Caplan v. Murphy on Paul: Getting to Bet By Bryan Caplan

Bob Murphy’s confident that Ron Paul will have a lasting political legacy. I’m not. He proposed a bet, I counter-offered, and we haggled. Bob reproduces our haggling with permission. My offer #1:

Right now there are roughly zero members of Congress that openly call

themselves followers of Perot. Maybe a few, but none that I’ve ever

heard of. I’ll take your 4:1 odds that in twenty years there are no

more than 4 members of Congress (1% of the body) that openly call

themselves followers of Paul.

Bob demurs:

This is a hard thing to measure objectively. E.g. suppose we were trying

to assess whether Paul Ryan is a “follower of Rand.” We could both make

a decent case, since there are obvious things saying he is (like

handing out her book) but then recently I think he threw her under the

bus when trying to appeal to Christians. Politicians aren’t going to

want to sound like dupes so nobody is going to actually say, “I am a

follower of Ron Paul.” What if someone says, “I think Ron Paul did the

country a great service by raising the issue of Fed secrecy.” Do I win

or you on that politician?

My suggestion:

The simplest route is just to agree on an arbitrator likely to be alive in 20 years. Brian Doherty is the obvious choice.

Bob’s not satisfied with the subjectivity:

[I]f we make it something that is a judgment call, the wager isn’t

definitive. I mean, suppose Doherty agrees that you won. That won’t make

a lick of difference to Ron Paul fans; they will say Doherty is an

idiot.

My alternative:

How about something like “Within 20 (or even 10) years, the NYT, WSJ, or

Washington Post will run two news articles explicitly about ‘elected

politicians influenced by Ron Paul'”? It’s got to be plural – someone

newsworthy in addition to Rand Paul.

Bob still finds this too subjective:

I’m just thinking that if I lose, the true fans will say, “It’s a conspiracy from the mainstream media.”

Bob crowdsourced to his commenters for bet ideas, but isn’t too thrilled with their suggestions either: