6 ms·

Game fixing is a known crime in many jurisdictions. If you are a football/baseball/soccer player and you bet your team will lose, you have an obvious way to dra

by arter45 9mo ago

Game fixing is a known crime in many jurisdictions. If you are a football/baseball/soccer player and you bet your team will lose, you have an obvious way to drastically increase your odds (especially if you are a top player) - playing bad. Other people are completely unaware of this deal. Having fire insurance and burning your car is in most jurisdictions illegal. Yes, you should be paid if your car is burned, but if you do it intentionally, you are obviously increasing the chances of getting paid, unless of course the insurance company finds out you did it. And so on. I don't see why these situations would be illegal and, say, betting against the survival of a regime when you're actually working against it, would be legal. Things are even harder if you coordinate multiple people. For example, let's say 100 people bet that there will be a riot in town X by the end of the year. X is normally a quiet town so most people bet against. These 100 people bet this will happen 10 minutes before actually starting a riot themselves. Yes, someone could observe last minute trends and might predict reality, but last minute or huge bets are not necessarily true - someone could bet on random things for a variety of reasons. So it's not even useful as a way to get insights into the reality.

TZubiri 9mo ago
In the context of the events talked about the article and events covered by these markets, sports are irrelevant, not a concern, they influence 0 on how these markets should be regulated. Sports might be fixed? People might gamble with sports? I don't give a shit man, these markets bet on democratic elections and war, the concerns are whether military action is effected for money or leaked for money, everything else is an infitesimal rounding error.
- arter45 9mo ago
  I agree. What I'm saying is that, especially because way less critical applications of this "bet and act to win the bet" rule (sport, insurance,...) are notoriously illegal, I don't see why worse use cases (bet on a military action and lead it) should be ok.
  - TZubiri 9mo ago
    I can give you a concrete example In chess, it's part of the rules that you cannot use a chess engine, a tournament may have a prize money, to enter into a tournament you agree to some clauses like following the rules of chess and not using an engine. It's a contract. If someone were to use an engine, they would be cheating, and in this context it would be breach of contract, and possibly fraud. It would be wrong to assume that because using computer programs in this competitive sport, it is therefore wrong to use it in more critical applications, like war, or health or construction. The core reason being because they are by nature very different events with different contracts that are entered into willingly and are controlled by very different laws, but also independent of laws, they are very different phenomenons and will of course have different moral and practical impacts. (Duh)
    - arter45 9mo ago
      Ok but what difference between, say, sport bets and “prediction market” is significant enough to allow people who can directly influence the result bet on it, but only in “prediction markets”?
      - TZubiri 9mo ago
        I think the misconception here is that there is someone or some law "allowing people" to do things. It's of course the inverse, people by default can do whatever they want. What laws or contracts you may find actually "forbid people" from doing something. I think you are right in that often (but not always), it's fraud (which isn't the same as being ilegal, it could be a breach of contract or fiduciary duty) for someone who is working for a purpose, to sabotage it for another purpose for some additional gain. But the rule being broken is contract law, not criminal law, in this case. Sometimes other laws would have to be broken to manipulate the events, like in the case of democratic elections, or wars. It's just that these are higher order laws and not contracts between parties. It's entirely possible for an event to be manipulated where a party doesn't really break a rule or law or contract to win at it, like elon musk tweeting more than 500 times. Furthermore it's worth noting that this doesn't have much bearing on the legality of the market itself, one thing is for manipulation to be illegal or fraud or somehow penalized, the other is the market itself being illegal. I hope I have helped a little bit, I'm not sure what your legal training is, I'm not a lawyer, but since you are talking about 'allowing people' I analyzed this from a legal perspective based on the knowledge I have.

by arter45 9mo ago

TZubiri 9mo ago

In the context of the events talked about the article and events covered by these markets, sports are irrelevant, not a concern, they influence 0 on how these markets should be regulated. Sports might be fixed? People might gamble with sports? I don't give a shit man, these markets bet on democratic elections and war, the concerns are whether military action is effected for money or leaked for money, everything else is an infitesimal rounding error.

arter45 9mo ago
I agree. What I'm saying is that, especially because way less critical applications of this "bet and act to win the bet" rule (sport, insurance,...) are notoriously illegal, I don't see why worse use cases (bet on a military action and lead it) should be ok.
- TZubiri 9mo ago
  I can give you a concrete example In chess, it's part of the rules that you cannot use a chess engine, a tournament may have a prize money, to enter into a tournament you agree to some clauses like following the rules of chess and not using an engine. It's a contract. If someone were to use an engine, they would be cheating, and in this context it would be breach of contract, and possibly fraud. It would be wrong to assume that because using computer programs in this competitive sport, it is therefore wrong to use it in more critical applications, like war, or health or construction. The core reason being because they are by nature very different events with different contracts that are entered into willingly and are controlled by very different laws, but also independent of laws, they are very different phenomenons and will of course have different moral and practical impacts. (Duh)
  - arter45 9mo ago
    Ok but what difference between, say, sport bets and “prediction market” is significant enough to allow people who can directly influence the result bet on it, but only in “prediction markets”?
    - TZubiri 9mo ago
      I think the misconception here is that there is someone or some law "allowing people" to do things. It's of course the inverse, people by default can do whatever they want. What laws or contracts you may find actually "forbid people" from doing something. I think you are right in that often (but not always), it's fraud (which isn't the same as being ilegal, it could be a breach of contract or fiduciary duty) for someone who is working for a purpose, to sabotage it for another purpose for some additional gain. But the rule being broken is contract law, not criminal law, in this case. Sometimes other laws would have to be broken to manipulate the events, like in the case of democratic elections, or wars. It's just that these are higher order laws and not contracts between parties. It's entirely possible for an event to be manipulated where a party doesn't really break a rule or law or contract to win at it, like elon musk tweeting more than 500 times. Furthermore it's worth noting that this doesn't have much bearing on the legality of the market itself, one thing is for manipulation to be illegal or fraud or somehow penalized, the other is the market itself being illegal. I hope I have helped a little bit, I'm not sure what your legal training is, I'm not a lawyer, but since you are talking about 'allowing people' I analyzed this from a legal perspective based on the knowledge I have.