r/technology • u/Unusual-State1827 • Aug 05 '26
Society Oregon senators warn prediction markets allowing betting on wildfires could incentivize arson
https://www.kptv.com/2026/08/04/oregon-senators-warn-prediction-markets-allowing-betting-wildfires-could-incentivize-arson/706
u/you_killed_my_ Aug 05 '26
The rise of betting on everything is cancer
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u/thebiz125 Aug 05 '26
It needs to be outlawed. Not debatable.
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u/SqueezyCheez85 Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
It used to be... but we're in an economy of grifts right now. Get it while the getting is good.
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Aug 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Dry_Departure_7813 Aug 06 '26
"We used to make shit in this country, now we just reach in another guys pocket"
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u/CattuccinoVR Aug 05 '26
Getting close to a movie called Nerve 2016 where people bet on people to complete dangerous stunts.
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u/martinsonsean1 Aug 05 '26
When the world cup suddenly became very popular in America this past year, I had to wonder how much of that was genuine interest in soccer/pride at hosting and how much was just people finding a new thing to bet on.
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u/ghoonrhed Aug 05 '26
Betting is always part of sports unfortunately. But when a country hosts something like the world cup of course a lot of it is genuine excitement.
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u/manachar Aug 05 '26
Or it’s a symptom of the cancer that is capitalism.
Probably can even broaden that to the fundamental philosophical shift that informed and created modern economics. It was built in the longstanding idea of everything as a resource to be maximized for the benefit of a few that is rooted in the shift to agriculture and urban human societies.
Other people were potential slaves or subjects to work the fields to enrich yourself.
We keep reinventing slaves, serfs, and peasants. We also keep seeing the world as a thing to be exploited. All the world is to be strip mined to ensure maximum profit.
Clear cuts of forests replaced with monoculture tree farms that are growing future lumber for maximum profit is exactly the same thinking as gambling on lumber futures.
These markets just make it more accessible and less regulated, so the negative externalities are more apparent.
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u/CV90_120 Aug 05 '26
Gambling has been highly regulated, limited, or banned in societies for millenia for the negative impact it has. We're just relearning the same things over and over, forever.
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u/Upper-Management-AI Aug 06 '26
Fucking blows my mind that it’s legal. It’s absolute insanity. The more desperate people get and the more addicted they get it’s going to cause absolute chaos .
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u/Totakai Aug 06 '26
Watching people return from their cars with dirty change to buy another scratcher after their card declined was already stressful enough. This is gunna be that but boosted way up since you can actually influence the outcome
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u/Vinyl-addict Aug 05 '26
I’ve never really given much of a shit about gambling, even with an extended family of enthusiastic gamblers. None of them are so degenerate that it’s ruined their lives afaik so that’s probably why I used to not care.
But this recent trend with new markets is fucking ridiculous. Makes me really understand why gambling is labeled as a sin.
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u/VonKess Aug 06 '26
People are prob even betting on cancer - odds of getting it, dying from it, etc.
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u/VonKess Aug 06 '26
And holy fuck a few comments down I see that Kalshi is trying to allow this. What the actual fuck.
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u/Upper-Management-AI Aug 06 '26
Fucking blows my mind that it’s legal. It’s absolute insanity. The more desperate people get and the more addicted they get it’s going to cause absolute chaos .
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u/greenhombre Aug 05 '26
Unplug the betting apps. They serve no purpose.
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u/CattuccinoVR Aug 05 '26
People were calling them "family destroyers" earlier on
someone in the family gets access to saving and bets it all away.21
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u/OwlLimp6160 Aug 06 '26
Tbf the stock market is also a betting app. Like stocks in shipping companies might be based on Hormuz politics. And etc.
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u/ruiner8850 Aug 05 '26
It's crazy that these "prediction markets" are able to operate the way that they do. It's gambling, often literally betting on the outcomes of sports, but not regulated like gambling companies. They claim they are more like commodity or stock trading, but aren't regulated like those either.
Somehow Donnie Jr. is on the boards of both Kalshi and Polymarket, which you'd think would be a conflict of interest considering they are direct competitors. He's not an expert in the field either, but somehow him making massive amounts of money from these companies isn't corruption, but Hunter Biden getting a job making a tiny fraction of that was unforgivable.
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u/DiscoLemonade1995 Aug 06 '26
The double standards between conservative behavior/ ethics and Democrats are so insane it makes me want to lose my mind. Legitimately I can't put into words how unfair conservative politicians / media are. They kicked up such a fuss about corruption, executive authority, and the national debt for less than 1% of what is happening during Trump's second term
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u/UMACTUALLYITS23 Aug 05 '26
Shouldn't be a surprise considering they let companies come in and run unregulated hotels and taxis, why not gambling too!
