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Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

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Re: Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

#11

Post by giancarlostoro »

tdeck wrote: post #9
recursivedoubts wrote: post #5

The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. From you had to know a guy to baseball TV announcers giving odds on a home run this inning in less than a decade. I know this is hard to conceive of, but there was a time when there were no gambling ads on TV! The crazy part? The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either!

Some time around 2015 I remember seeing Powell station in SF completely plastered with DraftKings ads and thinking "wait, I thought that was illegal". It seems to have only snowballed since then. In 2020 I was in downtown Philadelphia before the election and saw a massive screen with a Polymarket ad, and at that time Polymarket wasn't even legal in the US. From nicotine to gambling harmful habits that our society had…

Ecigs worry me the most since you really cannot tell what someone truly has in there, it could be nicotine, it could be “legal” THC or other random nonsense, I wouldnt know, it all looks the same.

I have a friend who gave up cigarettes for ecigs but he is actually doing it for the nicotine, saves him a fortune, he was smoking a pack a week in NYC.

My thing is, how healthy are ecigs compared to real cigarettes really?

Re: Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

#12

Post by grubbs »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #5

The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. From you had to know a guy to baseball TV announcers giving odds on a home run this inning in less than a decade. I know this is hard to conceive of, but there was a time when there were no gambling ads on TV! The crazy part? The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either!

I've mentioned this on HN before. But it's pretty disgusting that the DC Lottery can advertise here on local TV.

Re: Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

#13

Post by atmavatar »

mwigdahl wrote: post #7
lovich wrote: post #4

Yet another article where the media is sanewashing the subject at hand > Then there's the potential for insider trading, something that has dogged the prediction market industry, … From a 2025 article [1] > Coplan said, “Nobody is under the impression that nobody knows the answer, right? Like, of course, there’s people who are working on it that know when it’s going to come. And I think what’s cool about Polymarket i…

There's big money in it, so of course there's going to be a huge PR push to cast it as a great moral and societal good. The thing that gets me is that the rationalists who were such outspoken proponents of prediction markets (look up "futarchy" and the many positive articles about it) failed to predict the astonishing amounts of corruption that have come along for the ride with them.

Strictly speaking, we cannot say for sure they didn't predict the corruption -- merely that they didn't warn about it.

For all we know, they're participating in the corruption, which is why they were outspoken proponents.

Re: Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

#14

Post by mullingitover »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #5

The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. From you had to know a guy to baseball TV announcers giving odds on a home run this inning in less than a decade. I know this is hard to conceive of, but there was a time when there were no gambling ads on TV! The crazy part? The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either!

Gambling legalization historically happens in waves following economic downturns because society’s tolerance for exploitation increases. It’s fundamentally a regressive tax that healthy societies won’t tolerate.

Re: Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

#15

Post by ecshafer »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #5

The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. From you had to know a guy to baseball TV announcers giving odds on a home run this inning in less than a decade. I know this is hard to conceive of, but there was a time when there were no gambling ads on TV! The crazy part? The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either!

I am hard-line on this. Sports betting and prediction markets should be banned. Casinos should be banned. Scratch offs should be banned. Its feeding into the worst tendencies of people and hurts the most disadvantaged families. People playing a poker game with their friends, or buying a super bowl square at their bar isn't great but at least it was off to the side and hidden. We have a large chesterson's fence level experiment in society where all of these good ideas the progressives have had to keep society civil and healthy in the late 1800s and early 1900s, have slowly been removed, to terrible results.

Re: Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

#16

Post by LargeWu »

atmavatar wrote: post #13
mwigdahl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's big money in it, so of course there's going to be a huge PR push to cast it as a great moral and societal good. The thing that gets me is that the rationalists who were such outspoken proponents of prediction markets (look up "futarchy" and the many positive articles about it) failed to predict the astonishing amounts of corruption that have come along for the ride with them.

Strictly speaking, we cannot say for sure they didn't predict the corruption -- merely that they didn't warn about it. For all we know, they're participating in the corruption, which is why they were outspoken proponents.

Of course they're participating, even driving it. Notably there were large bets placed predicting imminent military actions in Iran and Venezuela. In at least one case it was verifiably placed by one of the individuals planning it. We've reached the point where our country's leaders can profit not by the outcome of the war, but even just by the very act of initiating it.

Re: Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

#17

Post by imglorp »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #5

The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. From you had to know a guy to baseball TV announcers giving odds on a home run this inning in less than a decade. I know this is hard to conceive of, but there was a time when there were no gambling ads on TV! The crazy part? The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either!

For a while, we had tons of alcohol and cigarette ads. At some point they were both deemed catastrophically harmful to society. Maybe prediction markets end up there?

Re: Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

#18

Post by jerf »

mullingitover wrote: post #14
recursivedoubts wrote: post #5

The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. From you had to know a guy to baseball TV announcers giving odds on a home run this inning in less than a decade. I know this is hard to conceive of, but there was a time when there were no gambling ads on TV! The crazy part? The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either!

Gambling legalization historically happens in waves following economic downturns because society’s tolerance for exploitation increases. It’s fundamentally a regressive tax that healthy societies won’t tolerate.

There's a number of these problems that end up in a cycle because the solution to some problem is so effective that a later generation forgets what the problem even was. So they remove the solutions. Then they rediscover why they were there in the first place.

It's a Chesterton's Oscillating Fence, on a generation time scale.

Re: Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

#19

Post by water-data-dude »

mwigdahl wrote: post #7
lovich wrote: post #4

Yet another article where the media is sanewashing the subject at hand > Then there's the potential for insider trading, something that has dogged the prediction market industry, … From a 2025 article [1] > Coplan said, “Nobody is under the impression that nobody knows the answer, right? Like, of course, there’s people who are working on it that know when it’s going to come. And I think what’s cool about Polymarket i…

There's big money in it, so of course there's going to be a huge PR push to cast it as a great moral and societal good. The thing that gets me is that the rationalists who were such outspoken proponents of prediction markets (look up "futarchy" and the many positive articles about it) failed to predict the astonishing amounts of corruption that have come along for the ride with them.

I was never rabid about it, but I thought prediction markets were a cool idea for a while. I didn't anticipate all of the crazy second order effects.

Re: Kalshi attacks a Wisconsin law banning election bets as 'voter suppression'

#20

Post by bigbuppo »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #5

The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. From you had to know a guy to baseball TV announcers giving odds on a home run this inning in less than a decade. I know this is hard to conceive of, but there was a time when there were no gambling ads on TV! The crazy part? The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either!

I'm not completely anti-gambling, but I'm of the mind that if you're going to gamble away your life savings you should at least be required to put on pants and go to a sketchy betting parlor. Online gambling platforms make it too easy.
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