Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel
9 hours ago
This is the entire idea behind the concept of "assassination markets" - "prediction" markets on assassinations that are just thinly veiled ways to crowdsource murders by taking bets that you expect to lose against an "insider" (the killer).
It doesn’t need to be as high stakes as assassination. Any public figure could have a free-money loophole with all the stupid bets on things like whether a certain word would appear in a speech.
If I were famous I could start a pool betting on whether I would post a picture of a my lunch this week. I could stake whichever side has the biggest payout and then just make it happen
And we already have laws against this stuff when it is traditional gambling. For example, a couple MLB players[1] are currently facing 65 years in prison because they would occasionally waste a pitch at the directions of gamblers netting them a few thousand dollars each time they did it. For those not familiar with baseball, a starting pitcher generally throws between 80-100 pitches a game and a reliever throws roughly 10-30. This is basically as low stakes as a sports bet can get, so it makes it all the more attractive to attempt because it feels less like a compromising of morals with the less the participant actually needs to sacrifice.
These prediction markets are now giving even more people the opportunity to make a small ethical compromise in exchange for non-trivial amounts of money without any of the potential legal repercussions of traditional markets or gambling. That type of ubiquitous corrupting influence can't be good for the health of society.
[1] - https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/guardians-closer-emmanuel...
Futures contracts were a mistake, god damn