I feel like America is re-learning why gambling was so widely outlawed. It just ruins everything it touches. At least casinos are mostly contained. I'm tired of seeing gambling ads on every sport and hearing the news talk about prediction markets.
Not to mention, they all prey on people. When I was younger, I worked in a gas station, and people would come in regularly and drop everything they had on scratch-offs. And a lot of these people clearly did not have the money to spare. It's gross.
The marketing is what bothers me the most. These books market very aggressively in app: Take Daves 5 leg parlay; Share your picks! 30% profit boost if you do a 4 leg parlay that'll never hit. Its constant engagement. Contrast this to a real bookie: Open app. Place bet. Meet once a week in parking lot. Small chatter. Pass envelope.
Basically, a fake "Cricket league" was setup up in rural India, complete with online streaming, play by play commentary, etc. just to fool gamblers in Russia. Worth the read.
I feel like this is worse then gambling even, because it's not only luck. You can actually influence an outcome without cheating, hence credible deaths threats
Online (foreign based, read: tax and regulation havens) gambling casinos are flooding the social media feeds of children with AI slop or memes that have their logo/branding slapped on it. They are posting thousands of videos per day, trying to get kids to gamble on their casinos. Who are behind? The owners of gaming communities/e-sport brands like FaZe Clan etc. Basically, if you were a large youtuber in the 2010's, the goto seems to be get in on some kind of online gambling site for kids.
Many people just think certain things in history were outlawed because of 'stupid religious people'. Most of the time there's genuine reasons for banning things even if they weren't perfect or brought other harms with them. Something like usury was banned in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and it wasn't because people prior to 1900 were imbeciles, these things can cause immense instability.
Years ago I was friend with a guy who played tennis at international levels (say top 1000 players). He regularly received death treats on social networks from people Gambling on him to win/lose (and the opposite happened)
Still happens at all levels of professional sport. Even the top women get messages on their IG accounts all the time by degenerate gamblers pissed off after a loss.
Day trading too, and day trading led us down this path. Everyone is a gambler now. All morals are out the window.
On a side note, I find it incredible crypto trading/day trading/meme stock trading etc is not recognised as a bigger societal problem. It is 100% gambling and has the same negative externalities associated with it. But none of the tools gambling companies need to abide by (blocklists, warnings, limits, etc) apply to trading.
I do not know about daytrading, but trading in the long term works, if you have a (technical/IT) system.
Regarding meme stocks: I do not see how this should work compared to the "real market", as on the real market you have clear signals when it is useful to enter a position (e.g. institutional attention), but on the meme "stock" market lacking those features it is much much harder to make any money - unfortunately, a lot of young people are trying their fortuna
Yeah, that claim was always ludicrous to me too. Wisdom-of-crowds isn’t an unbiased decision making strategy, it’s quite biased. Crowd-wisdom works best as a limiter on the bias of other decision making strategies—this is why democracies use representatives rather than direct votes for most decisions.
And polymarket isn’t even the wisdom of crowds lol. At its greatest possible adoption it’s still the wisdom of internet-connected (mostly) white men with time and money to spend on gambling.
If you believe Polymarket odds are wrong in a systematic way then you are free to make a lot of money out of it. Unlike the stock market, where "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent", any such irrationality will become irrelevant at settlement time.
I don't know, man, looks like we are now literally gambling on whether people die today or tomorrow. This is even worse than underground sports gambling.
Commodities futures markets have an actual purpose, which is to make business inputs (or outputs) more predictable. Like if I know I need ten tons of corn next year, it's safer to buy futures now than to wait and see how the price of corn fluctuates over that time, potentially sabotaging my business operation. (Of making corn chips.)
Similar business cases can be made for futures from polymarket. For example if I start a business in the USA I may want to hedge by buying some futures Jesus will not return before 2027.
Do we typically [0] have a problem with people sabotaging industries to manipulate the futures market?
[0] Edit: Originally wrote "currently", but then I remembered the current White House, whose various crimes are being studiously ignored by the Republican congress.
I feel like America is re-learning why gambling was so widely outlawed. It just ruins everything it touches. At least casinos are mostly contained. I'm tired of seeing gambling ads on every sport and hearing the news talk about prediction markets.
Not to mention, they all prey on people. When I was younger, I worked in a gas station, and people would come in regularly and drop everything they had on scratch-offs. And a lot of these people clearly did not have the money to spare. It's gross.
The marketing is what bothers me the most. These books market very aggressively in app: Take Daves 5 leg parlay; Share your picks! 30% profit boost if you do a 4 leg parlay that'll never hit. Its constant engagement. Contrast this to a real bookie: Open app. Place bet. Meet once a week in parking lot. Small chatter. Pass envelope.