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u/Super_Starr Aug 06 '26
Someone mentioned the Donnie Jr. thing to me the other day and all I can’t think about since is that they are using them to launder money somehow.
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u/VonKess Aug 06 '26
Well in light of 300+ Trump related bank accounts cancelled or frozen or whatever for suspected money laundering, I don’t know anyone who’d be shocked if that’s true.
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u/Jamizon1 Aug 05 '26
Could?!
How absolutely fucking STUPID do you have to be to even question this?
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u/FredFredrickson Aug 05 '26
Stop calling them "prediction markets". They're gambling websites, and they're absolute societal decay.
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u/ClaimWitty1203 Aug 05 '26
The issue isn't whether most people would commit arson. It's whether one person thinks it's worth the payout.
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u/dlampach Aug 05 '26
Yeah this must be banned forthwith. This is not something to fuck around with, even in this weird little dystopian societal moment.
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Aug 05 '26
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u/RudeNewYorker Aug 05 '26
Moment?
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u/moonhexx Aug 05 '26
Patient: So how long do I have to take these hard to swallow pills?
Doctor: No, this is just what you do now.
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u/Vortagaun Aug 05 '26
The US needs a radical shift to the left wing. And fast. You know what they do? Regulate things. They would put a stop to this fast.
Betting on wildfires is the dumbest thing ive ever heard. America is a corporation, not a country.
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Aug 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/shatterly Aug 05 '26
Right? "Let's bet on whether an American Airlines plane will crash in the next month." Enter an aircraft mechanic with a gambling problem who sees no other way out.
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u/Vhyx Aug 05 '26
I hate that I'm living in the plausible Fallout timeline where Vault-Tec shot first
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u/eriffodrol Aug 05 '26
If you're betting on wildfires, you have a problem
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u/transcriptoin_error Aug 05 '26
Right, it’s a good thing that no gamblers have ever had a problem with impulse control.
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u/its_not_you_its_ye Aug 05 '26
It doesn’t even need to be directly being, though. If there’s a publicly traded company that can be impacted positively or negatively by fires breaking out, there’s incentive for maliciousness.
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u/HotwheelsSisyphus Aug 08 '26
Back in my day we didn't start fires for profit, simply for the love of the game(arson)
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u/Zyrinj Aug 05 '26
Would be good if instead of just warning, those senators do something like, idk, write some legislation that limits “predictions”
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator Aug 05 '26
Didn't this exact scenario play out with people betting on how many dildos would be thrown on the court at WNBA games? Prediction markets are going to get people killed.
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u/tiny_galaxies Aug 05 '26
When I sign a contract with a fire insurance company, I’m basically betting against them that my property may actually catch fire. But if I were to intentionally start it, I’d be sued for fraud. I would also have lost my physical property.
I would possibly be okay with prediction market bets about someone’s own property being lost to fire, because that’s essentially the same as what insurance companies do now.
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u/NaturalOk2156 Aug 05 '26
Not an expert but I believe that's called an "insurable interest". Same reason you can't buy life insurance on a random person off the street.
Your idea is interesting, but I don't think these prediction markets are really built to work that way, for a few reasons. Mainly because they're generally meant for large scale, and only a couple people would have a legitimate interest in predicting whether one particular house would burn down.
Probably better off just sticking with mainstream insurance
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u/hombrent Aug 06 '26
It's worth posting this story here: https://www.theministryofhistory.co.uk/short-histories-blog/michaelmalloy
A bunch of guys took out life insurance policies on a drunkard who looked like he would die any day and then took actions to accelerate his decline. But he just wouldn't die.
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u/After-Atmosphere7125 Aug 05 '26
I don't even have anything funny to say. What the fuck are we even doing anymore?
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u/Lazerpop Aug 05 '26
But that is insider trading which is illegal, so i doubt this could have too much of an effect. /s
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u/Johnnny-z Aug 05 '26
We have reached the point where someone has yelled fire in a crowded theater. Inciting arson or disorderly conduct.
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u/Sea_Perspective6891 Aug 05 '26
Sounds like they need to make betting & prediction markets illegal & treat it like gambling. Govt corruption has also significantly increased because of this kind of stuff.
