Manifold Markets Model UN

Manifold Markets Model UN


Heavily inspired by Gavriel's blogpost; there's also discussion on Manifold and Discord.

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:

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!

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:

The citizens of the futarchy are:

The dictators are: