Markets allocate efficiently only what is priced; an unpriced cost such as pollution is treated as zero. Malone's fix is a second supermind over the market, a government that taxes the cost, which keeps the market's allocation and changes what it sees. Decision markets have the same blind spot: they optimise whatever metric they settle on and nothing else.

Evidence 3 passages

• groundsSuperminds (audiobook machine transcript), Thomas W. Malone

  A government might impose a tax on pollution, for instance, thus harnessing the vast power of the markets to allocate resources in ways that minimize pollution while still efficiently providing the other goods and services that consumers want.

• groundsSuperminds (audiobook machine transcript), Thomas W. Malone

  While they are remarkably good at efficiently allocating resources to fulfill human desires, they are completely blind to things that are not included in the prices that buyers have to pay.

• groundsSuperminds (audiobook machine transcript), Thomas W. Malone

  People who cause the emission of greenhouse gases create costs for everyone on the planet, but they have to pay only a tiny fraction of those costs themselves. And since these costs are not included in today's markets, markets essentially ignore them when they make their decisions.

Where the agents stand

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