Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets • Hacker News Board

Re: Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

#81

Post by nomadygnt » Mon, May 18, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

egorfine wrote: post #6

jackp96 wrote: post #2

Neither conservative nor Mormon, but online gambling is an addictive scourge that ruins lives, and I'd love to see it banned broadly. And go ahead and ban paid loot boxes as well. I don't love casinos or lotteries, but at least there's the friction of having to travel to a physical location to feed your addiction. And then there's the whole "insider trading" and "gambling on war" angles that come into play with predi…

As much as I hate what gambling does on the society, I'm still not sure if banning this activity counts as freedom. I believe that grown consenting adults do have a free will and should have the ability to destroy their lives if they so choose. OTOH allowing those kind of activities WILL end up with people opting in for the greater evil and thus some kind of limits should be enforced by governments. I have no idea wh…

I agree to a point. But it should be regulated as what it is, which is gambling. Prediction markets doing everything in their power to avoid regulation is just scummy.

Re: Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

#82

Post by dpark » Mon, May 18, 2026, 3:18 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #79

dpark wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the poor who are least well equipped to understand Is there some actual evidence that poor people are under the impression that they have a meaningful chance of winning significant money the lottery? I see this line a lot and it’s extremely patronizing. I’m not even pro lottery but this “poor people are too dumb to understand” does not strike me as a sound argument.

This article looks at lotto sales. I understand it doesn't address the assertions brought up about why people buy tickets, but maybe it still interesting in the context of this conversation. https://archive.is/kY7U6

For sure, lottery revenues are disproportionately drawn from the poorest.

Re: Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

#83

Post by toss1 » Mon, May 18, 2026, 3:47 PM UTC

which wrote: post #70

jackp96 wrote: post #2

Neither conservative nor Mormon, but online gambling is an addictive scourge that ruins lives, and I'd love to see it banned broadly. And go ahead and ban paid loot boxes as well. I don't love casinos or lotteries, but at least there's the friction of having to travel to a physical location to feed your addiction. And then there's the whole "insider trading" and "gambling on war" angles that come into play with predi…

The "return to player" numbers for lottery tickets are on the order of 60% https://wizardofodds.com/are-lottery-players-smart/ . Many states have online lottery apps, they do TV and radio ads, etc. Why should that be allowed? Of course some of the only forms of gambling where skill actually matters (poker and sports) come under constant attack... If you bet randomly on the winner of NFL games on DraftKings you'd expe…

>>all but 1-2 percent of people are able to control themselves and not become problem gamblers

That says absolutely nothing about the blast radius of damage from the 1-2% who do become problem gamblers and end up leaving their families impoverished and destitute, robbing their children of chances for education, etc. This cascades into issues and expenses for society in terms of more dependent and fewer productive members.

Similarly only a small percentage of people also are problem drinkers enough to drink and drive, and the small percentage of trips while impaired result in accidents. Yet the blast radius of the damage by that small percent is such that we decided long ago that serious laws and enforcement is a good idea.

Just because only a small percentage of people

Re: Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

#84

Post by jerf » Mon, May 18, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

jrflo wrote: post #42

jerf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't work. They only work if all the participants in prediction markets don't notice their incentive to cheat the market. One example of many: https://moneywise.com/investing/cryptocurrency/polymarket-ri... A market that only works as long as participants in the market also pretend that they aren't in a market is nonfunctional. Let all reasoning be silent when experience gainsays its conclusion. The beautiful l…

I think this is far from widespread. It's very difficult to tamper with the majority of markets, and nearly impossible to do so without getting noticed (hence, the news story about this case).

I chose that example precisely because even by prediction market standards it shows the degree to which people will go to skew the market.

The much more popular method of making bets in a variety of ways to skew the system, use all the power of financialization to manipulate values of contracts independently of the underlying measurement, and everything that we're already seeing in quantity and abundance ruins the utility of the market as a prediction market.

You say it's really hard and can be neglected... I say it's already happening so much that the putative value of the markets is ruined. I wave at all the news already written about it and the ongoing flood of news that will continue. The system is fundamentally broken, does not work, and will never work. The theory only works if the value of the prediction market is somehow completely isolated from the value of the things under prediction, but the prediction market itself is the engine for destroying that assumption.

Re: Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

#85

Post by redsocksfan45 » Mon, May 18, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

egorfine wrote: post #6

jackp96 wrote: post #2

Neither conservative nor Mormon, but online gambling is an addictive scourge that ruins lives, and I'd love to see it banned broadly. And go ahead and ban paid loot boxes as well. I don't love casinos or lotteries, but at least there's the friction of having to travel to a physical location to feed your addiction. And then there's the whole "insider trading" and "gambling on war" angles that come into play with predi…

As much as I hate what gambling does on the society, I'm still not sure if banning this activity counts as freedom. I believe that grown consenting adults do have a free will and should have the ability to destroy their lives if they so choose. OTOH allowing those kind of activities WILL end up with people opting in for the greater evil and thus some kind of limits should be enforced by governments. I have no idea wh…

[dead]

Re: Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

#86

Post by mcmcmc » Mon, May 18, 2026, 4:35 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #77

mcmcmc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One distinction I think really needs to be included in any gambling bans is whether it’s a game of chance or skill. Betting on yourself is quintessentially American. I’d argue betting on someone else’s game of skill (eg sports betting) is a game of chance. Would be interesting to see how a new prohibition amendment on gambling on games of chance would work.

