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How Kalshi Infects the News

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Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#81

Post by roadside_picnic »

rescripting wrote: post #29
hebleb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may take awhile, but it ends by voting in political candidates that actually care about combatting greed and corruption again

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…

> no other widely accessible path for young people to build a future

This is exactly right. Widespread gambling has a fundamental nihilism baked into it. If you believe hard work and frugality are the best path to success, then gambling doesn't feel like a good use of your income and energy.

But if you feel like your dreams are falling out of reach despite your hard work, if it starts to look like even big investors are really just playing a game (often with loaded dice) rather than acting on fundamentals, if grift seems like a more reliable path to success then hard work and ingenuity, then all of a sudden gambling seems a lot more sensible. Even if the odds aren't in your favor, you can at least get lucky when you gamble. When the game feels rigged its easy to believe that hardwork is destined for failure, whereas even loaded dice have some probability of landing in your favor.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#82

Post by mothballed »

criddell wrote: post #62
xg15 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony being that gambling is about as far from "guaranteed" or "stable" as you can get. But it does fit the ultralibertarian mindset best, I guess. The right to the pursuit of happiness, not to actually getting it.

The best way to win at gambling is to be the house.

Even better, be the guy that taxes the house and winners, sells the licensing to the house (or friends of them that have privileged advantage to sell compliance services), or the guys who determine whether the house gets its zoning or construction exemptions.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#83

Post by thrance »

keiferski wrote: post #21
baggachipz wrote: post #3

The unprecedented era of gambling on literally everything everywhere is an absolute cancer on society, made completely legal by absolute greed and degeneracy at the highest levels of government. I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle (amongst many detrimental genies).

Society needs to rediscover the idea that not all moral judgements are religious in nature, and in many cases are just basic pragmatic ones. The bans on gambling were often framed in Christian terms, so as society became more secular, they were undone. Now they probably need to be re-added with practical reasoning.

I disagree with your assessment, the ban wasn't undone because of secularism. In fact, this prediction market craze was embraced by the right almost instantly, which is the side currently most favored by Christians.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#84

Post by reaperducer »

xg15 wrote: post #31
baggachipz wrote: post #3

The unprecedented era of gambling on literally everything everywhere is an absolute cancer on society, made completely legal by absolute greed and degeneracy at the highest levels of government. I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle (amongst many detrimental genies).

What I find almost as depressing is evidently the concerted push to normalize this practice. We were all shocked by Polymarket, but meanwhile others just saw it as yet another emerging market - and now CNN is including it in news segments as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

What I find almost just as depressing is evidently the concerted push to normalize this practice.

The gambling industry has been trying to normalize gambling for decades.

I first ran into this in the mid-90's when the PR woman for a race track told me not to call it "gambling," but instead to call it "gaming."

We see gambling language used everywhere now, if you know what to look for. Terms like "all in" and "table stakes" are gambling terms,† but people use them every day in regular conversation.

† Though "all in" was used as far back as the 1930's to mean "very tired," I hardly ever hear anyone use it that way anymore.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#85

Post by Spooky23 »

xg15 wrote: post #31
baggachipz wrote: post #3

The unprecedented era of gambling on literally everything everywhere is an absolute cancer on society, made completely legal by absolute greed and degeneracy at the highest levels of government. I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle (amongst many detrimental genies).

What I find almost as depressing is evidently the concerted push to normalize this practice. We were all shocked by Polymarket, but meanwhile others just saw it as yet another emerging market - and now CNN is including it in news segments as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

It’s the logical next step for the crypto bros. At this point it’s just political patronage for the small time MAGA grifters who are outside of the big boy financial frauds.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#86

Post by Analemma_ »

nradov wrote: post #55
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…

That perception bears almost no relation to reality. The most reliable path to building a modicum of wealth has remained the same for generations: start a small business in some boring field and work your ass off for 80 hrs/wk. Building wealth through real estate is also still totally possible outside of the HCOL metro areas. Try unfashionable areas like Cleveland or Oklahoma City. And let's not have any low-effort c…

“Building wealth through real estate” should not be possible, and it’s half the reason we’re in this mess: people treating their homes as a store of wealth and blocking new construction to protect the value of their investment has locked young people out of the housing market. Hence all the gambling. What you should be hoping is that YIMBY policies carry the day in the end and “building wealth through real estate” is eliminated as a thing.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#87

Post by topgrain2 »

vel0city wrote: post #59
SoftTalker wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An FSA should not be a "bet" it should be set up for expenses you know you are going to need to pay: dependent care, recurring care and prescriptions, planned procedures. Your employer, not you, owns the account and keeps any balance remaining at the end of the year so you should not really guess at how much you contribute. An advantage of the FSA is that the full contribution is available immediately but the payroll…

But for a ton of people that amount is extremely variable. Do you plan on getting into a car accident? Do you plan on getting an appendectomy in June when making your elections the November before? Sorry doctor, getting cancer wasn't in the plans for 2026, can we reschedule that to 2027 after my open enrollment? I hate FSAs. Anyone have a good argument on why we should have them instead of just making HSAs open to ev…

Requiring certain healthcare plans to access HSAs is the only thing that keeps HSAs from primarily being (in terms of amount of tax income lost to the program) a benefit for the upper-middle-class and higher, i.e. a regressive redistribution scheme.

Optimal (maximizing your benefit... and also cost in lost tax receipts) use of HSAs requires not touching the money until retirement. You pay medical bills with non-HSA money and keep the HSA money invested and growing tax-advantaged, like an extra retirement account. Spending the money you put in every year offers relatively tiny gains compared to keeping it in those accounts for decades.

Your options to mitigate this are to limit access, or to make it undesirable to keep money in them long-term, approaches to which look kinda FSA-like.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#88

Post by wahnfrieden »

kevinob11 wrote: post #39
aqme28 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the gambling industry is going to have a much wealthier and more powerful lobby than any effort to displace it.

How in the world do we get money out of politics? I want to so so so badly, but I have no idea how to successfully do it. I can't even figure it out as a thought exercise.

It begins with hierarchy

Others have offered contrived rules for solving it through policy, but these don't account for how to get those with power over us to institute such rules to bind their own hands and then to follow the rules to their own detriment

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#89

Post by wahnfrieden »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #44
kevinob11 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How in the world do we get money out of politics? I want to so so so badly, but I have no idea how to successfully do it. I can't even figure it out as a thought exercise.

I think some places have the government give every party equal (by what measure? I don't remember. Past votes maybe?) money for campaigning and no donations are allowed.

Japan has such rules. They have absolutely massive decades-long scandals with money corrupting their politics, and ongoing right now.

Re: How Kalshi Infects the News

#90

Post by erikerikson »

mghackerlady wrote: post #71
jmyeet wrote: post #67

Over the last 2+ decades gambling has increased massively. By "gambling" I include sports betting, prediction markets, online casinos and crypto (including NFTs). Yes, I'm including crypto under gambling. When ordinary people buy crypto it's mostly because they saw the stratospheric rise of Bitcoin, don't really understand why and don't want to miss out on the next Bitcoin.. Straight up. That's gambling. But why? Eas…

There's 3 kinds of crypto buyers: The investor, the criminal, and your weird libertarian uncle

s/investor/speculator/
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