http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticipatory_democracy I like their intriguing idea for a more direct, crowd-sourced democracy: People vote on *values* but bet on the *effect* of policies. This prediction market is then used to determined the success probability of each given policy towards a specified goal. The policy with the highest probability of success towards the highest voted goals are implemented. That way, one first determines the objectives people want to reach, but the methods are subject to evaluation. It also takes care of the stupidity problem as people that have higher success rate of predicting the effect of policies will collect "political capital" and will be able to bet higher amounts after an initial warm-up period.

I wonder whether if could be used to make a lighter bear proof suit... http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1637-bearproof-suit-to-be-put-to-the-test.html