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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'

#21

Post by tiffanyh »

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!

Crypto + Betting is a match made in heaven.

Both audiences are super speculative.

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

#22

Post by [deleted] »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #11
tdeck wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#23

Post by rozab »

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…

The experience we have of sports betting shows that even extraordinarily well compensated sportspeople will cheat to influence events due to greed. That's not such a big problem for something that fundamentally does not matter (sports outcomes). As you apply it to things that do matter, like political appointments, actions in warzones, and even weather measurements, people will and have changed these outcomes to make money.

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

#24

Post by ratelimitsteve »

The ability to bet on the outcome of any event is a guarantee of corruption in any event. We've seen the president's teleprompter operator bet on his speeches, we've seen journalists threatened in an attempt to get them to reword an article in order to resolve a bet differently, we've seen several sports betting scandals. What we haven't seen is any indication that this will get better without regulation, and now we're seeing betting markets fight like hell to introduce their rot into the institutions at the bedrock of our society. It needs to stop.

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

#25

Post by totallyhuman »

water-data-dude wrote: post #19
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.

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.

Same here. I soured on it a bit when I noticed them becoming a bit of a rhetorical stick, "well if you think you're right, go place a bet!". I guess that's good if you want people to only make claims they seriously believe in, but it had a tendency to shut down discussion, and I feel like there's something valuable in being able to discuss and debate without the expectation that being right should be rewarded with money, and being wrong should be punished with same.

The negative second-order effects I expected were more about people concealing information and analysis that they otherwise would have shared, replacing complex but informative discussions with a black-box oracle. Boy was I wrong.

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

#26

Post by ratelimitsteve »

imglorp wrote: post #17
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?

unfortunately the dominant ideology right now states that the ability to do catastrophic harm to both yourself and society in general is fundamental to the nature of freedom, and is therefore paramount.

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

#27

Post by iwontberude »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #11
tdeck wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Way healthier, it’s not even a comparison. Cigarettes have particulates that are not bioavailable and create the black lung tissue. Here in California we have banned any flavors from nicotine vapes so it’s very straight forward. The best vapes anymore are THC, due to psychoactive effects and flavors, similar level of safety to nicotine.

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

#28

Post by dsabanin »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #11
tdeck wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In a society where government is not participating in helping people with their health care, what moral right does it have to make "unhealthy" things illegal?

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

#29

Post by buttercraft »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #11
tdeck wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Option A: nicotine.

Option B: nicotine plus a lot of really bad stuff.

You're seriously questioning which is better?

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

#30

Post by cogman10 »

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!

> The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either!

Not really true in the US. (I take what you are saying to mean there weren't any/many pharmaceutical commercials a decade ago)

Here's one from the 2000s that ended up maming about 10,000 people. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTUoeaQGL1s

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