In September 2022, I was celebrating a friends’ birthday in Diani, at the Indian Ocean in Kenya. We were hanging out at the Nomad Beach Bar when we met a Swedish lawyer, who was working for the UN. He was very confident, quite brazen, had many very strongly held opinions, and was overall a fun guy to talk to on an evening like that.
It was remarkable to me that he seemed to be 100% sure of most of his predictions and societal views. As a former - and current - gambler, being 100% sure of something is a habit I had to unlearn rather quickly in my early days as a poker player.
We were discussing the results of the most recent Swedish elections, various trends shaping up within the EU and how positive he was. At some point, I proposed to him an amical bet: what odds would he give me, if I wanted to bet that 2 (or more) countries would leave the EU by the end of 2028. A very interesting bet in my opinion, the two parameters naturally being very crucial to fiddle around with, namely that 1 country leaving wouldn’t suffice to win the bet, and that the time period cap would be end of 2028.
Much to my surprise, he became quite displeased, maybe even a tiny little bit angry. ‘That is never gonna happen!!’, he said. As people often do, he confused my willingness to bet for either my opinion on the probability of it happening, or even for me wishing that it were to happen.
To be clear, and what should be completely needless to say, I don’t *think* it will happen and also don’t really think it’s something to root for. As made clear ad nauseam in my previous blogs, I’d rather root for less opaque institutions than for less collaboration between countries, and consider that to be obvious. It should be noted that he also wouldn’t have convinced me of anything in this way, had I been very anti-EU. Outrage is never an argument.
But I digress. So, I told the Swedish lawyer: ‘If you think it’s never gonna happen, you can give me very good odds;) my 100$ versus your 10k$. Give me 100 to 1 to collect a free 100$ bro!’. He didn’t go for it, and we left our social interaction on amicable but noticeably more distant terms.
This headline made me think back about my proposed bet. I don’t know the correct odds. Saying that they’re 0% is an absolutely horrendous take though. 5 years is a long time, and let’s not forget it already happened once (so much for ‘never gonna happen’, it should be ‘never gonna happen again’). Some Black Swan in Holland, or Italy going out on a limb, or Hungary, or some crisis in Greece reaching a breaking point this time, or some other scenario, use your imagination. And if one country would ever go, maybe the second one is more likely to go as well. So what are the odds? Any 2 countries? Certainly in this volatile, social media fueled, new world of ours. 15%?
I don’t know. Not zero.
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This long-winded tangent brings me to the point of this post. When it comes to elections, and more specifically, the US elections, I am giddy like an 8-year old boy on Christmas morning. I love that stuff. The greatest show in the world. The ‘Democracy’ charade, on the world’s biggest stage, trending downwards in terms of intellectual standards for some years now.
Looks like 2024 will be a historic election year, with elections in more than 50 countries. Fun! A flammable geopolitical situation, dwindling institutional trust, with some potential AI fake news bots sprinkled on top.
And this time, my friends, is special. Where one could say that 2016 was the first Facebook-election, 2020 the first Twitter-election, 2024 will be the first Podcast-election. Or even the first Bitcoin election. With legacy media’s audience numbers in insurmountable decay and the rise of more and more platforms where one doesn’t need the establishment’s stamp of approval to start broadcasting, it was for example an easy prediction to make that there would likely be a third-party candidate, likely pro-crypto, very unlikely to win, but perhaps shifting the Overton window in the process.
Lol.
So what’s even better than elections? Betting markets about elections, of course.
Spicy. ‘Never gonna happen that Biden is gonna run, too old’. You can make close to 4x (!!!) your money betting on that. ‘Biden is for sure gonna run’. Buy the Yes token for 75 cents, watch it go to 1$ and collect 33% premium (adjusted for liquidity and minor fees). Where I come from, getting a PHD from the poker-streets, betting on your conviction is a wonderful thing. Skin in the game, baby.
What about this one, so then only one of them needs to drop out? Nobody really wants a Biden-Trump match-up anyway, right? Imagine getting 3.3x your money by betting on ‘No’. Aside from the financial gain, it would be such an enjoyable victory in my opinion, paying memory dividends on top, for a very long time to come.
Like the Swedish lawyer, don’t mistake my musings about the betting markets with a prediction, a political take, or even, god forbid, a pro-Trump stance. Don’t be that guy. The market is probably right on this one, so ‘never gonna happen’ is better worded as ‘the market is saying 25% of the time, for whichever reason, Biden won’t end up running’. That number intuitively feels low to me given health risk in combination with popularity, but I also think the DNC is waiting an awfully long time for a party that would still consider a pivot. Maybe after the holidays.
Sure, it would be unprecedented for an incumbent president to drop out so late in the race. And who would even run? Behind the scenes still-the-Kingmaker Obama sends in Michelle to unite the party? Gavin Newsom after meeting with president Xi?
However, it would also be unprecedented for a candidate to run at that age -and with that approval rating-, so guess what folks, it looks like we’re getting a ‘First time’ of something. Strap in.
So which one of the multiple scenarios is never gonna happen then? Biden running, Biden not running, Trump running, Trump not running, even winning perhaps?
Surely they, by mathematical definition, can’t all not happen. I’ll be watching closely:)