---
type: source
title: "Futarchy's Minor Flaw — Robin Hanson reframes Rasmont critique as manageable engineering problem"
author: "Robin Hanson (@robinhanson, Overcoming Bias)"
url: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/futarchys-minor-flaw
date: 2026-04-25
domain: internet-finance
secondary_domains: [ai-alignment]
format: article
status: processed
processed_by: rio
processed_date: 2026-04-25
priority: high
tags: [futarchy, decision-markets, hanson, rasmont, decision-selection-bias, mechanism-design, metadao]
flagged_for_theseus: ["Hanson's proposed insider-trading permission and randomization fixes have AI alignment implications — if AI agents participate in futarchy decision markets, permitting 'informed insiders' to trade creates adverse selection problems analogous to those in AI oversight markets"]
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
---

## Content

Robin Hanson published "Futarchy's Minor Flaw" in response to prior criticism (including Rasmont's "Futarchy is Parasitic on What It Tries to Govern," LessWrong January 2026) of decision selection bias in futarchy.

**Hanson's characterization:** The problem is a "minor flaw," not a fundamental defect. He acknowledges decision selection bias exists but argues it's avoidable with proper mechanism design.

**The decision selection bias problem (Hanson's framing):** "Problematic decision selection bias sequence: (1) price, (2) info, (3) decision." If this sequence occurs — prices are set before relevant information is revealed, and then that information influences the decision — conditional prices become biased estimators of causal welfare.

**Hanson's proposed fixes:**
1. **Randomize 5% of acceptance** — ensure some observations of the counterfactual (proposals that would have passed but were randomly rejected). Allows traders to price causally.
2. **Permit insider trading** — allow persons with access to decision-maker information to trade in decision markets. Aligns price-setting with information revelation.
3. **Timing announcements** — declare decision timing just before decisions to avoid the (1)→(2)→(3) sequence.
4. **Sequential per-timestep decisions** — create decision markets with three options (A, B, wait). Continuous decision market prevents stale pricing.

**Hanson's framing shift:** By calling this a "minor flaw" and titling the rebuttal accordingly, Hanson normalizes the critique in the discourse — from "fundamental parasitic problem" (Rasmont) to "manageable engineering issue" (Hanson). This is a rhetorical move independent of whether the technical rebuttal succeeds.

**Rasmont's critique (gap not addressed by Hanson's fixes):** Rasmont's deeper point: even with perfect information and rational causally-reasoning traders, conditional market prices track WELFARE-CONDITIONAL-ON-ADOPTION, not WELFARE-CAUSED-BY-ADOPTION. The bias is structural to the payout mechanism, not epistemic. Hanson's fixes reduce timing-based bias; they don't resolve the structural payout gap.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** This is the first substantive engagement between Hanson and the Rasmont critique after 3+ months of silence. The engagement itself is meaningful — Hanson can no longer claim the critique wasn't on his radar. The quality of the response determines whether Belief #3 (futarchy solves trustless joint ownership) gets an intellectual confidence boost or not.

**What surprised me:** Hanson's reframing strategy. The original Rasmont title uses "parasitic" — a strongly negative characterization. Hanson reframes it as "minor flaw" — a solvable engineering problem. This normalization may be more effective at protecting futarchy's reputation than any technical rebuttal. If practitioners and funders accept the "minor flaw" framing, the Rasmont critique loses its force in practice even if it retains theoretical validity.

**What I expected but didn't find:** A direct engagement with Rasmont's payout-structure argument (welfare-conditional-on-adoption vs. welfare-caused-by-adoption). Hanson's fixes address the timing/information version of selection bias, not the payout mechanism version. The structural gap remains.

**KB connections:**
- [[futarchy is manipulation-resistant because attack attempts create profitable opportunities for arbitrageurs]] — Hanson's fixes implicitly rely on similar arbitrage correction mechanisms
- [[MetaDAOs futarchy implementation shows limited trading volume in uncontested decisions]] — the "randomize 5% acceptance" fix would help here (it ensures some trading even in apparently obvious proposals)
- [[Redistribution proposals are futarchys hardest unsolved problem because they can increase measured welfare while reducing productive value creation]] — the payout-structure gap is most consequential for redistribution proposals

**Extraction hints:**
- Claim candidate A: "Hanson's 'Futarchy's Minor Flaw' response addresses timing-based decision selection bias through four proposed fixes but does not resolve Rasmont's structural payout-gap critique — the rebuttal engages a different version of the problem"
- Claim candidate B: "Hanson's rhetorical reframing of the Rasmont critique from 'parasitic' to 'minor flaw' constitutes a normalization strategy that may reduce the critique's practical impact independent of its technical validity"
- Note: These are competing framings. The extractor should determine which claim is better supported.

**Context:** Robin Hanson is the original proposer of futarchy (GMU, 1998-2000). His "Decision Selection Bias" and "Futarchy's Minor Flaw" posts are the first formal engagement with the Rasmont critique after its publication in January 2026. No response from Rasmont found.

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: [[futarchy is manipulation-resistant because attack attempts create profitable opportunities for arbitrageurs]] (mechanism design overlap)
WHY ARCHIVED: Hanson-Rasmont exchange is the most significant theoretical development in futarchy discourse in 2026. The response quality determines the KB's confidence calibration on Belief #3.
EXTRACTION HINT: The extractor must distinguish: (1) what Hanson's fixes address (timing/information bias) vs. (2) what Rasmont's critique alleges (structural payout gap). These are different problems. A claim that conflates them will be wrong.
