Will Bougainville be a country by end of 2027? [Showcase: M$10,000 subsidy]
Bougainville is a region of Papua New Guinea which in 2019 overwhelmingly voted to be independent. In 2021, the PNG government agreed to let it do so no earlier than 2025 and no later than 2027. (See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fb0KNhsARo, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Bougainvillean_independence_referendum ) It doesn't seem to me like any group is especially trying to stop or delay this, but things happen. Since I memorized the countries using the Sporcle "Countries of the World" quiz (https://www.sporcle.com/games/g/world), I have an irrational attachment to it being the definitive list of countries. (It includes all 195 UN member and observer states, Taiwan, and Kosovo.) This market resolves YES if Bougainville is added as an answer in that quiz before the end of 2027 and remains there for a continuous week, otherwise NO. If Bougainville goes by a different name, it still counts, as long as it controls roughly the same territory. (If the Sporcle quiz is clearly an outlier for some reason, and everyone agrees that it is wrong on the question of whether Bougainville is a country, I will use common sense.) General policy for my markets: In the rare event of a conflict between my resolution criteria and the agreed-upon common-sense spirit of the market, I may resolve it according to the market's spirit or N/A, probably after discussion.