Reminds me of this wild story: https://www.si.com/betting/2023/09/15/fake-indian-cricket-le...
Basically, a fake "Cricket league" was setup up in rural India, complete with online streaming, play by play commentary, etc. just to fool gamblers in Russia. Worth the read.
I feel like this is worse then gambling even, because it's not only luck. You can actually influence an outcome without cheating, hence credible deaths threats
Online (foreign based, read: tax and regulation havens) gambling casinos are flooding the social media feeds of children with AI slop or memes that have their logo/branding slapped on it. They are posting thousands of videos per day, trying to get kids to gamble on their casinos. Who are behind? The owners of gaming communities/e-sport brands like FaZe Clan etc. Basically, if you were a large youtuber in the 2010's, the goto seems to be get in on some kind of online gambling site for kids.
Many people just think certain things in history were outlawed because of 'stupid religious people'. Most of the time there's genuine reasons for banning things even if they weren't perfect or brought other harms with them. Something like usury was banned in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and it wasn't because people prior to 1900 were imbeciles, these things can cause immense instability.
Years ago I was friend with a guy who played tennis at international levels (say top 1000 players). He regularly received death treats on social networks from people Gambling on him to win/lose (and the opposite happened)
Getting death threats from aggrieved gamblers, MLB players starting to fear for their safety
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nigh...
Doesn't help when some MLB players also apparently participate in the gambling outcomes, too.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/46906636/guardians-emman...
Still happens at all levels of professional sport. Even the top women get messages on their IG accounts all the time by degenerate gamblers pissed off after a loss.
Day trading too, and day trading led us down this path. Everyone is a gambler now. All morals are out the window.
On a side note, I find it incredible crypto trading/day trading/meme stock trading etc is not recognised as a bigger societal problem. It is 100% gambling and has the same negative externalities associated with it. But none of the tools gambling companies need to abide by (blocklists, warnings, limits, etc) apply to trading.
I do not know about daytrading, but trading in the long term works, if you have a (technical/IT) system.
Regarding meme stocks: I do not see how this should work compared to the "real market", as on the real market you have clear signals when it is useful to enter a position (e.g. institutional attention), but on the meme "stock" market lacking those features it is much much harder to make any money - unfortunately, a lot of young people are trying their fortuna
B-b-but futarchy and unbiased decisionmaking means well-calibrated markets could be a net good for society!! /hj
Yeah, that claim was always ludicrous to me too. Wisdom-of-crowds isn’t an unbiased decision making strategy, it’s quite biased. Crowd-wisdom works best as a limiter on the bias of other decision making strategies—this is why democracies use representatives rather than direct votes for most decisions.
And polymarket isn’t even the wisdom of crowds lol. At its greatest possible adoption it’s still the wisdom of internet-connected (mostly) white men with time and money to spend on gambling.
If you believe Polymarket odds are wrong in a systematic way then you are free to make a lot of money out of it. Unlike the stock market, where "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent", any such irrationality will become irrelevant at settlement time.
1 reply →
Ugh, the sophistry (or at least self-deceiving arguments) people throw around to defend these markets makes my stomach churn.
"It is difficult to get a prediction-market person to understand something, when their stock-options and IPO depends upon them not understanding it."
-- Cyborg Upton Sinclair
I don't know, man, looks like we are now literally gambling on whether people die today or tomorrow. This is even worse than underground sports gambling.
Reply of the year. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to laugh or cry.
The question isn't whether futarchy isn't perfect, it's whether its better than our existing democracy.
Well, we're discovering some really fascinating and pervasive failure cases of proto-futarchy. Please update your priors.
Anything that requires a ton of criminal law, regulation, and enforcement around it should have to meet some kind of standard of societal benefit.
The entertainment value of betting does not meet that standard, in my opinion.
Replace gamblers with futures market and I agree.
Commodities futures markets have an actual purpose, which is to make business inputs (or outputs) more predictable. Like if I know I need ten tons of corn next year, it's safer to buy futures now than to wait and see how the price of corn fluctuates over that time, potentially sabotaging my business operation. (Of making corn chips.)
Similar business cases can be made for futures from polymarket. For example if I start a business in the USA I may want to hedge by buying some futures Jesus will not return before 2027.
Do we typically [0] have a problem with people sabotaging industries to manipulate the futures market?
[0] Edit: Originally wrote "currently", but then I remembered the current White House, whose various crimes are being studiously ignored by the Republican congress.