One of the biggest commodity trading companies is in Minnesota (Cargill), where I would think that commodities are a prediction market too: They predict the harvest and relate that to a future price. Also there are quite some real estate investors in Minnesota, also due to tax arrangements.
Wonder how that will pan out.
Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets
231–240 of 256 posts
Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I could imagine cases where prediction markets could offer some actual insight I could imagine that there's very little insight to be gained when some 23 year old has so little hope for his financial future that he's spending some of what he earned last night delivering food for uber eats on making a completely uninformed bet on a geopolitical situation involving a country he couldn't even find on a map just in cas…
ThAt's one of the interesting(?) aspects of prediction markets. Some meaningful percentage of people in the market need to be bringing some useful insight. If everyone is just making random guesses, the market isn't very useful (other than, perhaps, financially to the lucky).
What insights are being gained? Every time this topic comes up, I see someone vaguely mentioning insights from prediction markets. But no one ever has concrete examples - real or even hypothetical.
Can you give an example of insights derived from prediction markets? Who benefited from the insights, and how did they act on the insights?
Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets
#233I could imagine cases where prediction markets could offer some actual insight, but in practice they seem few and far between. Most markets I've seen devolve into one or more of: betting on unimportant events (e.g. sports games), insider trading, or poorly written ambiguous resolution criteria. It's just hard for me to imagine that, on net, these markets will offer more societal good than the harm we've seen from spo…
Getting inside traders to publicize their knowledge for a price is like half of the point of prediction markets
I asked this elsewhere, but do you have an example of this knowledge? Have prediction markets ever revealed genuine knowledge? If so, has anyone ever acted on the newly revealed knowledge in a meaningful way?
Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not even. Minnesota is fine with betting as long as it is tribal betting and lawmakers are getting their share of the cut. Look it up.
I lived there, and I am familiar with that. I would be happy if they did away with all of it, including the state-administered lottery. But this is a great start of low-hanging fruit.
Once a vice is taxed, it becomes a budget line item for the local government and is much harder to get rid of
Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the SC said the federal government can't outright ban sports betting. The logic was that a ban interferes with states right to legalize sports betting. (To be clear, it is still an nonsensical decision though. Congress does still have the power to regular gambling under the interstate commerce clause, just not outright ban it)
Why is this nonsensical? Gambling is not necessarily inter-state?
I think it is a inconsistent position that the federal government can regulate gambling but not ban it.
The Controlled Substances Act also rests on the interstate commerce clause. Can you imagine if the federal government was allowed to regulate heroin sales but not ban it?
Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good on Minnesota.
Not even. Minnesota is fine with betting as long as it is tribal betting and lawmakers are getting their share of the cut. Look it up.
Exactly.
This is not a law to protect people, this is a law to protect entrenched special interests (Reservation and State-owned casinos).
Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is this nonsensical? Gambling is not necessarily inter-state?
I think it is a inconsistent position that the federal government can regulate gambling but not ban it. The Controlled Substances Act also rests on the interstate commerce clause. Can you imagine if the federal government was allowed to regulate heroin sales but not ban it?
My question wasn't so much about the contradiction between regulating & banning authority, but questioning the authority to do either in the first place. I.e. I don't understand why gambling must necessarily be considered to be inter-state. But I now think this is unrelated to the point you were trying to make.
Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I could imagine cases where prediction markets could offer some actual insight I could imagine that there's very little insight to be gained when some 23 year old has so little hope for his financial future that he's spending some of what he earned last night delivering food for uber eats on making a completely uninformed bet on a geopolitical situation involving a country he couldn't even find on a map just in cas…
ThAt's one of the interesting(?) aspects of prediction markets. Some meaningful percentage of people in the market need to be bringing some useful insight. If everyone is just making random guesses, the market isn't very useful (other than, perhaps, financially to the lucky).
It looks like the markets aren't very useful except for the small percentage of people with inside information, the exceptionally lucky, and the platforms themselves that get to take a cut of the action and/or collect personal data to sell.
Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets
#239Re: Minnesota becomes first state to ban prediction markets
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Er, I agree it's incredibly old, but also has been treated as societal ill and subject to regulation for its entire history.
Should cannabis and other currently illegal substances remain as such?
There's degrees of harmfulness. Weed is on the mild side along with alcohol (possibly even less harmful than alcohol).