Over yonder in the “Elections” section, there is all sorts of bullshit flying, but the bullshit-iest of all concerns the people who are confidently claiming all sorts of, well, bullshit, and some are offering to make bets on various outcomes. Which is all well and good, I suppose, as long as you don’t inhale, but I feel bad for the people who win bets over the Internet because the problem of collecting from a user-name presents some obvious problems. IRL, you have a lot of shaming-tools available, but here, not so much. If I bet $100 that Romney will take at least 35 states and collect over 250 Electors, and I lose, what can you do me? The worst is, make me slink my tail between my legs and never post here again, which many would prefer to admitting their foolishness and losing $100 that they don’t need to lose.
As an veteran bettor, both online and IRL (and usually a winner–I won’t even bet unless I’m pretty sure that the odds favor me by a considerable margin), I think it’s pretty dumb to bet with strangers on-line for the above reasons. But people persist in doing it. I think it’s much better (much bettor?) to wager something non-pecuniary but nonetheless real. I often suggest that rather than bet money, people ought to bet sig-lines. In my above example, if I lose my bet about Romney, I might have the sport beneath my username a tag like “Doesn’t know squat about American politics” or “Totally wrong about the 2012 election” or “PRR–moron since 2012” or some such for an equally agreed-upon term. That would be my idea of fun (not wearing such a tag–making someone else wear it.) We could even have a sticky in “Games” containing the terms of each bet.
What do you think of this notion?