Via Niall O’Connor of Betting Market, James Surowiecki:
So if the folly of crowds got us here, is there any hope for using the wisdom of crowds to get us out? I’m hesitant to offer any forecast that would be too optimistic, given the enormous amount of uncertainty that’s still out there. But the answer may not be necessarily to use markets less, but rather to do a better job of ensuring that they are working the way they should: that there are many players in them rather than few, that diverse opinions can be easily registered, and that incentives and goals are well aligned. The collective intelligence of markets can be a startling and useful thing. It’s just too bad that it’s been years since we have seen much of it.
• James Surowiecki is a staff writer at the New Yorker and author of The Wisdom of Crowds
