaden their experience; maybe this can be achieved through voluntary switching, or maybe the organizer(s) will move people around.

details

None of this is set in stone — if you think something should be changed, say so!

• Once a policy effect has been predetermined, a hash should be posted publicly to improve trust with the organizer(s).
• There should be a time conversion between real life and UN-world — maybe 48 hours IRL = 1 year for the countries? That would make a 4-year term of office last a little more than a week, and let you fit a decade into three week.
  • The game clock shows the time in-game; right now, it uses 48 hours:1 year as the ratio.
• Initial metrics are economy size (GDP per capita, starts at US$15,000), life expectancy, population (each country will start with 50 million people and initially grow 1% per year), and civil liberties (an arbitrary score 0-100 based on policies enacted).
  • More metrics can be proposed via markets or just having a bunch of people ask for them — this can be adding an entirely new dimension (for example, crime) or expanding an existing one (for example, breaking out the population growth rate into births, deaths, and immigration).
• Nothing is predecided about countries — I strongly encourage worldbuilding about what your country is like in terms of physical land, culture, and history!
  • Countries shouldn't be allowed to give themselves too much of an advantage here, though

assignments

11 people signed up to play; if you want to join, contact arae in the Manifold Markets Discord server. Nobody wanted to be in a democracy, and a lot of people wanted to be dictators, so I've reassigned some players (chosen randomly) so that there are 4 democracy citizens, 4 futarchy citizens, and 2 dictators for now. (There's ongoing discussion on how to pick dictators.)

The citizens of the democracy are:

• Gavriel
• Gabrielle
• Дмитрий Зеленский
• Timothy Currie
• Isaac King

The citizens of the futarchy are:

• RiverBellamy
• Jack
• Milli
• JuJumper
• Zoli

The dictators are:

• Austin
• someone to be chosen by a vote among all participants
• someone to be chosen by a prediction market after a week of play