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9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight

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Re: 9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight

#171

Post by jfengel »

consp wrote: post #122
skissane wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not sure a vote of non-confidence would have helped here — there are only two parties. But why are there only two parties? The rest of the Anglosphere–Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK–have multiparty systems–some are more multiparty than others, but none of them have the hard two-party system that the US has, in which third parties have a very marginal role (not completely marginal – e.g. in a c…

I dont see how the uk system's small parties are not marginalized. The larger parties still claim outright majorities with 35% of the votes or less (last time 172 seat majority with 33.2% of the votes) so they are irellevant. If I am not mistaken all disruptions to fpp two party systems eventually settle back into them, maybe not the same parties but two nonetheless.

The smaller parties are all aligned with one of the two major parties. In a lot of ways they act more like caucuses than separate parties. Like Bernie Sanders being "independent".

That's overstating it, but it's why the largest group always can form a government. They go to the same aligned parties looking for a majority.

Re: 9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight

#172

Post by jfengel »

nkrisc wrote: post #127
skissane wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not sure a vote of non-confidence would have helped here — there are only two parties. But why are there only two parties? The rest of the Anglosphere–Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK–have multiparty systems–some are more multiparty than others, but none of them have the hard two-party system that the US has, in which third parties have a very marginal role (not completely marginal – e.g. in a c…

First past the post doesn’t explain historically why we have only two parties, but it explains why we will continue to have only two going forward unless something changes.

It explains why you end up with two parties even if you start with more. The two largest will woo minority parties until they get a majority. And minority party members know they will be marginalized unless they are aligned with the majority (or hope to be in the majority some day.)

Changing that will require a radical reconsideration of democracy, like replacing FPtP with... something.

Re: 9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight

#173

Post by skissane »

nkrisc wrote: post #127
skissane wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not sure a vote of non-confidence would have helped here — there are only two parties. But why are there only two parties? The rest of the Anglosphere–Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK–have multiparty systems–some are more multiparty than others, but none of them have the hard two-party system that the US has, in which third parties have a very marginal role (not completely marginal – e.g. in a c…

First past the post doesn’t explain historically why we have only two parties, but it explains why we will continue to have only two going forward unless something changes.

I actually think the US hard two party system isn't purely due to first-past-the-post, it is actually due to four interacting factors: (1) first-past-the-post; (2) presidentialism; (3) a deeply-entrenched primary system; (4) cultural homogeneity

Point (4) will likely strike many Americans as dubious, but the US doesn't have anything comparable to Québec – there is presently no US state where English isn't the majority language; nor anything comparable to Scotland or Northern Ireland (no state where a significant percentage of its population identify with a competing national identity). So, no matter how much (undeniable) diversity the US has, in the sense that counts for this purpose, it doesn't.

Hence: while abolishing first-past-the-post would no doubt do a lot to break the US hard two-party system, it could also be broken while retaining it if something happened to (2) or (3) or (4) instead.

But, in US politics, changing (2) or (3) is even more politically fringe than changing (1) is. Maybe that might change at some point though, who knows what the future holds.

And (4) will likely eventually cease to be true, but only in the long-run in which we are all already long-dead.

Re: 9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight

#175

Post by nkrisc »

skissane wrote: post #173
nkrisc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First past the post doesn’t explain historically why we have only two parties, but it explains why we will continue to have only two going forward unless something changes.

I actually think the US hard two party system isn't purely due to first-past-the-post, it is actually due to four interacting factors: (1) first-past-the-post; (2) presidentialism; (3) a deeply-entrenched primary system; (4) cultural homogeneity Point (4) will likely strike many Americans as dubious, but the US doesn't have anything comparable to Québec – there is presently no US state where English isn't the majorit…

I don't mean that the two party system we have is due to first-past-the-post, it almost doesn't even really matter why we have it. But first-past-the-post is the mechanism which currently entrenches it and is the most likely to change. I think that (3) is a result of the system, not a cause.

Re: 9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight

#176

Post by jfengel »

throw0101a wrote: post #124
jfengel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have them because the Founders thought it was a good idea. Then they thought it was a good idea to have two houses with different criteria, giving two chances to quash legislation. Plus the veto. Plus the Supreme Court (whose job they left almost completely undefined, so they made up a job description). So we have them because we can't get rid of them. But they are practically useless. They can usually manage the…

> We have them because the Founders thought it was a good idea. The US Founders also did not have political parties, and the tribal/clan thinking that goes along with them.

