How Kalshi Infects the News • Hacker News Board

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#131

Post by nradov » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #96

nradov wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That perception bears almost no relation to reality. The most reliable path to building a modicum of wealth has remained the same for generations: start a small business in some boring field and work your ass off for 80 hrs/wk. Building wealth through real estate is also still totally possible outside of the HCOL metro areas. Try unfashionable areas like Cleveland or Oklahoma City. And let's not have any low-effort c…

Just start a small business, or build wealth through real estate is a take that indicates some severe divorce from the reality of poverty in America. You need both capital (which folks don’t have access to) and the ability to absorb risk (which folks don’t have access to). Similar advice is in the vein of just stay with your parents for free, have a relative invest $50,000 in your business to start it up. This runs c…

If you try hard enough you can always find a plausible sounding excuse why failure is inevitable. And yet on Saturday at the neighborhood Independence Day party I met a guy who immigrated from Ukraine about 25 years ago with no money, no college education, no family support, and no English language skills. Instead of complaining he just went to work and while not exactly wealthy he's now doing fairly well as an electrical contractor.

Life is usually a struggle. No one should expect any different.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#132

Post by Analemma_ » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:30 PM UTC

throwitaway222 wrote: post #128

Analemma_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Building wealth through real estate” should not be possible, and it’s half the reason we’re in this mess: people treating their homes as a store of wealth and blocking new construction to protect the value of their investment has locked young people out of the housing market. Hence all the gambling. What you should be hoping is that YIMBY policies carry the day in the end and “building wealth through real estate” is…

> Building wealth through real estate should not be possible I am sympathetic to this argument, but there are problems. How do you get homes built if you make this change?

Construction companies can still turn a profit building and selling them. The idea is that houses should be depreciating assets, like cars. If houses are appreciating in value it means you're not building enough of them.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#133

Post by myrmidon » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

throwitaway222 wrote: post #128

Analemma_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Building wealth through real estate” should not be possible, and it’s half the reason we’re in this mess: people treating their homes as a store of wealth and blocking new construction to protect the value of their investment has locked young people out of the housing market. Hence all the gambling. What you should be hoping is that YIMBY policies carry the day in the end and “building wealth through real estate” is…

> Building wealth through real estate should not be possible I am sympathetic to this argument, but there are problems. How do you get homes built if you make this change?

By people paying for houses they actually want to live in?

Real estate as "investment" is not helping anything here; it hurts home availability, first because prospective homeowners have to compete with capital that just wants to use those as store of value/for rentseeking (driving up demand/prices) and secondly because this creates incentives against building more houses (because that hurts those real estate "investors").

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#134

Post by ndiddy » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

kevinob11 wrote: post #39

aqme28 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the gambling industry is going to have a much wealthier and more powerful lobby than any effort to displace it.

How in the world do we get money out of politics? I want to so so so badly, but I have no idea how to successfully do it. I can't even figure it out as a thought exercise.

Any sort of reform that would successfully get money out of politics would require a constitutional amendment. I have little faith that the current Congress would pass any sort of amendment that would eliminate the system they benefit from unless there was at least a reasonable possibility that the states would call for an Article V convention, but the state legislatures also benefit from the current corrupt system so I don't see this happening either. You can't wholesale replace Congress either because the lack of term limits and the staggered terms means that the special interest groups that benefit from corruption will try to primary candidates before you can build up a critical mass (see what happened to Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush).

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#135

Post by s1artibartfast » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #132

throwitaway222 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building wealth through real estate should not be possible I am sympathetic to this argument, but there are problems. How do you get homes built if you make this change?

Construction companies can still turn a profit building and selling them. The idea is that houses should be depreciating assets, like cars. If houses are appreciating in value it means you're not building enough of them.

or that the cost to build them is going up.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#136

Post by spike021 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

jorts wrote: post #32

spike021 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even something that should be as fun as collecting and trading cards (baseball, pokemon, etc.) revolves around "pull odds" for rare cards. There are people spending thousands of dollars monthly just to rip a desirable card they could flip for money that in most cases would never make up for how much they spent just buying packs and boxes of the product.

I was taking an Uber from Sonoma back to the Bay, and the driver was one of those people. He wouldn't stop talking about how he was spending thousands a month on rare cards, then reselling them, all the while losing money, his wife, etc.

I really got into baseball cards a few years back. It is fun to collect for favorite players and all but once you realize it's a money pit you either are too deep and addicted or you're able to wean yourself back off it.

Fortunately it was the latter for me. I'd love to keep buying the stuff but it's such a waste. Better to buy singles I actually want. It's just not as fun as me being the one who pulled the card.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#137

Post by pacman1337 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

baggachipz wrote: post #3

The unprecedented era of gambling on literally everything everywhere is an absolute cancer on society, made completely legal by absolute greed and degeneracy at the highest levels of government. I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle (amongst many detrimental genies).

Adults should have the freedom to gamble if they feel like gambling. I don't like the government trying to daddy me. If I want to blow my money on some stupid bet that is my problem. As long as the rules are clear and fair then it should absolutely be legal. CNN not disclosing is bad, but that has nothing to do with gambling in general.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#138

Post by gordian-mind » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

tsunamifury wrote: post #102

We are reaching a new post-rational or neu-rational stage of our society which i think many HNers and educated people will find deeply uncomfortable The difficult truth is that as we've engeineered our society over the last 50 years into more and more deterministic outcomes, and began to assign morality itself TO determinism. Where in we've reached a point where when we must face that life is probablistic (i.e. gambl…

Personally I see nothing wrong with prediction markets, so it feels weird to see people around here freak about it as if it was the antichrist put in place by .

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#139

Post by nradov » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #132

throwitaway222 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Building wealth through real estate should not be possible I am sympathetic to this argument, but there are problems. How do you get homes built if you make this change?

Construction companies can still turn a profit building and selling them. The idea is that houses should be depreciating assets, like cars. If houses are appreciating in value it means you're not building enough of them.

Most houses do depreciate, or they require frequent expenses just to maintain their value which amounts to the same thing. There are occasionally exceptions to this rule in times of rapid construction price inflation but that's rare.

It's the land under the house that typically appreciates. Land is unlikely to depreciate unless the broader regional economy declines.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#140

Post by Pxtl » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 5:50 PM UTC

datakan wrote: post #95

miltonlost wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some states are trying to fight against Kalshi. One of the problems is the President's family has a financial interest in these markets and so the Republican party does their best to say "hey, these are clearly "swaps" and not bets!!!1!" https://www.yogonet.com/international/news/2026/06/29/125136...

Sure lets act like Democrats are innocent little victims in all of this

Yeah, I think we all remember how Hunter Biden tried to get tips from white-house associated UFC organizers about whether the fight was rigged or if there were any injuries that would help him know how to bet on the fight.

Oh wait, I'm sorry, my mistake, that was Eric Trump.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/pic-eric-trump-requests-in...