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How Kalshi Infects the News

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Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#151
post #131
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 elect…

> you can always find a plausible sounding excuse why failure is inevitable

I think this starts to make an inferred narrative about how failure is inevitable and that its excessive complaining, when there is large amounts of data showing how it is genuinely more difficult.

Just your Ukrainian example, it was cheaper to live 25 years ago, the cost of college has gone up ~180%. Since 2001 incomes have gone up 64% while housing has gone up 136%, healthcare up 180%, food up 100% and transportation up 120%. Thats a different playing field.

The point being made isn't that failure has any inevitability. Most people will be able to make it work enough to live, and those who can't due to choices, trauma, disability, drug use, or excessive bad luck are the homeless people you see begging on freeway offramps and intersections. At the economy level its a numbers game. It will never be impossible to make it big, in the same way that some people with every single advantage will end up on the street without a penny.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#152
post #91
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's instilled into society at every level in the US. If your company offers an FSA, it's asking to make a gamble on how much medical needs you'll have in the next 1 year. The "smart" way to write the tax law would be to just let taxpayers deduct whatever medical expenses they have at tax reporting time. But instead, they want you to make a bet because you're highly likely to either (a) not use all of it and…

> If your company offers an FSA, it's asking to make a gamble on how much medical needs you'll have in the next 1 year. Conflating this with gambling is dishonest. I'll grant you that I've always viewed the way FSA is structured is weird, but this is absolutely not gambling unless you're completely unaware. If you have any regular, annual medical expenses that are out of pocket, or plan to purchase any of the very wi…

The non-gambling way of doing this would be to just tax deduct all of that stuff at tax time based on what you ACTUALLY spend.

Being forced to plan it and "lose it if you don't spend it" IS gambling, in my book.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#153
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not conflating anything here. Nobody should be asked to make bets on their medical needs. They should just be allowed to tax deduct everything when the need arises. You ARE almost-guaranteed to lose the FSA game, basically. You'll either bet too much or too little, and the collective house wins either way. In my opinion, it's even more sickening that the system is designed to scalp a few extra bucks off of people…

Nobody should be asked to make bets on their medical needs. Your entire argument sounds very much like how certain religions are against insurance because they view it as gambling. It's led to the rise of an even riskier practice of shared health benefit pools, which market themselves as not being insurance even though they're pretty much the same thing as "mutual insurance," except that when you need them most, sudd…

> there are plenty of over-the-counter everyday goods

Yep, that's how you've been sucked into the system. Oh, you didn't spend as much as you planned? We'll steal the rest of the budget unless you go buy some name-brand Tylenol that you don't actually need just to fill up the hard-earned money that you marked up as FSA that are on the verge of being stolen. That's the flip side of the casino: either the FSA admin pockets your cash, or Tylenol (TM) pockets your cash, or the IRS pockets your cash, depending on which direction in the triangle you mis-priced your needs.

Also, generic acetaminophen is cheap, and works just as well. If you're buying name-brand Tylenol just to fill up remnant FSA dollars, you aren't saving money.

> you WILL use up that FSA. Every. Single. Year.

It's strictly better to abolish the FSA and just let you tax-deduct your medical expenses. You win, the young ones also win. But no, the system wants to put the FSA casino in the way so that it can bank a few extra dollars off the young folks.

If you don't see it blindingly obvious that this is strictly better, and STILL want to play the FSA game, you've either been brainwashed by the system as well, or you've become part of the system in upholding something that is predatory.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#154
post #93
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's instilled into society at every level in the US. If your company offers an FSA, it's asking to make a gamble on how much medical needs you'll have in the next 1 year. The "smart" way to write the tax law would be to just let taxpayers deduct whatever medical expenses they have at tax reporting time. But instead, they want you to make a bet because you're highly likely to either (a) not use all of it and…

Well, then any insurance is also gambling, according to your argument. Mean return of buying insurance must be always worse than not buying, but you don't want it to happen to _you_. PS: except for home insurance in hurricane areas, government allows insurance plans to be non-actuarial, so essentially all other taxpayers pay for destroyed homes there. Gov even promotes rebuilding destroyed homes in the same place, in…

> Well, then any insurance is also gambling

It literally is. You're buying a YES token on a black swan event that pays you if that event happens. The entire American system is built on gambling, and that's my point.

If you want, and you're good at math, you can even buy such insurance from Kalshi. Hell, if you're worried about an alien attack, you can buy insurance against that on Kalshi by buying the $0.05 YES for that. If aliens attack and mess us all up, you get a payout of $1. You can insure yourself against politics, against a market crash, against war, lots of other things. See my point? Insurance IS gambling.

BTW, there are other countries where healthcare is almost free and you don't need to buy insurance.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#155
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 elect…

> you can always find a plausible sounding excuse why failure is inevitable I think this starts to make an inferred narrative about how failure is inevitable and that its excessive complaining, when there is large amounts of data showing how it is genuinely more difficult. Just your Ukrainian example, it was cheaper to live 25 years ago, the cost of college has gone up ~180%. Since 2001 incomes have gone up 64% while…

Rule of thumb for survival vs sober reality. nradov provides the mindset needed to survive, you provide the wisdom of risks and challenges to be aware of.

Today a dreaming Ukrainian is quite likely to instead get ripped away by conscription kidnapping teams and used as cannon fodder on the front, and not even make it to America. The reality changes but the rule of thumb is still good, you do the best with what you have and make yourself ready for opportunity you might not ever get.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#156
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony being that gambling is about as far from "guaranteed" or "stable" as you can get. But it does fit the ultralibertarian mindset best, I guess. The right to the pursuit of happiness, not to actually getting it.

The best way to win at gambling is to be the house.

Really it's the only way to win at gambling.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#157
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know what you mean, I mean I made a million dollars with only a small hundred million dollar loan from my dad! This sort of entrepreneurship is available to anyone in America.¹ ¹ Terms and conditions apply.

The propagation of this type of mindset is more damaging than the gambling.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#158
post #140
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'm not going tit for tat on corruption. If you treat this like team sports and fail to hold "your side" accountable then you deserve all the misery you'll inevitably receive. God help you

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#160
post #6

It's amazing how naked it is that laws just don't apply to certain people. Kalshi et al are obviously gambling, and yet somehow all the laws about gambling have been politely forgotten by law enforcement.

Is it obviously gambling? Would it be any different if a large financial institution sold prediction market securities?

Somewhere between 70 and 90% of Kalshi event contracts are sports betting. This is obviously gambling.

Much of the remainder is silly stuff like 'how many times will Elon Musk tweet this week' with no predictive value. Again, gambling.

Ironically they've banned a bunch of the genuinely predictive stuff like 'will this town in Ukraine be attacked this week' on public policy grounds.

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