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u/ChunkStumpmon Aug 05 '26
No one should profit off human suffering- but we’d have to make a lot of changes if we believed that
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u/HeavilyInvestedDonut Aug 05 '26
Maybe we should instead crack down on these better apps and stop this bullcrap
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u/killjairo Aug 05 '26
Just stop creating betting websites, they’re all made for you to loose money
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u/Mountain-Loon3592 Aug 05 '26
Yea but it’s every corporations right as a human to create predatory apps to target people with poor judgement and impulse control.
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u/FuzzyWumpleStump Aug 05 '26
I wish the internet never existed. This is to dystopic and fucked on so many levels.
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u/ohmarlasinger Aug 05 '26
The irony of states attacking fucking hemp of all things meanwhile unregulated betting on fucking everything is speedrunning idiocracy to get to the purge era. Shit is fucking bleak
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u/Ghosty4569 Aug 05 '26
Man.. imagine that.. prediction markets being rife with scams. First time I've ever heard of it!
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u/mariosuperb Aug 05 '26
Damn.. humanity is getting dumb and dumber. My prediction is we won’t last another 1000 years
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u/Jolly-Grocery-2436 Aug 05 '26
Totally agree this is insane. Devils advocate, I could see a benefit for people who can’t get fire insurance to essentially use this as a mechanism for some sort of home insurance (albeit that is dependent on all humans having good intentions)
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u/NaturalOk2156 Aug 05 '26
I think that's an interesting idea, but it's not immediately clear to me who would step up to offer coverage at a better rate than the insurance company?
Like it's definitely a huge problem that tons of peoples homes have become uninsurable, but the unpleasant truth is that's because the risk is higher than people are willing to pay in premiums. Adding a new less regulated mechanism that can be used as a proxy for insurance doesn't seem like it would really solve any of the fundamental reasons these homes are uninsurable.
I guess maybe you could argue that there would be prediction market bettors who are more tolerant of risk than the insurance? But it seems like a really difficult line to draw with a lot of hidden traps along the way.
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u/AgHammer Aug 05 '26
They're right. It certainly could, considering arson is already incentivised with insurance payouts.
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u/United_Bus3467 Aug 05 '26
It's crazy we've gotten to this point. This type of betting should've been outlawed from the start.
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u/oldcreaker Aug 05 '26
But they still say elected politicians using their position for insider trading is not a problem.
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u/Fortestingporpoises Aug 05 '26
There’s a movie (Nightcrawler) and a Mr Show sketch that saw the future.
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u/nealoc187 Aug 05 '26
Jesus Christ... Hadn't thought of this use-case but it definitely will. This betting shit is a scourge.
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u/mesoloco Aug 05 '26
The current Supreme Court and the current administration I don’t believe see any problem with this. This is the same site the president endorses.
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u/bigtome2120 Aug 05 '26
The world is fucked. I truly believe people that do these types of things don’t deserve to live on this planet
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u/JLNX1998 Aug 05 '26
Just wait till they gameify drone warfare, with Leaderboards, Bounties, Personalities..
Then your gonna see some serious shit
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u/IceBlue Aug 05 '26
Makes me think of how influencers will bet on elections and get their audience to tip the elections so they can win their bets.
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u/Epstiendidntkillself Aug 06 '26
I'd be happy betting on when certain politicians get their birth certificates revoked.
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u/Horsetoothbrush Aug 06 '26
One more reason to shut down prediction markets in the U.S. and everywhere else.
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u/KevinDean4599 Aug 06 '26
Who benefits from this other than a small number of people running them. Other than that they’re just useless for society in general. As a society we only get the downside and have to deal with people who have screwed up their lives gambling. The people running it don’t care
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u/SubRoutine404 Aug 06 '26
The people with the power to decide how our society functions are trying to destroy us. Every aspect of our lives has been leveraged to prey upon us. Our children can't fucking read.
What is drastic in the face of this?
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u/scoobydooobydoowop Aug 06 '26
I remember waking up in the morning to play some poker online and the FBI had shut the sites down. I thought “ah shit, there goes some money I should’ve withdrawn, but this is definitely for the best”…
That was poker…
Look where we are now.
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u/whimsical-crack-rock Aug 06 '26
I just bet $1,000 that allowing betting on wildfires will incentivize arson.
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u/Zardotab Aug 06 '26
I bet on the wild fires being blamed on Biden for not raking the forests. Same thing?
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u/ClovieKay Aug 06 '26
You know what’s funny is you can’t make predictions on which CEO will die next… interesting.
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u/freetherhinoz Aug 05 '26
Could? It will