ychantit
For instance parking ticket has skyrocket by 300% this year in paris, fr ! You don't want to have a car parked there ...
http://www.metronews.fr/paris/stationnement-a-paris-les-tari...
When I was kid we had a congressman where I lived in Morocco who win a election with a strategy similar to a quadratic voting. His team went to the poorest neighborhoods of the district and they distribute half (literally half the bill) of today equivalent of 20$ and you get the rest after the election, it had cost him roughly around 100k$ and he won. From the power he got he had made a lot more and been able to invest again in his own district and get two more districts for his son and brother in law in the next election... this is a bad idea at least for the poor.
The point is you need an independent third party to establish a fair market value for the votes otherwise the poor will be ripped of...
hacker news : http://www.hackernewsletter.com/
techcrunch
hadoop weekly : http://www.hadoopweekly.com/
A second point is that the underwriter is paid to keep the shares liquid on the market at least for the first 30 days depending on the contract deal. It means that the underwirter will need to put himself on the buying side or the selling side everytime someone want to buy/sell his shares ... this is a huge risk again just look at the volume of the share deals everyday on the market to see what kind of liquidity the underwriter need to keep ready to play ... I agree with you that this don't create value for the economy out there but it is necessary to keep the wheel rolling ...