Sports gambling is a cancer, as are prediction markets. None of it should've been legalized and all of it should be banned.
As a tangent, it reminds me a bit of cryptocurrency: in the earliest days the interested parties have a mix of intellectual (can it be done? How can it be done?) and some idealistic (this technology will have utility, like reducing spam or libertarianism for crypto, or giving us a more accurate and precise understanding of the world for prediction markets) values. Of course, as both are directly financial, the third value is that one stands to get rich off of the technology. This third value might be adequately communally suppressed in the beginning, but the force of money gradually makes this third value the only one that matters, and both technologies become net-negatives on humanity.
Might be something the populace is just too dumb to have - the people seem to overwhelmingly prefer their events to be pretty much games of chance (BTC price up/down at 15 minute intervals) or sports.
I figure Kalshi and Polymarket for dead before too long, if only because the "traditional" sportsbooks seem to have much better "government relations".
Easiest way to know its just valueless
Open the watchduty app and start looking into how many fires are currently arson suspected/apprehended and how this is the largest national wildfire year we've ever had.
The Dick and Cleetus methheads doing this stuff aren't the brightest and most well informed tech risk takers out there. Most of them will get caught and never get a dime, who the hell knows how why or else they're causing fires, the FBI isn't investigating anyone. They don't tell us WHY an arson occurred. Who knows how many of these apps exist in other markets, etc. The last global wildfire article I saw said either 86 or 96 arsons were arrested. I can't remember if it was France or in Africa.
This is THE strangest wildfire year anyone has had and the news is nowhere.
I'm not the only ex-tech wildland person, plenty of laid off firefighters right now back to their old lives.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/17/climate/betting-wildfires-pol...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/arrested-suspi...
Not only are you seeing the advertisements for these platforms and their betting apps, you're having a coordinated focus on actively pushing it in a myriad of other ways as well.
Short term trading, however ...
Maybe we should just put limits on how short one can own a stock (?)
Making a sudden event that happened on the other side of the world reflect in the local market price at almost the speed of light is far more meaningful work than going around shooting dark-skinned people.
Sophisticated investors would never be on the other side of the trade. Add to that bigger spreads and unsophisticated market participants get fleeced. As they wouldn't want to get fleeced they would hire an intermediary to do trades for them - a stock broker who again charges commission.
We already had that: spreads were bigger, prices were less efficient. The main victims were retail/naive investors and the main beneficiaries would be big institutions, brokers and sophisticated investors.
Current system benefits:
-retail/unsophisticated investors
-vanishingly small group of the best/fastest/most sophisticated traders
Who lost:
-big institutions, banks, stock brokers
-investing wannabes who no longer get access to easy money from retail/naive buyers
You seem to assume there is a pool of sharks that prey on pure souls without fast connection. It's not the case at all. Most HFTs lose money without exchange incentives which are provided because exchanges understand liquidity and low spreads are good for other participants. The pool of people who make money out of spreads/inefficient prices is way lower than it used to be as well.
The best possible world would have efficient prices every nano-second coming from god himself. Having a group of very sophisticated market makers is the second best we can have - at least if you care about normal investors who don't have resources to process all the information themselves.
But do I want the prices to be as efficient as possible?
Also considering that these traders will use their $100k in ways that my $1 will become worth even less. For example by buying all the housing in my neighborhood and thereby increasing my rent.
Electronic trading doesn't need to go away. The trade itself might take some time instead of being functionally instant, but that's fine.
Imagine news broke that makes a company worth 15% less. Naive investors isn't aware of it and makes their bid on the market. They look at a recent price, make some offer and buys the shares now worth 15% less while bankers who were able to process the information just made a killing. This is even worse in "slow exchanges" where participants need to come-up with bid price themselves because recent transaction price is not a relevant indicator of fair value.
The problem with the stock market is when there aren't enough new companies going public to soak up the spigot of all the capital that people want to invest, leading average P/E ratios to increase over time. There is too much money chasing too few earnings. When the underlying fundamentals don't match up, then all that investors are doing is speculating that someone else will be the bigger fool and buy from them at an even more unreasonable price - and that is a gamble.
Even if that is true, UK gambling really is not a force for good, quite the opposite. And becoming worse as it moves from a betting shop on the high street into a betting app in a persons pocket.
Sounds like the enlightened citizens of the UK aren't either?
> Health service figures show that from April to September 2024, 1,914 people were treated at NHS gambling clinics. This compares to the previous financial year when a total of 1,389 patients were cared for. In 2022-23 this number was 1,013, and in 2020-21 it was 775 patients.
I get that you're probably trying to make a point that it's bad for everyone in general, but the US is on a completely different level of societal corruption from all of this.
I guess I should just stick to really deep thoughts like "America is not the UK and its citizens are not capable of regulating themselves in the face of this sort of exploitation", with absolutely nothing other than vibes that it's true. Because of course Americans are dumb.
Modern gambling isn't you talking to a bookie and putting down $100 on your favorite team. That should still be legal. Phone apps which learn your behavior, your favorite teams, the offers you are likely to accept, the time of day that you're most likely to make a bet, etc etc and use that to barrage you with notifications, "free" plays, high paying parlays with horrible odds, should not be.
Society bears the downsides of gambling and gambling addiction, while the casinos gather all of the upside.
Finally... https://www.thalamos.co.uk/resources/gambling-addiction-rela...
> NHS gambling clinics have experienced a rise of 130% in referrals in a year, leading to a large increase in the number of support locations.
Seems like the UK is also experiencing a large increase in problems from modern gambling systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gambling_in_the_Uni...
But i think one of the prediction markets more important uses is to enable insider trading for the current administration.
All of the above is completely independent from what Congress can or cannot do.