(Notes from Legal Futures, Hal Varian)

The Kaplan program @ Santa Fe Institute. Everyone else wanted to prove their theory was correct, but he really needed the 10,000 prize. He let everyone else do the price discovery, then he snatched all the trades. An index fund — you’re letting markets decide on the price then you’re buying at the market. Soon, everyone else was doing this. But, then there was no one setting the price. So, this is what the markets can’t do.

The process of trade creates volitility in the market.

Prediction markets at Google. Most things the market was predicting management already knew (more useful in more heirerchial organizations). Run the risk of every person in the market declared an indider. Everything that’s interesting you can’t ask.

Crowdsourcing will never work to produce new things. Why do you think Wikipedia works? When people came to the site, they already knew what an encyclopedia was.

Crowdsourcing think about:
who the crowd is
shared knowledge going in
the technology that’s used to coordinate

Self and its corollary as currency. Rise of the printing press prioritized the vernacular. Photography and its effects on war and photography. Africa — phone minutes as currency. HP a net jewel (energy) expenditure. Our conception of ourselves, our time, and the amount we touch other people.

New kinds of groups to share rewards and risks. Opening bank accounts, getting insurance, having the right to sue and sue. “The trim tab, the small router that moves the big routher” The Virtual Company project. (will pass House this June) Using rating and recommendation technologies to distribute things in the group. Greater technology to visualize the group. Infastructure for virtual firms.

Need to modify patent law to provide more rational calculation of damages.

Eben Moglen asking Kevin Martin about whether the FCC is going to require disclosure requirement for network management practices? He says yes, that this is going to be critical for whether the FCC determines whether this is an effective management practice. He says the complaint process gives them the opportunity to address this, and agrees that it would be helpful in being able to fully understand the potential congestion problems that they say they’re having.

The Google/Stanford conference about the future of law that I’ve been helping plan for months is finally finally happening. I thought I should at least announce it on my blog, since I’d been to busy to tell anyone, and a friend called to say: “Is that the conference you’ve been planning? He told me it’s all sold out (I’m not handling the, um, details) so you can’t come. Sorry about that. Now you know that conference I plan are like Rolling Stones concerts: next time you’ll just have to camp out. If I’d have known I would have made sure you all had VIP backstage passes, but now it’s too late.

Organizing a conference is a lot more work than you think: like a dinner party, only at a grand scale. And I like to think of them as a dinner party where you get to tell everyone what to talk about.

Oh Google. You’re so clever. You ‘ve democratized the greek choir. Every so often I’ll glance over to the AdWords beside my emails, and I’ll hear the haunting warnings of my downfall.

Some pretend conversations. To illustrate.

> We have to stop this conversation. Right now.

> > Why?

> > > Because, an ad for a life coach just appeared
> > > in my AdSense. That’s when you know your
> > > pitiful conversation has gone too far.

> > > > Yes, they’re kind of like the digital Greek
> > > > choir. Warning you of your impending
> > > > tragic downfall.

> > > > > It’s too late.

> > > > > > What happened? Are you okay?

> > > > > > > No.

> > > > > > > > Why?

> > > > > > > > > I clicked it.

> Hey, did you know you can make a lot of
> money writing about asbestos?

> > Yeah. I’ve been trying to work it
> > into my story for days.

> > > The click rate is like $10.

> > > > Just wait until I unleash my
> > > > new epic poem about
> > > > asbestos on the Internet.
> > > > I’m going to be a millionaire.

Barbara Holland gives an account of the heavy drinking that went on in the evenings of the Constitutional Convention.

[A]djourned to a tavern for some rest, and according to the bill they drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 of whiskey, 22 of port, 8 of hard cider and 7 bowls of punch so large that, it was said, ducks could swim around in them. Then they went back to work and finished founding the new Republic.

At 55 delegates, that’s at least two bottles of wine each. Quite impressive. Our founding fathers could sure drink.

Now, of course, this would be almost unheard of. Due to ethics legislation. For instance, in the California Assembly, due to Proposition 9, no one can buy anyone anything that costs more than $10. That wouldn’t have even bought our founding fathers a single bottle of Maderia.

There was recently an article in the Sacramento Bee about the effects:

Wilson, a two-term Republican governor from 1991 to 1999, said the Legislature is dysfunctional when it gets too partisan. He blamed discord on a lack of the kind of collegiality that existed when he was in the Assembly in the late 1960s.

“It may have something to do with the fact that when John, Willie and I were all in the Assembly, there was a great deal more drinking in the Legislature,” Wilson said to laughter and applause. “These guys, the teetotalers, need to lighten up a bit.”

Burton, a liberal Democrat termed out of the Senate in 2004, likewise attributed problems to a lack of relationships among lawmakers. He recounted how legislators connected over daily lunches and dinners sponsored by lobbyists until post-Watergate political reform efforts limited meal contributions to $10 per legislator per month.

In one case, Burton said, he and Cusanovich, a Republican, bonded while eating dinner at an establishment where there was a topless dancer.

“You find out your kid plays Little League baseball, you find out that your daughter’s in ballet, you find out you have things in common,” Burton said. “But then something called Proposition 9 came in and said nobody could buy anybody anything more than $10 per month per person.”

A friend of mine, Stan Christenson, worked for the Harvard Negotiation Project, traveling around the world engaging in the most contentious negotiations between people that hated each other. He told me an amazing story once about two leaders in Latin America that wouldn’t even begin negotiations. They could barely stand to be in the same room as each other. So, Stan told them not to talk about politics, just to talk about their lives, get to know each other. An hour later, they were ready to talk. What happened? On of the leaders had found out that the other leader also had a handicapped daughter. That bond connected them more than their politics divided them.

Politics depends on us seeing the human in those that believe in very different things than we do, in an environment that’s set up to have us make them into enemies, into scapegoats. It’s true that alcohol, the Great Social Lubricant, can help break down those barriers. No political debates have been as contentious as the ones our founding fathers had, and no politicians have ever had such a large bar bill.