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We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

derekthompson.org

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Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#611

Post by spacebanana7 »

kiliantics wrote: post #609
spacebanana7 wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be useful for insurance/hedging purposes. For example if you're a European farmer it might be rational to protect yourself from fertiliser price swings by buying/shorting natural gas futures, derivates or long dated delivery contracts. Polymarket bets on specific geopolitical events are just another option for this, which can be attractive depending on the price. Prediction markets have a pretty unique benefit…

There are a lot of baked in assumptions here. For instance, as an extreme example, betting on nuclear war or climate collapse happening and then "winning" doesn't really provide you anything of much use in the society you will be living in after such events.

Extreme events are always poorly priced in markets. For example, there's no point in making a trade for the S&P 500 falling by 90% because if it does we'll be in such a catastrophe that money doesn't matter any more.

Insurance / hedging is most useful in protecting you from realistic well defined risks that affect you personally but not the wider system.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#612

Post by alsetmusic »

DrBazza wrote: post #547

> Here are three stories about the state of gambling in America. Here's one story about gambling in the UK: the TV advertising is relentless and out of control after 9pm due to legislation passed in the early 00s. Gambling can quite literally lose you your house, friends and family. But apparently it's totally fine to advertise as long as HMRC get ££££. On some TV channels, every second advert, or worse, most adverts…

South Park had the most honest alcohol ad, I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJWEJuKXZyk

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#613

Post by phil21 »

amarant wrote: post #206
jackfruitpeel wrote: post #88

The craziest thing here is that online gambling has been legal in the UK and Ireland for many years, and it's been such an obvious negative for those countries — and had been optimized brutally like any other tech product. When I moved over to the US a decade ago, I remember thinking 'well at least they're smart enough to have banned online gambling'. I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to…

Anyone who worked in it? Like someone who needed a salary took a job, and now due to your grandstanding they're locked in to keep working in that industry because they can't get a job elsewhere? I'm not sure your virtue signalling has the effect you want it to have. In fact I think it has the exact opposite effect

The intended effect is to feel good about oneself, so I’m sure it’s working fine.

What this tends to largely accomplish is ensure that those who come from non-traditional backgrounds are further locked out of mainstream high-end tech jobs. If you grew up in a rough area with shitty parents, didn’t go to college, and came into the industry entirely self-taught there aren’t that may decently paying jobs in the field willing to hire you. The “vice industries” are some of the few typically willing to take a chance, while also allowing such a person to level up on relevant cutting edge tech. It’s generally that or working for a small company on 25 year old IT gear and often getting pigeon holed in those (low paying) roles.

And I’m not even saying that it justifies working for such places to many. That’s a personal choice of course. Just saying that it’s mostly a class signal vs moral one.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#614

Post by vovavili »

worldsayshi wrote: post #599
vovavili wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I explicitly accounted for this incentive with my first three words.

I'm curious what positive externalities you're thinking about? Being able to make plans for the future?

Again, as I said, "aggregating public and private information through market mechanisms".

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#615

Post by superxpro12 »

yonatan8070 wrote: post #538
YZF wrote: post #490

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/court-idf-reser... This was just on the news: "A reservist suspected of using classified information to place bets on the Polymarket prediction site served as a major in the Israeli Air Force, a Tel Aviv Court reveals. The defendant was indicted alongside his alleged accomplice last month on severe security offenses, as well as bribery and obstruction of justice, after the…

In addition to this article, I've recently read this one [1], where the reported received numerous violence and death threats from people who wanted him to change the a story he published to match what they bet on Polymarket. [1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/gamblers-trying-to-win-a-bet-o...

Yeah this is a much more likely outcome of unregulated gambling... I expect to hear a LOT more of this. Also plan for a swift, complete erosion of trust in sports officiating.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#616

Post by lux-lux-lux »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #592
vovavili wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the moment being, Polymarket has an enormous reputational incentive against behaving like a predatory gambling company. People rely on it as a kind of decentralized alternative to New York Times. Distorting this effect would be very short-sighted.

I believe they are incentivized to discourage insider bets and essentially "rigged" wins. I do not think they will ever be able to control the problem of insiders leveraging guaranteed knowledge to take money for the poor suckers who don't know the game they are playing. Maybe that's too pessimistic, but at this point I don't see how anything but a pessimistic view is warranted.

Putting bounties on insider knowledge is the ideological justification for these kinds of betting markets, so I doubt they’re going to stop this kind of thing

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#617

Post by triceratops »

bluetidepro wrote: post #104
jackfruitpeel wrote: post #88

The craziest thing here is that online gambling has been legal in the UK and Ireland for many years, and it's been such an obvious negative for those countries — and had been optimized brutally like any other tech product. When I moved over to the US a decade ago, I remember thinking 'well at least they're smart enough to have banned online gambling'. I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to…

> I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired. Can't say I agree with that specific take (and find it a bit naive to be honest), unless you're also not hiring anyone from companies like Amazon, Meta, and all the other tech companies that have also ruined/preyed on society in their own way just as much as any gambling app has.

I don't like Amazon personally. But how is it like gambling or social media? I guess shopping can be an addiction but wouldn't that condemn the entire retail sector?

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#618

Post by foxglacier »

andrewflnr wrote: post #603
foxglacier wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like the people proposing how a social network could operate without making people addicted to doomscrolling. Anyone can make a worse service like that but it won't stop the superior service from operating, which is the problem.

I guess I wasn't clear that I'm proposing a statutory limit on gambling amounts, not a voluntary limit by the service, as an alternative to banning it entirely.

I see, sorry.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#619

Post by superxpro12 »

The final conclusion about the evolving and rising focus on "money" as a core value is interesting, and one that seems to make sense to me.

I think most people before the age of information found meaning in life in these non-monetary "beliefs"... religion, community engagement, etc. Mostly to the benefit of the wealthy class.

I think people are finally waking up to the fact that the wealthy (parasite) class have been using these non-monetary values as a smokescreen for generations to extract more and more wealth out of the lower classes, and the internet has allowed this zeitgeist to forment.

Anecdotally, I've experienced this in the company i work at. For years and years and years, we would complain about low salaries, with respect to peer companies. And they would always throw distractions at us instead of just... raising salaries. "More happy hours, more team building activites, more company benefits that didnt actually cost anything". Anything but raise salaries.

Re: We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do

#620

Post by ragall »

trynumber9 wrote: post #492
ragall wrote: post #342

Gambling is flourishing not because we're in a low-trust world, as the article says, but because the living conditions of an increasingly large part of the population as such that they cannot hope of ever achieving a comfortable life. We're returning to the social dynamics that dominated much of history (if you consider how much gambling was a scourge, from ancient Rome to thousands of years of history in China).

So do you have a lot of trust in people that "cannot hope of ever achieving a comfortable life"? It seems like a risky proposition.

Still, yes. I can trust that if I were in an accident, people passing by would be decent enough to try to help me. To see a place where you'd have the rational expectation of being robbed by passers-by, see Russia.
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