371–380 of 741 posts
The entire country seems built on taking advantage of people, from my vantage point right now. Whether it’s attention, drugs, or business/legal leverage, everyone is out for advantage and they’re not even pretending to care about people they affect.
“Not even pretending to care about the people they elect.”
There, I fixed it for you.
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or even if they are pro-gambling jeez would you never be able to work with someone you disagreed with politically
Having your job eligibility depend on your boss aligning with your personal morals on topics that have nothing to do with work is terrible I'm surprised there's so much support for this in these HN comments.
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I'm still reeling from the fact that the sitting president pumped some meme coin the day (iirc) he took office. And this largely passed by without any consequence, reckoning, or repercussions. It's just accepted now that even the highest office will scam their own supporters
The US government and private interests are clearly incentivized to keep the crypto industry subdued to a chaotic casino. Participants engage willingly. If crypto is legitimized, it threatens the US dollar, sanctions regime and the US’s ability to project power as the world leading reserve currency. The president and any other shitcoin operator know this and are playing the game on the field. Every country has the sa…
This is worded like it's something negative, but I honestly fail to see what exactly. Tokens will be pushed to grey market, and? They are already fully utilizing grey and black markets, half of the worlds drug, arm and sanctioned oil trade is done in these shittokens. Cutting out the legal bridges and exchanges would reduce total amount of legal liquidity and on/off ramps and not not change grey and black markets much, since criminals are already operating there.
Instead it would cut a lot of the "legal" schemes by which country elites are laundering bribes and evade taxes. At least part of the schemes.
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…
> 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.
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…
All this fearmongering about decision markets lately is really annoying. If you don't like gambling — just don't gamble and shut the fuck up. It's not for you to decide if gambling is good or bad for me. If I am stupid enough to bet anything on an outcome that clearly depends on a person who could, potentially, be betting as well — it's my problem, not yours.
This puts plenty of people who shouldn't gamble into debt and lowers their societal fitness.
The other side of the gamble is probably losing on average too. Only the house and infrequent insiders win.
These private companies are fleecing our economy's dynamicity without reinvesting it in aligned positive externalities.
It's a cancer.
At least the lottery goes to education, in theory. My college was subsidized by the lotto, so there's that.
Kalshi and PolyMarket aren't doing anything positive.
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Personal liberties are overrated, and a functioning society is underrated. OnlyFans, sports betting, and junk food appeal to some people with low impulse control and high time preference in the short term, but have massive negative consequences on everyone in the long run.
Personal liberties being overrated is a wild take. I feel like this is one of those things that is easy to say when it isn't something you are interested in being infringed upon. I would be curious if you would feel the same way if people were trying to ban something you want to do.
These prediction markets shouldn't be allowed for situations where humans can control the outcome. They do have their place however - one I find particularly interesting is weather prediction markets, primary because they end up having a net benefit. Hundreds are creating their own weather prediction models and are duking it out. Over time these models get better, and the rest of us benefit. I think these markets cou…
Humans already control the weather: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding.
We already have an example of humans sabotaging the measurement of weather: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41684440. Two ranchers sabotaged weather monitoring stations in order to fraudulently collect millions in drought insurance. One of the farmhands involved ended up dead.
And we have an example of prediction markets attempting to manipulate reporting of events: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47397822.
I have a hard time believing weather prediction markets will be net beneficial. The incentive for sabotage & manipulation up and down the chain seems likely to lead to worse weather predictions overall.
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I saw someone say recently "hobbies are a luxury" and I tend to agree. Think back decades ago and you had a single person or a family supported by a single income who could afford the rent or to buy their house and put their kids through college. By the late 1970s and 1980s the balance had shifted to where more households than not had both parents working. Then people started having multiple jobs. This was in part be…
> The problem is capitalism Capitalist countries build walls to keep people out. Socialist countries build walls to keep people in.
The double edged brilliance/danger of capitalism is that it constantly opens up and moves into new markets. This is good, it means once the market determines a need, capital investment can accelerate production of the good that meets that need.
But the flip side is it is coming for everything. Everything will be marketized and monetized and accelerated and made efficient. And there are genuine problems with that.
Regulation has been the historical response, but we've seen concentrated wealth chip away at regulations for decades or even rip them apart overnight.
This is a contradiction that needs to be resolved. One can be pro-capitalism or anti-capitalism and come to the same conclusion.
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I saw someone say recently "hobbies are a luxury" and I tend to agree. Think back decades ago and you had a single person or a family supported by a single income who could afford the rent or to buy their house and put their kids through college. By the late 1970s and 1980s the balance had shifted to where more households than not had both parents working. Then people started having multiple jobs. This was in part be…
> The problem is capitalism Capitalist countries build walls to keep people out. Socialist countries build walls to keep people in.