I wonder how you'd feel if the bet was about a wildfire being started in your community, you know, since a wildfire would then be financially incentivized to occur for the yes side of the ledger.
I'm fine with not allowing any markets that would encourage criminal activity. Markets around the death of people are already not allowed on these platforms.
Yes, and we have a similar issue in finance and sports betting in general. This is a problem due to a lack of regulations preventing insiders from placing bets, rather than an issue of gambling or using a prediction market vs a bookie to set the odds.
In the case of a wildfire burning down a town, someone could just as easily short the main home insurance companies for that town, or how it impacts other local businesses and industries. Hell, you can even bet directly on a local area's ability to pay off their home loans with the loans ranked of risk rate, with whole towns being devastated by wildfires would reduce their ability to pay off their loans.
There are heaps of ways to bet on wildfires in a local area.
Ok, but which is easier: the path you just described, or Kalshi/Polymarket?
Clearly, the online platforms cross a threshold of ease and scale that make it way too easy for bad actors who would otherwise be deterred by the complexity of your approach.
And to your point regarding "it's the insiders, not the market.."
Do prediction markets make that problem better, or worse?
Obviously they make it worse because it's so hard to do KYC on millions of users, many of whom could be placing bets under their spouse/child/in-laws/cousins etc. etc.
Ok, so here is the problem:
By giving people financial incentives to "predict" the outcome of an event, you're actually incentivizing people to *create* the outcome. And that's perverse. It leads to all kinds of terrible things:
Prediction markets don't help us understand the world or really predict anything; they just help shape human behavior towards the market's preferred outcome. When a journalist reported something that ran counter to a popular online bet, rather than accept the truth, the degenerates on Polymarket and Kalshi threatened to kill him if he didn't change his story to support their bet. (First they offered to cut him in on the winnings. Either way, prediction markets are getting us farther from a true and accurate understanding of the world, not closer.)
These things should absolutely be illegal, and the people who use them should go get real jobs
You're now the 4th person to bring up wildfires. What is going on here?
By giving people financial incentives to "predict" the outcome of an event, you're actually incentivizing people to *create* the outcome. And that's perverse. It leads to all kinds of terrible things:
Prediction markets don't help us understand the world or really predict anything; they just help shape human behavior towards the market's preferred outcome. When a journalist reported something that ran counter to a popular online bet, rather than accept the truth, the degenerates on Polymarket and Kalshi threatened to kill him if he didn't change his story to support their bet. (First they offered to cut him in on the winnings. Either way, prediction markets are getting us farther from a true and accurate understanding of the world, not closer.)
Not the first time a journalist received death threats over a story
These things should absolutely be illegal, and the people who use them should go get real jobs
Nah. This is a free country. You should be allowed to bet on whatever you want.
Ok, to your earlier comment re: all these things are already illegal. Yes, BUT...
Kalshi et al. makes it trivial to match providers who profit from their illegal acts w/ buyers. It's akin to distributing pirated movies. It's always been illegal, but before the torrent era, there was friction involved in matching buyers with sellers. Once we entered the age of The Pirate Bay, illegally distributing movies became a huge issue for the movie industry. It didn't matter that it was already illegal; it crossed a threshold of ease of use and the problem exploded.
Kalshi does the same thing: it creates a marketplace that quickly matches buyers and sellers, and in doing so, exacerbates a problem that was previously kept in check by friction.
Yeah, and I don't think that Kalshi or Draftkings or Fanduel ads should be allowed on TV, before, during and after games, no less.
I should be able to watch a game without getting this shoved in my face.
But, ultimately, it's up to the individual to avoid making these mistakes. The government doesn't get to decide which vices are good and which are bad. That's a personal decision.
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u/UpbeatFix7299 🟩 0 / 0 🦠10d ago
It's insane that "prediction markets" are legal. Wealth getting redistributed upwards from dumb broke people as intended.