We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

> Two-thirds of Americans now believe that professional athletes sometimes change their performance to influence gambling outcomes.

I'm not sure this is a bad thing. It's just bringing to public visibility exactly what happens across the stock market. Public companies do this all the time -- engineer their performance end earnings to influence shareholder gambler expectations on earnings day.

Assassinations markets are what's next.

eg. someone will bet $1M that Elon Musk will be assassinated in 2026.

But these don't themselves even have to be legal. Second order wagers will be placed on SpaceX and Tesla stock prices, bets that "a hundred billionaire will die in 2026", etc.

A bet that Putin will be assassinated could be encoded in, "there will be regime change in Russia."

Assuming everything physical gets tokenized (as occasionally gets predicted), people could soon literally lose their house on a bet! Maybe even a bet placed by their swarm of agents. The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades!

Just game-theoretically, suppose you bet $100 on some disaster.

That disaster causes $10,000,000 of harm, but only causes you $90 of harm individually.

You've gained $10, but your $10 gain is a millionth of the harm caused.

Generally-speaking, there's an enormous asymmetry between the cost to create/build and the cost to destroy. So now we have a mechanism by which individuals have a financial incentive to cause harm...

Don't these markets create a mechanism for society to race to self-destruction?

Ban them too. Make bets have to be placed in person.