Using https://news.ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html i got "He was banned by betting sites. Then he relapsed on Kalshi."
Prediction markets are a way of effectively placing a "bounty" on something you would like to happen. Or capitalizing on one of these existing bounties because you're able to affect the result. It's a way to commodify power (and information of course, which is what these platforms bill themselves for), converting it into money, which can you can build further power with.
So it's not surprising someone would be against restricting gambling. The hard part is to how the gov should do it. But it's not government's job to please every single person.
Online gambling was literally illegal in most of the US a decade ago, even on the modern post-social-media internet. You could still do it by jumping through hoops like using a VPN to access foreign gambling sites, but you couldn't get it in the App Store on your iPhone, and you weren't spammed with ads for it every time you watch football.
It's not hard to imagine going back to that world; it wasn't that long ago. I used to support legalizing online gambling back then, but we've run the experiment and seen the results and it's past time to shut it down.
I guess being able to scan each and every cell for the cancerous mutation is also a possible solution, but also a tall order.
- make detection easier and cheaper (e.g. with less invasive biopsies)
- make treatment easier and cheaper (e.g. more precise targeted treatments, making chemo a last resort instead of the only option)
Among other things. There's even emerging research that certain types of cancers could be "vaccinated" against: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02612-3
How is this different than scanning every cell in the body? You can get rid of the cancer cells you can (easily) detect, but the lengthy chemo/immuno therapy is to catch the few cancer cells that might have gotten away, even though it will harm the body in other ways.
The vaccine possibility sound pretty cool, but my understanding of cancer is that it is a ton of different diseases with different pathologies that require different solutions.
Therefore “a” solution to cancer is not really realistic.
You may not be aware of how rapidly and historically unprecedented gambling has spread in the US in the last few years. More than half of all men aged 18-49 participate in some form of online sports betting (https://futurism.com/future-society/men-aged-18-to-49-hooked...)
10 years ago I had some friends who were into online sports betting. It required getting a VPN, accessing offshore servers, signing up for sketchy websites, and linking an online bank account. It was enough hoops to jump through that the average person wouldn't bother. Back then I would have agreed with you: let the people play! But I'm only 33 and I've watched online gambling cripple peoples' lives in just the last few years. It's a huge problem and should be made illegal again. You should not be able to access it in one click from the App Store.
There is data from the past 10 years showing a direct spike in bankruptcies, divorces, foreclosures, suicide, and domestic violence (yes, really) as soon as DraftKings-style gambling is legalized in a state.
> despair, desperation and hopelessness
These are certainly factors, and yes we should have better mental health treatment and job opportunities in the US, etc.
But it's an incomplete picture of what's happening. There are billion-dollar companies with teams of advanced psychologists crafting the most addictive experience possible, and specifically targeting problem gamblers, with these new apps. It's industrialized and predatory. People with happy fulfilling lives and careers are still falling for it, not just hopeless impoverished people. Saying it's only about mental health and despair is framing it as an individual failing and ignoring the huge industry creating it this way.
The apps and the companies behind them really brought in a dangerous paradigm shift and the data is already here to show it.
Sorry, I thought this was a discussion about gambling, not Facebook and TikTok and YouTube and Whatnot and OpenAI and EA and Roblox and every other company that invents a problem (oh no, your hair isn’t shiny!) and uses psychological manipulation to sell you a solution. :-)
Jokes aside, the fact that this sort of predatory behaviour is showing up in multiple industries with broadly similar characteristics (giant corporations with immense wealth concentrations who are not part of the communities they serve and whose only interest is in sucking up all the money) suggests that there are some deeper problems here, and that focusing on the gambling industry is focusing on a red herring (or perhaps the most obvious canary to date, to stick with bird metaphors).
> Saying it's only about mental health and despair is framing it as an individual failing
Not at all! Despair is the outcome of a broken system.
The other way you can self-exclude or ban yourself from the traditional gambling apps is just win too often.
By definition if you use traditional (non-'market') gambling apps and aren't banned by the owners of them then you're statistically a loser or at best neutral over time.
If you were a winner over time they would ban you to stem their own losses. They are legally allowed to do this and do it all the time.
Good movie plot, perhaps, and some (relatively) ethical old-school brick and mortar sportsbooks work that way but the non-market online gambling apps have an established system that they all follow.
They all just use 'lazy odds' compiled algorithmically by outside third-parties like Sportradar, Kambi, Genius Sports, etc and if you show any true ability to beat these odds you just get instantly restricted from betting.
Only losers are welcome to remain on the platforms. Gotta keep things maximally extractive.
Really wish the author had pushed back more on this. They have different predatory incentives, benefitting from encouraging people to make a large number of slightly stupid bets rather than a smaller number of very stupid ones. I would love to hear Kalshi explain what non-predatory value the 15 minute crypto markets have.
In some traditional markets, a source of funding is investors who are hedging, essentially buying insurance.
Kalshi Trading LLC, the market maker which is fully owned by KalshiEX and has no independent online presence, makes money from losers in the same way as traditional gambling platforms. Kalshi's claims that this is an independent company are obviously absurd. (It's fair, I think, to say that the structure of the market limits their ability to make windfalls from severe mispricing.)
It's like the stock market, where there's always one buyer and one seller. The marketplace, ie. NYSE or Nasdaq for example, don't bias in any particular direction they just being one side together with the other.
Many of the ideas that later became the United States were discussed in a bar while drinking, the same cannot be said anywhere for solo gambling. Whether you like it or not, alcohol and tobacco are woven into the social order.
How much did legalization contribute to making it mainstream-casual? What about the ads?
I think it's time for a modern Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act which banned cigarette commercials on TV and radio starting January 1, 1971.
It's my opinion that gambling be reserved for Atlantic City (or your town). But legality aside, we ought to at least stop advertising it.
Gambling is a bad addiction but the long term impact is much lower if you can't possibly spend more money in this addiction. How in hell can someone accumulate 75k$ of debt through credit cards and loans spent in gambling. No financial institution should be allowed to open a second credit card account or loan to someone who hasn't shown ability to timely reimburse its current debt.
(not being serious)
Prohibited:
- Travel: No air travel; limited high-speed rail. Can still take the slow green trains, but only in the lower-class coaches.
- Lodging & leisure: No stays in star-rated hotels, nightclubs, golf courses, or other luxury venues. Yes, no golf. No gambling visits to Macau, either. Within China, gambling is already prohibited.
- Property & business: No purchase of real estate; no leasing high-end offices/hotels; no luxury vehicle purchases.
- Education & insurance: No enrollment of children in high-cost private schools.
China can make this work because everything runs on the official government ID card, and the database of who's on consumption restriction is tied to that.
[1] https://www.chinajusticeobserver.com/a/restriction-on-high-l...
Restricting air travel would be an attack on an American's freedom of movement, a right enshrined in our Constitution.
Restriction on doing business with whomever is willing to do business with them would be an attack on an American's freedom of association, which is likewise enshrined in the very first ammendment of our Bill of Rights.
Any US politician who offered up such an outrageous attack on the Constitution would deserve nothing short of death for their utter betrayal of the trust placed in them by the American people.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/09/how-common-is...