>By a strict definition of gambling, the stock market is gambling: It's a monetary wager placed on an unknown future event.

No, that is not a strict definition of gambling, that is your own loose, personal and casual definition. The strict definition of the gambling in question under Arizona law (the subject of this article) is I believe partly under 13-3301 [0] and has a number of criteria that clearly differentiate it from investment (whether it be stock, loan by a bank or any other entity/person, or whatever else). Other polities will have their own flavors, but all of them are aimed at a net negative, destructive social activity. That's the whole point of regulating it, it's not some metaphysical philosophy thing about life having uncertainty it's about long experienced concrete harm. Trying to argue that buying shares in a broad index fund is a "wager that a meteor will not hit the Earth" is uninteresting.

>Just because it (often) is positive sum doesn't mean it isn't an unknown that people are betting money on.

It does actually! Positive sum changes everything in terms of collective incentives, strategies available and how investors can hedge risk. You may not choose to make use of all the tools available, but that doesn't make investment the equivalent of gambling. Part of the whole point of markets is to manage changing risk and information discovery (including dead ends) such that we still continue to grow overall.

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0: https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/03301.htm

Pointing that out makes as much sense as "so you're against drugs? Did you know Tylenol is a drug? Ha checkmate!"

I mean sure, people can find ways to use all sorts of events and activities for gambling, but that doesn't mean the events/activities themselves are. And the sentiment you expressed joking has gotten repeated with (afaict) total seriousness in these threads with some regularity (insurance is another one that people incorrectly bring up trying to defend gambling). So I think it's pretty important to differentiate between everything, and to help pass on some of the history as humans have grappled with this in the past. Insurance for example has the concept of requiring an "insurable interest" to help avoid negative incentives and gambling. You can insure your own house against burning down, but you can't take out a policy against some random stranger's house.

The utility is always the same. The stock market provides price discovery, which drives efficient resource allocation (in theory).

Theoretically, more gamblers should mean better price discovery because the payouts for correctly taking the opposing side of the trade are higher.

The market solution would be that the gambling will eventually solve itself. They’ll either learn enough to be trading on knowledge rather than vibes, fueling price discovery, or they’ll exit the market when they’ve lost too much or everything.

My sticking point is that a lot of brokers offer leverage to people they really shouldn’t. I could have sworn you had to be a qualified investor to get leverage, but if that isn’t law it should be. Show the brokerage your certification, or a pile of cash large enough to convince them you can afford to lose the whole thing.