How Kalshi Infects the News • Hacker News Board

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#171

Post by throwitaway222 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 8:54 PM UTC

taurath wrote: post #151

nradov wrote: 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…

Or you can think differently, 4 families can buy a 1 acre land plot, 5 or 6 children and a couple dads then start building a modest house (maybe 1200sqft) and then resell the entire thing in about a year for 4 times the land-only price. Suddenly 4 families that were making 25k each per year have $1.3m from some tiny plot they bought in the Santa Cruz mountains. Then they do it again and again and again. This is LITERALLY not even that hard to do today.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#172

Post by mothballed » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:07 PM UTC

throwitaway222 wrote: post #171

taurath wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Or you can think differently, 4 families can buy a 1 acre land plot, 5 or 6 children and a couple dads then start building a modest house (maybe 1200sqft) and then resell the entire thing in about a year for 4 times the land-only price. Suddenly 4 families that were making 25k each per year have $1.3m from some tiny plot they bought in the Santa Cruz mountains. Then they do it again and again and again. This is LITER…

The step of building the house for your family at an incredible discount vs buying can work a lot of places. It's not very repeatable to do it commercially though. I DIY'd my entire house for extremely cheap but even in one of the most generous spots in the USA they only allow me to build a house once every 5 years and I have to file a sworn affidavit I do not intend to sell or profit off of it. If you want to do this as a business proposition as a random unlicensed person you'll be fronting all your own capital and then looking at about 5-6 year turnaround per time, and the buyer likely won't be able to use a mortgage, plus (in my case at least) I'd be subject to prosecution if it came to light I was doing that for a living. The smaller scale version of this is motorcycle/car curb-flippers that don't spend a gazillion dollars securing a dealership license, probably a bit more accessible but again as soon as the state or real dealerships get a sniff you're fucked.

I can recommend doing this to make a house for your own family but I think you have to be a bit insane to front your own money to build houses in almost anywhere in California as a business proposition unless you have a contracting license, which is to say, you already were able to make a decent living. I only got away with doing it for my family because all the people who could have brought the insane rules down upon me were kind enough to realize it was just a family trying to survive, they'd have fucked me with all sorts of inspections, shenanigans with the utility company, having trouble getting water, trades licensing, engineering stamps and plans, etc if they'd have gotten a sniff I had done this "again and again."

This kind of stuff did work fairly well up until in the 60s/70s before developers got in bed with the regulators/planning and zoning boards. Back then a guy and his truck could become a developer easily.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#173

Post by nradov » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

throwitaway222 wrote: post #169

nradov wrote: 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…

This is why immigrants are often the most exemplar people of the American Dream today. Most of the people today pushing socialist or communist agendas are not these immigrants, but instead children of very wealthy company owners that only saw a downward trend from their parent's trajectory. It's from that privileged that they found fighting for other people their cause. However it's misguided and they don't even unde…

Most socialists and communists have an ideological blind spot in that they don't understand how to create any wealth in the first place. Based on their policy proposals they implicitly seem to believe that the means of production just appear from somewhere, like a gift from a benevolent parent. And that wealth can be redistributed based on ideological whims without destroying it — or without preventing it from being created in the first place. This is an example of magical thinking.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#174

Post by throwitaway222 » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:31 PM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #172

throwitaway222 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you can think differently, 4 families can buy a 1 acre land plot, 5 or 6 children and a couple dads then start building a modest house (maybe 1200sqft) and then resell the entire thing in about a year for 4 times the land-only price. Suddenly 4 families that were making 25k each per year have $1.3m from some tiny plot they bought in the Santa Cruz mountains. Then they do it again and again and again. This is LITER…

The step of building the house for your family at an incredible discount vs buying can work a lot of places. It's not very repeatable to do it commercially though. I DIY'd my entire house for extremely cheap but even in one of the most generous spots in the USA they only allow me to build a house once every 5 years and I have to file a sworn affidavit I do not intend to sell or profit off of it. If you want to do thi…

