101–110 of 116 posts
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I find this argument entirely unconvincing. AWS’s massive outage lead to a significant jump in the stock price. No single grunt level employee has the power to affect any large company’s share price.
Yeah that’s why I said prediction markets, not stock markets. In a prediction market you’re betting directly on something like “AWS has a major outrage on or before May 12th”.
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Why though. This is a dead serious question, what is the difference in using financial derivatives and prediction markets. Both are a transaction between parties that is influenced by some other underlying event. Why is it ok for the event to be a stock price, but not ok for it to be a sports match?
The financial derivatives are (supposed to be) regulated, there's laws against insider trading that keep the market fair. For sports betting there's laws against match fixing. The prediction market CEOs on the other hand seem to be actively encouraging insider trading and match fixing, it's practically their main selling point.
So they can vote themselves out to do the right thing, and they purposefully allowing themselves to invest in the stock market with insider information. My cynicism tells me they are throwing this bone to divert attention from the stock market loophole
better is always good when something you think is bad gets better but not better enough, say "more please"
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There is a valid purpose for (some) trades in a prediction market, namely as a form of insurance/risk management for specific risks a company or individual might have. For example, if you are a company whose current business would be severely hurt if a particular piece of legislation passes, it might make sense to hedge that risk by placing a bet on a prediction market that the legislation will pass. That way, if you…
And another thing... What is the harm of malfunctioning insider dominated prediction markets, other than those hedging possibilities evaporating? I am not taking a position, I am wondering. When they started they were an academic curiosity and experiment. Now they are becoming a social phenomenon are they more harmful than, say, stamp collecting? "Fools and their money" is OK so long as the fools are truly volunteeri…
I don't give a shit about the addicts losing their money on those markets, I don't want bad decisions to be made that affect me, when the main incentive for making them is fleecing the addicts of their money.
They are just bribery with extra steps.
The real with prediction markets problem is that people can make bets, then alter outcomes to match those bets. This is a well-known issue in sports betting (e.g. taking a fall), and I don't see how we're going to prevent it for things that matter a whole lot more than sports.
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> Often the senator's aides earn more than the senators themselves. Fine. People motivated by money should take jobs other than sitting in Congress.
Not paying officials enough leads to bribery and corruption. Take away their avenue for insider trading, but let them make a healthy living off it in my opinion.
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> Often the senator's aides earn more than the senators themselves. Fine. People motivated by money should take jobs other than sitting in Congress.
~Everybody is motivated by money or else not motivated at all. Money is potential energy for essentially any objective you might have, whether that's developing new tech or donating to charity. By cutting money out, you just select for the subset of people who are more motivated by power or status or who already have more money than they know what to do with.
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What can Congresscritters expense? I'd assume they need to travel between their home state and DC frequently. Would lodging for work where they do not have a home be expensable somewhere? Isn't the solution to needing two homes to do the job for the government to provide that as a work expense rather than permitting funky financial hijinks?
It’s better than it used to be. Since 2023 House members can expense up to $30k / year in travel costs and lodging in DC. Prior to that, they had to eat those costs which were estimated to average around $28k per year based on number of days in session.