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| ▲ | hatthew 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Otherwise they are simple gambling maybe I'm dumb but I thought gambling is the whole point |
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| ▲ | UncleMeat 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Otherwise they are simple gambling and pointless. People find gambling fun. Owners of gambling services make a lot of money. The prediction markets both run ads that present themselves as gambling products. Both of these things are points that can sustain large businesses. |
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| ▲ | cj 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Have you been to a casino? Gambling is a billion dollar business. |
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| ▲ | bethekidyouwant 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That’s not true. Consider a jar of jellybeans. |
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| ▲ | phil21 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That would go under someone who thinks they have more information than they think they do. Perhaps you are great at mathematics and think you can estimate much better than the average bidder. The person who filled the jar is going to have even better information than you do. Or perhaps not. Maybe they miscounted or their manager added a handful before they screwed the top of the jar on. If the market that is taking the bet also filled the jar, then sure it’s just outright fraud at that point. But the market exists to get the real information into the open. Betting that an insider just isn’t going to play is a variable you consider when placing your bet imo. | |
| ▲ | 8note 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | the guy who put the jellybeans in the jar can put the best bet on the result, no? | |
| ▲ | echelon 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A "market" is hypothesized to be "efficient" at price discovery. An efficient "prediction market" would more quickly resolve to its expected outcome due to not only skin-in-the-game bets by experts, but also the influence of insiders. Furthermore, bets are likely to shape outcomes. Betting someone will be assassinated (not allowed on Polymarket) would likely increase the probability of that outcome had there been no bet at all. | | |
| ▲ | bethekidyouwant 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | I’ve heard this assassination thing said, but I don’t see it. Someone still has to kill said person and somehow profit from the unlikelihood of this outcome. I’m not saying it’s impossible but I’m just saying that it’s never happened and maybe never will. | | |
| ▲ | echelon 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | There is no assassination market to test it against. If there was, I think you'd see quite a few public figures on the list. And I think it _would_ cause folks to die. Which is why it's banned or regulated. (I'm actually not sure what the legal status is, just that Polymarket and US prediction markets disallow it.) | | |
| ▲ | Karrot_Kream 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Polymarket is not fully in the US and its betting on oil prices is not a CTFC-allowed market. This is after all a bet on a commodity, which is already regulated and already a product available on ICE. Technically Polymarket doesn't need to care about the assassination market rule (which is a CFTC rule for prediction markets), but I presume they adhere to it out of respect for the reasoning behind the rule. |
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| ▲ | lovich 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| War is peace. Ignorance is strength. Openly corrupt markets that feature insiders with secret knowledge taking money from gambling addicts and rubes is actually good cause the crowd is now wiser. |
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| ▲ | broof 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | Unironically yes. Someone bet a mid sized amount and now we all share in that potential insider knowledge. A small scale example is my spouse said that the election odds from her home country were not realistic because all the westerners were betting a candidate would win but weren’t accounting for corruption that she felt was guaranteed to happen. Turns out she was right. | | |
| ▲ | lovich 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ah good. The NBA/NFL/MLB/etc should let players bet on whether they win or lose. Letting those with the influence on events being able to make money on them has never degraded a system before. Someone must have just mistakenly put in regulations against insider trading before, for no good reason. Luckily this isn’t anything like the normal tech play of figuring out a loophole or flat out ignoring the law and hoping you get too big before the regulators catch up. | | |
| ▲ | maxerickson 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If athletes didn't face consequences for manipulating betting markets, I think you'd see people become less and less likely to bet on sports outcomes. People naturally don't like a rigged game, you don't have to tell them not to play it. With these betting markets, do you think it's critical that they exist, but with bans on insider bets? Because I'm not sure anyone you are moralizing at is taking up the argument that it's critical that they exist. | | |
| ▲ | lovich 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > With these betting markets, do you think it's critical that they exist, but with bans on insider bets? No, I don’t think they should exist at all. |
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| ▲ | phil21 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sports betting is specifically not a prediction market precisely because the players are banned by both law and extreme consequences from their leagues for participating. You cannot have an open-ended prediction market with the same protections. It's just impossible from a practical standpoint, much less theoretical one. I don't think these should be legal since it's just enabling more random gambling, fraud, etc. or even worse for no clear societal gain. But if they do exist, the only purpose for them is to lure out insider information into the open. Pretending they are just folks gambling on 'random' outcomes like a fair coin flip is naive at best. |
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