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

npr.org

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

#61

Post by mullingitover »

autoexec wrote: post #59
mullingitover wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it tolerance for exploitation or are people just realizing that as poor as their odds are while gambling that's still the best chance they have to make the money they need. A healthy society offers the public better ways to have their needs meet, people gamble when they are desperate.

> or are people just realizing

It's a stretch to say that gambling is truly anyone's best option, so 'realizing' isn't the right word here. I'd go with "delusionalizing."

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

#62

Post by quantified »

SubmarineClub wrote: post #32
ecshafer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What blows my mind is how many “progressives” I know who really support this libertarian-style maximum “freedom.” I’ve been the stodgy conservative of my friend group saying “uh, maybe there was a good reason for banning this stuff?” Pretty funny, since I actually was a committed libertarian for a while.

It's a little easier to think about when you ignore people's addictive tendencies in the large.

It also takes a blind spot re the forces that will influence events based on betting. I don't care about point-shaving in college basketball (some great stories there, see the Bad Sports episode [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15402912/]. But other real-world outcomes are too important.

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

#63

Post by TheCoelacanth »

Whoppertime wrote: post #57
ratelimitsteve wrote: post #24

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'…

Doesn't the insurance market have the same moral hazard? If you are paying for fire insurance it promises you a bundle of cash if your business burns down. At that point if the finances of your company go into the red, your only chance of becoming whole financially might involve a fire, and then you start calling folks like Tony Soprano to find an arsonist

To an extent, but insurance also serves a vital economic function of allowing people to spread out risk.

The counter-parties in insurance are also sophisticated businesses who are highly motivated and capable of tracking down a significant portion of fraud.

The counter-party in prediction markets is other gamblers who usually have no ability to investigate fraud whatsoever. The prediction markets have some motivation to prevent fraud to protect their reputations but they don't directly lose any money from fraud, so they aren't going to do it nearly as effectively as an insurance company.

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

#65

Post by tzs »

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…

What are you talking about?

Kalshi and Polymarket having to do a wave of publicity to try to take off the heat over insider trading shows that the issue of insider trading is in fact dogging the industry.

The NPR article's level of discussion of insider trading is entirely appropriate for an article that is not about insider trading.

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

#66

Post by lovich »

tzs wrote: post #65
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…

What are you talking about? Kalshi and Polymarket having to do a wave of publicity to try to take off the heat over insider trading shows that the issue of insider trading is in fact dogging the industry. The NPR article's level of discussion of insider trading is entirely appropriate for an article that is not about insider trading.

if an analogy would work for you,

If my friend said they were planning on breaking and entering into homes to steal things for their income, and then complained that they were dogged by accusations of being a thief, I would call them out for being full of shit because they were getting called out for exactly what they planned on doing.

If your argument is that NPR was correct in their description as being dogged by claims of insider trading, then I believe you and I have a difference of opinion on the connotations of the term "dogged" when it comes to describing accusations levied against you for behavior you 100% planned on engaging in.

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

#67

Post by pandaman »

cogman10 wrote: post #33
buttercraft wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Option A: nicotine. Option B: nicotine plus a lot of really bad stuff. You're seriously questioning which is better?

Dose makes the poison and ecigs enable giving it's users 10x the nicotine you'd get from a single cigarette. I think you are right that cigs are less healthy, but I have to wonder if megadosing nicotine isn't also a pretty big problem.

Why do you think that? A cigarette contains 10-20 mg of nicotine depending on the tobacco blend used. The strongest e-liquid is 50-60 g/l so to get 10x nicotine of a mild cigarette you'd need to atomize 2ml of the strongest e-liquid. Coincidently, 2ml is the legal limit of disposable vapes in EU. So, to get nicotine of one pack (20) light cigarettes you'd need to empty two European vapes (provided they are filled with the strongest liquid and at the capacity cap). To get 10x nicotine of a pack-a-day smoker you need to vape 20 disposables a day, which seems like quite a feat to me both physically and financially.

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

#68

Post by cogman10 »

pandaman wrote: post #67
cogman10 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dose makes the poison and ecigs enable giving it's users 10x the nicotine you'd get from a single cigarette. I think you are right that cigs are less healthy, but I have to wonder if megadosing nicotine isn't also a pretty big problem.

Why do you think that? A cigarette contains 10-20 mg of nicotine depending on the tobacco blend used. The strongest e-liquid is 50-60 g/l so to get 10x nicotine of a mild cigarette you'd need to atomize 2ml of the strongest e-liquid. Coincidently, 2ml is the legal limit of disposable vapes in EU. So, to get nicotine of one pack (20) light cigarettes you'd need to empty two European vapes (provided they are filled wit…

A cigarette contains 10-20mg, but it's not readily available. On average, of those 10-20mg, you absorb only 1mg. [1]

My assumption, which could be faulty, is a lot more of the nicotine in the vape gets absorbed vs a cigarette.

[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/how-much-nicotine-...

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

#69

Post by tdeck »

amavect wrote: post #37
giancarlostoro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I see replies that keep repeating the same "it's got no smoke and tar so it must cause far less harm", as if common sense always matches reality. Coating the lungs with cooked propylene glycol and glycerine could cause similar harm to smoke and tar, or even entirely new harms, but I don't really know that. Use empiricism and share reviews, please. Direct health implications of e-cigarette use: a systematic scoping re…

The reality is that cigarette smoking was on the way out with young people before vapes came along. Whether it's less harmful isn't the only relevant point, if it's still harmful and has dramatically expanded the market then it's a bad thing.
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