They had factions, which turned almost immediately into parties: the Federalists and Anti-federalists, which morphed into the Democratic-Republicans. There were always two after that, until the former died off and the latter split into what we have had since.

Re: 9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight

#177

Post by FireBeyond »

gamblor956 wrote: post #163
inigyou wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great example, because Tylenol is more dangerous than nearly every illegal drug.

Today I learned on the Internet that Tylenol is more dangerous than meth, cocaine, or fentanyl. Wait, no I didn't. That's absurd. Tylenol can cause long term health issues if used in excess (or death, for extreme overdoses), but most illegal drugs are illegal because they can cause immediate death even at normal usage amounts.

> but most illegal drugs are illegal because they can cause immediate death even at normal usage amounts.

Huh. The amount used on the street is not a "normal usage amount". Most fentanyl deaths are due to the fact that the medical usage amount is not something you can generally measure with your dealer's scale or the scale you bought at the local head shop (we, as paramedics, would typically administer 50-100 micrograms, and for anything more than 300 we needed to consult with a physician).

In those use cases, properly dosed, fentanyl is an exceptional, powerful, and short-lived, analgesic.

When people die from fentanyl ODs they're taking dozens, hundreds, or more, than the "normal usage amounts".

Re: 9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight

#178

Post by FireBeyond »

tsimionescu wrote: post #159
inigyou wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a rationalisation to me. People take Tylenol for pain. If they're still in pain, they take more of it. Tylenol doesn't mitigate all types of pain so people might think they need more. This happens, and then they die. It happens surprisingly infrequently considering how abnormally dangerous the drug is, but it still happens.

Tylenol only works for relatively low levels of pain, which tends to be relatively short term. So abuse is not very common, and even with chronic pain, Tylenol overdosing kills quite quickly, it doesn't have time to become a habit that takes down entire families together with the chronic pain sufferer. Either way, we don't have to assume, we can directly check the numbers. Per another commenter, Tylenol kills about 4…

I am not a physician, though I have a Masters in Biomedical Science and was a paramedic for 14 years.

I have a very difficult time taking an argument plausibly that compares Tylenol (acetaminophen, an antipyretic analgesic) to illegal stimulant use (immediately following a discussion on fentanyl, which is an opioid - about as close to opposite a stimulant as possible) - i.e. generally amphetamines.

Or comparing Tylenol to marijuana in a very apples and oranges comparison - Tylenol's dangers come from very direct hepatotoxicity (i.e. liver damage), versus marijuana's most real risks coming from impairment and intoxication (driving, judgment, panic) and their effects than toxicity of the drug itself.

It's all mixing and matching in a way that doesn't make for a sensical argument.

Re: 9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight

#179

Post by everforward »

inigyou wrote: post #155
everforward wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The utility is always the same. The stock market provides price discovery, which drives efficient resource allocation (in theory). Theoretically, more gamblers should mean better price discovery because the payouts for correctly taking the opposing side of the trade are higher. The market solution would be that the gambling will eventually solve itself. They’ll either learn enough to be trading on knowledge rather th…

I don't know if "theoretically" is good enough here. The theory hasn't really been tested or proven. It's more of a hypothesis, and an ideologically driven one at that.

I'm not positing that as a moral good or bad. It's possible for stock market gambling to be bad for society but have better price discovery, in the same way that dictatorships are bad but tend to have faster response times to events.

My theory is mostly that "gambling" seems like it inherently means "buying stocks based on something other than their concrete value". More gambling means stocks drift further from their "true value", which means a higher payout for correcting them back to what their price should actually be.

The whole thing does get very fuzzy because of the "market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" aspect. It's not enough to know what the correct price is, you have to know when other people will realize that as well, or else convince people that your price is "correct".

Re: 9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight

#180

Post by skissane »

jfengel wrote: post #172
nkrisc wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First past the post doesn’t explain historically why we have only two parties, but it explains why we will continue to have only two going forward unless something changes.

It explains why you end up with two parties even if you start with more. The two largest will woo minority parties until they get a majority. And minority party members know they will be marginalized unless they are aligned with the majority (or hope to be in the majority some day.) Changing that will require a radical reconsideration of democracy, like replacing FPtP with... something.

It doesn’t because the UK has FPtP yet doesn’t have a hard two party system.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have nationalist movements that want out of the UK-state independence movements exist in the contemporary US too, but they are very fringe

But even England has not just Labor and the Tories, but also the Lib Dems, Reform, the Greens, Restore

So England proves you can have multiple parties with real power, with FPtP, even in the absence of regional-nationalist movements

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