Sure, may be more difficult in Santa Cruz, but fairly typical in 90% of the country. And families that would dare do this, probably know 5 GCs that stamp their name.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#175

Post by mrguyorama » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:38 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #76

rescripting wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a market for the gamblification of everything because there is no other widely accessible path for young people to build a future. A college degree is no longer a guaranteed path to a stable, well paying job. Building wealth through real estate is no longer viable. With no clear options the only visible path to building a modicum of wealth is timing the next big crypto rugpull, hitting a 5 leg parlay, rippin…

> There is a market for the gamblification of everything because there is no other widely accessible path for young people to build a future. Gambling is the closest we've come to figuring out how to directly tax hope.

People who say they use gambling to "dream" or "Hope" are just coping.

You don't have to spend a single penny to dream or hope some sort of better outcome for yourself in the next few days that has much better odds than winning the lottery.

They just like gambling.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#176

Post by mothballed » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:41 PM UTC

throwitaway222 wrote: post #174

mothballed wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The step of building the house for your family at an incredible discount vs buying can work a lot of places. It's not very repeatable to do it commercially though. I DIY'd my entire house for extremely cheap but even in one of the most generous spots in the USA they only allow me to build a house once every 5 years and I have to file a sworn affidavit I do not intend to sell or profit off of it. If you want to do thi…

Sure, may be more difficult in Santa Cruz, but fairly typical in 90% of the country. And families that would dare do this, probably know 5 GCs that stamp their name.

If you know 5 GCs well enough to sign off for liability on your work, it's not necessarily a bad plan, but at that point, you're already bootstrapped enough to squarely make it into the middle class, as you could have just been offering to the public under that license or as an unlicensed sub to those 5 GCs.

I don't hate the idea but it's not a bootstrapping plan. It's a plan for someone already bootstrapped.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#177

Post by taurath » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:49 PM UTC

throwitaway222 wrote: post #171

taurath wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Or you can think differently, 4 families can buy a 1 acre land plot, 5 or 6 children and a couple dads then start building a modest house (maybe 1200sqft) and then resell the entire thing in about a year for 4 times the land-only price. Suddenly 4 families that were making 25k each per year have $1.3m from some tiny plot they bought in the Santa Cruz mountains. Then they do it again and again and again. This is LITER…

“Just think differently” but the answer starts with have a pile of money

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#178

Post by nradov » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 9:56 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #108

topgrain2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also: the healthcare system, and the military. We pump spectacular amounts of money (~10% of GDP in the former case based on diffing high-end-of-normal healthcare costs for peer states with ours, and who knows how much in the latter but probably around the same) into white collar and blue collar (respectively) jobs programs and wage-supplementation that buy us basically nothing . A ton worse than a proper jobs pr…

The military thing is a much bigger flywheel. A lot of technology really comes out of military research or is supported in key ways by military projects. Healthcare was similar until the wage stagnation really started impacting the ability to deliver service. It went from 9% of GDP in 1970 to 19% today, supported by payroll that has risen way under inflation. About 20% of the US economy is killing people, 20% healing…

Something like a quarter of all US healthcare spending is "low value care" which isn't justified by evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. It isn't healing people and often harms them. We have a huge problem with waste, fraud, and abuse.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#179

Post by mullingitover » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:00 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #175

mullingitover wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a market for the gamblification of everything because there is no other widely accessible path for young people to build a future. Gambling is the closest we've come to figuring out how to directly tax hope.

People who say they use gambling to "dream" or "Hope" are just coping. You don't have to spend a single penny to dream or hope some sort of better outcome for yourself in the next few days that has much better odds than winning the lottery. They just like gambling.

> They just like gambling.

So why to people suffering from poverty like gambling so much more than everyone else?

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#180

Post by nradov » Mon, Jul 06, 2026, 10:00 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #154

deepsun wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

But will those other countries protect you from an alien attack for free?