> game of chance or skill The line isn't all the clear, is it? Is poker skill or chance? What about betting on a horse? Or buying a stock option?

In poker you have some control over the outcome through your actions in the game. Your skill at judging horses and jockeys cannot affect the outcome of a horse race. Options trading I don’t really know enough to have a strong opinion, but since it’s already regulated and has some utility in contributing to price stability, I don’t really consider it in the same class.

Re: Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

#87

Post by yndoendo » Mon, May 18, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC

egorfine wrote: post #6

jackp96 wrote: post #2

Neither conservative nor Mormon, but online gambling is an addictive scourge that ruins lives, and I'd love to see it banned broadly. And go ahead and ban paid loot boxes as well. I don't love casinos or lotteries, but at least there's the friction of having to travel to a physical location to feed your addiction. And then there's the whole "insider trading" and "gambling on war" angles that come into play with predi…

As much as I hate what gambling does on the society, I'm still not sure if banning this activity counts as freedom. I believe that grown consenting adults do have a free will and should have the ability to destroy their lives if they so choose. OTOH allowing those kind of activities WILL end up with people opting in for the greater evil and thus some kind of limits should be enforced by governments. I have no idea wh…

I find the whole _Freedom_ trope to be nothing but a straw man fallacy.

What is _Freedom_?

Should I have freedom to enjoy a movie or conversation uninterrupted? Should I have the freedom to modify a motorcycle or car to be excessively loud that it shakes windows while driving by and interrupting people so they have to pause their movie or conversation?

Freedom for the movie viewer or conversationalist goes against the freedom of the loud motorcycle or car driver? They both cannot have freedom because each will impeded on the others. So who is gets their version of _Freedom_?

Re: Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

#88

Post by gottorf » Mon, May 18, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #78

gottorf wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more that poor people have worse impulse control and higher time preference[0], which contribute to the behavioral outcome of spending money on lottery tickets despite the EV being negative. [0]: If we're splitting hairs, we should specify that having poor impulse control and higher time preference are the base causational factors that make it more likely for someone to be poor, buy lottery tickets, engage in cr…

Sorry, is there evidence for this? I don’t have any trouble believing that there is some slice of poor people that this is true about. But I kind of doubt that holds in general.

Are we disagreeing about the definition of "poor people"? I'm not sure why someone would find it so hard to believe that the poor, especially the long-term poor, have character traits that are not conducive to lifting themselves out of poverty.

On that same vein, there is no particular evidence needed to convince someone that people who share the characteristics with me of not being very tall or particularly athletic have a terribly poor chance of making it in the NBA.

But here is one study[0] which found, interestingly, that although a higher time preference (that is, preferring the present over the future) is correlated as expected with wealth, it is not significantly correlated with current income. Put another way: in the modern world where opportunities are varied, anyone, even people with poor impulse control and high time preference, could earn high incomes, but you only become wealthy (i.e. escape poverty) over time through putting aside some of that income to save and invest.

Back to the American setting, "heavy hitters" of the lottery spend about $2500/yr[1]. If you instead put $200/mo into the S&P 500 over ten years, you'd be sitting on over $55k. Time under the curve matters greatly. The same personality traits that make someone prefer buying scratchers instead of investing for their future are the ones that keep them poor. I would have thought this to be self-evident.

[0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7392281/

[1]: https://elmwealth.com/lottery-fallacy/

Re: Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

#89

Post by gottorf » Mon, May 18, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #80

SoftTalker wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too dumb, but badly educated about money (part of why they stay poor) and probabilities.

Poor people stay poor because it’s really hard to climb out of poverty. It’s a function of opportunity, culture, society, and a lot more stuff. Education is a factor but I am doubtful it’s the primary one, and even where it is a major factor, it’s probably more general education than specifically about money. I feel like the “poor people don’t understand money” line of thought comes from the same people who insist th…

> it’s really hard to climb out of poverty. It’s a function of opportunity, culture, society, and a lot more stuff

I agree with you, but perhaps from the other direction. I think American society in particular gives an amazing amount of opportunity for people to climb out of poverty, or at least we used to, before we started "replacing what works with what sounded good". But we still do, for the most part.

Most of the cultural and social factors that prevent someone from lifting themselves up are self-imposed by those individual cultures and societies, and as of late, it's become verboten to call them out on it. There exist subgroups in this country where you'd indeed have to be a truly remarkable individual to claw yourself out of it into wealth. However, it doesn't have to be that way; that's a choice society made, on what grounds exactly I'm not sure, but the choice was made nevertheless.

Re: Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

#90

Post by gwerbin » Mon, May 18, 2026, 6:32 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #54

lizknope wrote: post #36

I'd like to first see all advertisements for gambling banned. Then lets take a look at the data after 1-2 years. Or if you allow it put a warning like the surgeon generals warning on tobacco. Clearly state that most people lose money. Smoking is legal but advertising cigarettes is illegal. I grew up in the 1980's where smoking was everywhere. We even had a smoking area at school. Today I don't know anyone that smokes…

I know some countries have banned tobacco advertising, but unfortunately it is still legal in the US.

In classic US fashion it's illegal in certain specific contexts but not others.