Let's not condone "measurements" that are effectively ways for people to gain money on important political decisions, affecting the lives of many people.
this law literally make it illegal to gamble on marine risk that you do not have direct economic interest in
Anything that relies directly or indirectly on the death of a real person is covered outlawed by the Life Assurance Act, so you've never been able to bet on things like fatal crashes in an F1 race or the date of the start of the next monarch's reign.
The Marine Insurance Act is a new one on me, but I've never seen anything which would obviously violate that. There's plenty of spread betting on oil, but mostly on prices and volumes, not the fate of individual cargoes.
But disregarding this admittedly niche attitude; it's not the same thing. If you're opening bets on the ships being bombed before a certain date, you're opening incentives for people to do so. Although buying OIL or Palantir is morally questionable, it does not create such direct incentives.
Surely, you acknowledge that funding something is a rather direct way of actively supporting it. It is your money and your choice of what you choose to invest it in, and thus how you choose to shape the future. If you buy OIL to make money, you are still responsible for the additional investment made in oil, and are still shaping the future, whether you like it or not.
Absolutely, but I believe you are conflating investing vs donating. The literal definition of investing is:
> Allocating money (or capital) with the expectation of generating a return or profit over time.
Would you buy stocks of ClusterBombsInc over CureForCancerInc because it has slightly better prospects?
All of the money comes from consumers. The money may change hands 100 times in between, but the money from consumers goes to producers.
If you purchase any products which included petroleum in your life, whether it's a house, car (EV or not), or stretchy clothes, that is what funds the oil producers. That where the money goes into the system, including to investors as return.
how about short-selling of stocks, isn't it the same thing? I'd even argue that sinking one ship affects say 10 people of the crew who most probable will survive in the warm Gulf waters whereis sinking a company may affect many people life outcomes probably causing a number of indirect deaths. CDS of 2008 would be similar example.
>buying OIL or Palantir is morally questionable, it does not create such direct incentives
it creates direct incentives to suppress competitors - wind and solar energy for OIL, and whoever Palantir competitors are.
Wrt. "Hormuz open" - does the "open" definition includes the new fee Iran would be taking for the strait traverse (something like $1/barrel, nice for Iran, how come that they had't implemented such an idea before? one can only wonder)
Yes. That's why it's illegal to short-sell your stocks just before you announce that your company is broke.
There are no such regulations when betting on a bomb dropping on a boat.
Probably someone would have bombed their country of they had done that before. That and the reverse are pretty basic assumptions..
Carbon-related environmentalism and greed now go hand in hand.
Modern equities and futures markets are highly evolved and rather carefully regulated systems. We've spent centuries learning what the failure modes are and how to guard against them. It's never perfect, it's never going to be perfect -- it's fundamentally a voting system -- but in general, we get liquidity and price discovery at a relatively low cost, while avoiding fraudulent and evil behavior like wash trading and criminal profit laundering.
These new "prediction markets" have been put in place without any of those hard-earned protections. And surprise, they're rife with dirty trick and dirty money.
I mean, looking at futures and stocks now, I dont believe in those anymore anyway.
It sucks that they're going mainstream, providing incentives to bad actors to profit from their power, and it sucks that they've gone so heavily for the predatory gambling market to boot.
I really hate this duality.
Are you sure it's not survivorship bias or similar? I've seen multiple trend lines that are very confident only to switch to the opposite outcome at the very end.
But there is plenty of research on how well-calibrated they are. For example, https://polymarket.com/accuracy
I would invite you to look into the statistics on foreclosures, bankruptcy, and gambling hotline traffic which compare jurisdictions that have allowed this stuff vs not. Those with demographic breakdowns help to show those most at risk.
Polymarket has $5 million of wagers on "Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by end of April?"
The toll Iran charges for safe passage is $2 million per ship, and at current prices such a ship would be carrying about $200 million of oil. Oh, and we live in a world where a single billionaire will happily spend $200 million to influence politics.
The polymarket number merely shows that nobody's paid to make it higher or lower yet.
And yet, it is the wisdom of the crowds. The crowds being obscene.
Aren't we all constantly hitting re-fresh for updates, and making predictions.
The prediction markets are just consolidating that 'desire'.
Who could have foreseen that a government/person would actually blatantly start a war, and manipulate bombing raids in order to manipulate a market, without being charged with a crime himself.
In sports betting, it seems obvious if a player throws a game.
In a war? Surely nobody would do this, right? Who could imagine it.
In sports, at least the outcome is only effected by the sportsmen. Here, who knows which and how many people have inside knowledge and influence that they can use that to their financial advantage?
I never imagined that markets could be so corrupted by those in power, without some other consequences somehow balancing out. Like being arrested, or removed from office.
Forget PolyMarket. We literally have bets being made on oil futures, directly before a tweet by the president. Openly profiting on direct minute by minute manipulation. Openly corrupt.
Economists. They even have a term for this, dating back to the late 1800s: "moral hazard".
Polymarket creates moral hazard when participants can profit from outcomes they can influence.
On the other hand, since you can bet on individual pitches, you no longer have to throw the game, just the right pitch at the right time. A couple of players were caught, but who knows how widespread this really is...
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/46917665/mlb-betting-gua...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/two-current-major-leagu...
The focus on making money above all else, as a cultural dynamic, is degrading the human experience. It increasingly seeps into more aspects of our lives and is part of the broader Trustpocalypse.
Running Man was a prediction, coming true.
I thought about it more and realized it’s the “via Polymarket” tag on it. It reads like an advertisement. I don’t need to know the exact market the figure is from. Someone could even combine multiple ones and I still wouldn’t want to know.