Polymath writing about economics, the social sciences, philosophy, AI, X-risk, forecasting, and cultural trends. My main focus with regards to causes is on AI-safety.
One reason we don't see large doom futures or doom insurance markets (including in catastrophe bonds) is that a large proportion of the risk is uninsurable, due to uncertainty on enforcability. Collateralised instruments underprice p(doom), and prices cannot adjust to the values that collaterisation participants would accept.
All these contracts and securities are reliant on courts to enforce them, alongside arbitration mechanisms (e.g. in the event of defaults or payment disputes). However in a doom state, these courts don't exist. Therefore these contracts are typically unenforceable, unless there's a sequential timing decision involved in their sale (where you can hopefully clear before unenforceability occurs). Such risks cannot be precisely measured however, so the rates required to justify such contracts exceed those participants are willing to accept, so the market is almost non-existent. In other words, these risks are uninsurable, so futures and uninsurance market values imply a lower p(doom) than is actually the case. However, the consequence of this is that such markets are not incentive-compatible so (to my knowledge?) don't exist.
You see this same pattern in the nonexistence of a futures market in galaxies too, in property rights over galaxy ownership of the sort discussed recently on LessWrong. Such optimistic capabilities forecasts are also consistent with much wider variance and larger tail-risks, so again enforcability concerns (in terms of the contracts and the property rights over galaxies) make this market incomplete. Moreover, collateral values would need to be incredibly high to justify such trades on a somewhat esoteric and outlandish bet, and not all participants are willing to provide such amounts.
One reason we don't see large doom futures or doom insurance markets (including in catastrophe bonds) is that a large proportion of the risk is uninsurable, due to uncertainty on enforcability. Collateralised instruments underprice p(doom), and prices cannot adjust to the values that collaterisation participants would accept.
All these contracts and securities are reliant on courts to enforce them, alongside arbitration mechanisms (e.g. in the event of defaults or payment disputes). However in a doom state, these courts don't exist. Therefore these contracts are typically unenforceable, unless there's a sequential timing decision involved in their sale (where you can hopefully clear before unenforceability occurs). Such risks cannot be precisely measured however, so the rates required to justify such contracts exceed those participants are willing to accept, so the market is almost non-existent. In other words, these risks are uninsurable, so futures and uninsurance market values imply a lower p(doom) than is actually the case. However, the consequence of this is that such markets are not incentive-compatible so (to my knowledge?) don't exist.
You see this same pattern in the nonexistence of a futures market in galaxies too, in property rights over galaxy ownership of the sort discussed recently on LessWrong. Such optimistic capabilities forecasts are also consistent with much wider variance and larger tail-risks, so again enforcability concerns (in terms of the contracts and the property rights over galaxies) make this market incomplete. Moreover, collateral values would need to be incredibly high to justify such trades on a somewhat esoteric and outlandish bet, and not all participants are willing to provide such amounts.