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Utah lawmakers form united front in push to ban prediction markets

theguardian.com

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

#91

Post by SoftTalker »

mcmcmc wrote: post #31
SoftTalker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have information/know the outcome in advance.

So it’s still gambling for the other participants who don’t have that insider knowledge then. If one person at a blackjack table is counting cards, does that make it not gambling for everyone else?

I don't really think so, because if you don't have information in prediction markets, you are the patsy.

Gambling is just hoping probability comes up in your favor. You'll lose over the long term, but you could win an individual bet. Neither is under your control or can be influenced by any "inside" information. The dice don't care what you know or don't know, and bets don't change the payout.

Granted some types of "gambling" such as horse racing or sports in general are more like a prediction market than a true bet against odds, where knowing something that the general betting public doesn't know could be used to your advantage.

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

#92

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#93

Post by [deleted] »

yndoendo wrote: post #87
egorfine wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

[deleted]

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

#94

Post by gwerbin »

jcfrei wrote: post #25

I'm surprised prediction markets don't get more support here on HN. There's a lot of benefit in having a probability estimate for various kinds of events. One example of many: https://polymarket.com/event/may-2026-temperature-increase-c These markets are a straightforward way to cut through all the noise of the current media conglomerates. Rather than getting bombarded by inflated headlines a glance at polymarket or…

Prediction markets were a lot more useful and benign when it was nerds staking small amounts of money for fun. I still think they're fun but it's clear that the prediction market platform companies aren't interested in staying a fun niche business for nerds.

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

#95

Post by therealdrag0 »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #44
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 think this approach of allowing something to quietly operate legally is a really interesting model.

I much prefer it to the heavy hand of paternalism.

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

#96

Post by LocalH »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #56
SoftTalker wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I'd go as far as "everything" but the wisdom on how to live, how to treat others, behaviors that are good and bad, etc. is all pretty solid.

Mostly it's just the regulations around sex that are wack. Jesus has great advice around taking care of the poor, the sick, and the refugee, which are given short shrift by the Christian nationalists on the US.

Modern Christians (especially the ones in power) would deport Jesus because he's not white enough

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

#97

Post by krackers »

xixixao wrote: post #10
exabrial wrote: post #4

can we stop calling them "prediction markets" and please call them what they actually are: gambling

Honest question which I think is at the heart of the question: What’s the difference between these and NYSE / Robinhood?

I don't think there is a difference today. Stocks used to be about long-term value but now the same gambling-esque mentality has applied to stocks as well, see things like GME. The modern stock market is basically a prediction market for attention/virality, in the same way that cryptocoins are.

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

#98

Post by phs318u »

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 believe that grown consenting adults do have a free will and should have the ability to destroy their lives if they so choose.

Perhaps. But almost universally, most societies consider it a crime to encourage or facilitate another’s self-destruction.

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

#99

Post by dpark »

gottorf wrote: post #88
dpark wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

This is real close to just “poor people deserve to be poor”.

> 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.

Ah, but here you’re talking about physical traits. What physical traits make someone poor?

We don’t say everyone who fails to make it to the NBA fails because they are lazy.

> Back to the American setting, "heavy hitters" of the lottery spend about $2500/yr

I only skimmed the article, but this seems to all be made up. They say “we estimate” multiple times with no clarity on how they make these estimations. None of their estimations seem to even matter to their thesis that buying lottery tickets is a poor financial strategy, which is maybe why they don’t put much rigor into their estimates.

The economist adults says adults in the poorest zip codes spend an average of $600 on lottery tickets. I don’t know know that balances out to households nor whether it’s 90% spending $667 or 25% spending $2400 each.

https://archive.is/kY7U6

Your investment math also seems pretty far off. Those numbers appear to assume a 15% return from the S&P 500, a number I’ve never heard a financial advisor recommend.

> 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.

Interestingly there are a number of other “self evident” causes of poverty depending on who you ask.

Lottery tickets being disproportionately purchased by poor people also does not mean all poor people buy lottery tickets. If that article you quote is reasonably correct and the poor ticket-buying household is spending 2500 on tickets, that means there are a lot of poor non-ticket-buying households in order for the numbers to work out. Why are those people poor?

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

#100

Post by dpark »

gottorf wrote: post #89
dpark wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> 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

I agree that we are better than many places for this, but also much worse than we could be.

> Most of the cultural and social factors that prevent someone from lifting themselves up are self-imposed by those individual cultures and societies

I agree with this. There are huge social and cultural aspects of poverty.

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