The stock market wasn't designed to be gambling. You're buying a piece of a company. They want people to come so they can raise money for expanding businesses. If insider trading benefits some at the expense of others, people won't come.

Obviously it has come a long way from that, and the markets have become more like gambling. You could probably allow insider trading at this point and the system would continue just fine.

Hmm yeah it depends on your definition of insider. If you assume all raw information is public-ish, a market can reward those who can synthesize/operate on that knowledge to predict better. (The cars in the lot, etc. there is friction to this discovery; the knowledge can be communicated to others through the market after discovery to profit off the initial cost of discovery). There is symmetric competition to some degree. If you have true non public knowledge (I’m going to say something to tank the stock on this date) then you are purely extracting value from others because you will always win; they will never have that info and the incentive for anyone else to participate in price discovery would go away.

Non-insider trading is liquidity. That’s why people pay for retail trading volume (payment for order flow). Not because of nefarious reasons. Just because it represents liquidity. With no liquidity it’s impossible to enter or exit trades efficiently.

Stocks are a financing mechanism. They're useful for the economy independent of the price discovery aspect in the much the same ways that lending is, except that instead of receiving an obligation of future payment you're compensated on vibes.

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You can bet on assassination. There are polymarket prediction markets for leaders of many countries where you can bet on if they will cease to be the leader by X date, for any reason.

If they get assassinated, those markets will resolve to yes. At least the rules don't specifically exclude that.

I would say corruption and not theft

Why does the page have a non-removable blue filter? Feels like a popup shadow that doesn't go away...

>The purpose of the Ukrainian military is to get stuck in a years-long stalemate with Russia.

>These are obviously false.

The purpose of the Ukrainian military is to exhaust the Russian army's materiel and test out our weapons. "Years-long stalemate with Russia? Yes, please." -the US. Seems like an overwhelmingly common Scott Alexander L.

Is the purpose of replying to Wikipedia with random substack drivel to get downvoted? Or is it a byproduct of the system?

I was shocked at how shallow that take is. I expected more.

The proof that free markets are efficient (even in the narrow sense economists use this word) relies on an assumption of perfect information. This has been known at least since Akerlof.

The Misesian folks are a lost cause, IMHO. They're hardcore rationalists, self-indulging in circular moral arguments from assumptions that don't apply in the real world.

Reporters have an entirely different incentive -- they're less interested in what will happen than whether or not they get eyeballs on their story.

That's not how it works.

First, you have inside traders. Then, among legitimate bettors, you have smart people using multiple data sources (not just the "news") and doing sophisticated analysis that most journalists cannot do, and are not motivated to do -- again, because their incentives are different.

No? Where's the loop?