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

derekthompson.org

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

#151
post #126
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't that be said of stock markets and any markets? United Healthcare stock dropped 10% immediately after its CEO was killed.

Well, there are laws against insider trading.

Prediction markets advertise insider trading as a feature, and enforcement of financial crimes is a racket anyway. If you know the right people, make the right campaign contributions, laws just don't apply to you.

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired. Can't say I agree with that specific take (and find it a bit naive to be honest), unless you're also not hiring anyone from companies like Amazon, Meta, and all the other tech companies that have also ruined/preyed on society in their own way just as much as any gambling app has.

this is a false equivalence. Amazon and Meta have caused plenty of damage, companies in our capitalist economies are bad etc. But shipping you books or connecting you to other people isn't inherently evil. There's nothing wrong with the service itself. Gambling is. It's been a vice in virtually every culture for thousands of years. It's akin to peddling drugs. The practice itself is corrosive and destroys people. It'…

Between these I think Amazon is less bad. It's a monopoly & monopsony which causes a lack of innovation and (eventually) higher prices but it's also a much more efficient way to sell things and it doesn't destroy the fabric of society or anything. Meta though is just as bad if not worse than any gambling site out there. Its products are optimized to destroy your attention span, feed you polarizing content, destroy your mental health and waste hours of your time every day all while ironically making you less connected to other people because users won't get off their phones and have a conversation.

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

#153
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there is a kid’s legal version! They sell them in Walmart - Pokémon packs. I don’t know how any of this is legal in a civilized country.

Don't forget the other children's gambling trainers: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=claw+machine&ia=images&iax=...

The average kid at these places thinks they're a skill-based game, so they aren't gambling any more than they are when they shoot hoops.

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

#154

I got into weather betting markets earlier this year since I figured those can't possibly be rigged, it is automated weather station data yet some groups in the market know the truth a few minutes before everyone else based on the way the markets move. BUT, I stopped on the day that the PHL airport preliminary report said the low of the day was 17 and then later than day the low was raised to 18. The way the market w…

it seems this could be solved by refusing last minute bets?

Data is released every minute, every five minutes, every hour, and then 6 hour high/low, and then mid-day preliminary reports, so there is no last-minute since any one of those reports could contain data (with various validation/rounding caveats) that could eliminate a market of temperatures, so there isn't really a last minute.

My conclusion was to focus on forecast and attempt to predict the temperature better than forecast vs. market implied probability rather than attempt to respond very quickly to published information. I learned (with my skills) the latter was a losing proposition, but the former isn't impossible (although also possibly beyond my skills it seems).

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

#155
post #28

'Predictions' market is the silliest loophole for gambling. Honestly, more surprised Fanduel, DraftKings and the like who have spent millions on lobbying and buying licenses, are not fighting tooth and nail on this.

Kalshi has Trump Jr on its board and is federally regulated. I'm not sure FanDuel and DraftKings will win that fight for the next 3 years.

[flagged]

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

#156
I agree that this is bad but the libertarian in me says "the market will resolve this because who in their right mind would be a counterparty to these bets knowing that there is so much insider trading?". But then again, many people are not in their right mind.

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

#157
post #62

Americans may be shocked to hear that in the rest of the world gambling has been a thing for centuries. We also have people under the age of 20 drinking alcohol. I am not suggesting in any way that gambling is good - but it wasnt invented last week in america

In Norway, gambling is controlled by a state monopoly, same as our alcohol sales. Probably for the same reasons.

Canada too, you buy liquor and lotto tickets from a crown corporation

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

#158
post #62

Americans may be shocked to hear that in the rest of the world gambling has been a thing for centuries. We also have people under the age of 20 drinking alcohol. I am not suggesting in any way that gambling is good - but it wasnt invented last week in america

Nonsense!

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

#159
post #17

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…

How does someone with a mere $10 stake have the opportunity to contribute to the cause of a $10mil disaster? Realistically, they'd have to be far more connected to the event, and as such, far more exposed to some kind of risk.

Pessimistically, i imagine that's what they meant by "enormous asymmetry between the cost to create/build and the cost to destroy". Like its a lot easier to destroy an art piece in a museum than to create one.

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

#160

The craziest thing here is that online gambling has been legal in the UK and Ireland for many years, and it's been such an obvious negative for those countries — and had been optimized brutally like any other tech product. When I moved over to the US a decade ago, I remember thinking 'well at least they're smart enough to have banned online gambling'. I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to…

Here in the Netherlands we have a big building housing a pro gambling lobbyist organization. Their sole goal is to bribe politicians and spread misinformation on public tv channels. A typical example of rottenness inside the western society.
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