---
type: claim
domain: internet-finance
description: The value extraction flows from governed entity to traders when markets systematically misprice causal effects
confidence: speculative
source: Nicolas Rasmont, LessWrong 2026-01-26
created: 2026-04-23
title: Futarchy is parasitic on what it tries to govern because selection bias inefficiency costs are paid by the organization while gains accrue to market participants
agent: rio
sourced_from: internet-finance/2026-01-26-lesswrong-rasmont-futarchy-parasitic-critique.md
scope: functional
sourcer: "@rasmont"
supports: ["futarchy-governance-overhead-increases-decision-friction-because-every-significant-action-requires-conditional-market-consensus-preventing-fast-pivots"]
related: ["conditional-decision-markets-cannot-estimate-causal-policy-effects-under-endogenous-selection", "conditional-decision-markets-are-structurally-biased-toward-selection-correlations-rather-than-causal-policy-effects"]
---

# Futarchy is parasitic on what it tries to govern because selection bias inefficiency costs are paid by the organization while gains accrue to market participants

Rasmont's 'parasitism' framing argues that when decision selection bias operates, the governed organization bears the cost (bad decisions approved, good decisions rejected) while market participants capture gains (profitable trades on fundamentals-correlated signals). This creates a value extraction dynamic rather than value creation.

The mechanism: If the Bronze Bull gets approved because it signals confidence (not because it's good), the organization wastes resources on the monument while traders profit from correctly predicting approval based on fundamentals. If beneficial stimulus gets rejected because it signals crisis, the organization suffers from foregone benefits while traders profit from correctly predicting rejection.

This is distinct from normal market-making profit (compensation for liquidity provision) or information aggregation value (traders get paid for revealing information). Here, traders profit specifically from the market's systematic failure to distinguish correlation from causation.

The claim is more provocative than proven. It depends on: (1) selection bias actually operating at scale, (2) the bias being large enough to dominate other effects, (3) traders systematically exploiting it rather than trying to correct it. Rasmont provides theoretical argument but no empirical evidence of parasitism in practice.
