5 ms·

Say whatever you want about the merits of prediction markets. But I just don't see a way those benefits outweigh the societal dangers of these constant reminde

by slg 6mo ago

Say whatever you want about the merits of prediction markets. But I just don't see a way those benefits outweigh the societal dangers of these constant reminders that people in or close to power can freely profit from their positions in the ways the rest of the population can't. There's always talk about the dangers of disincentivizing job creators, but what happens when a society routinely disincentives job havers in this way? We're just getting a constant barrage of information telling us that if we show up to our job and simply work as we're expected that we're stooges who won't get ahead. You'll need to look for your own individual scheme, ethics be damned, if you just want to keep up with the rest of the population. That's not healthy on an individual level or cumulatively at a societal level.

colechristensen 6mo ago
I think the bigger risk is changing major decisions (like war) based on the profitability of bets. Forget about drone war doctrine, if you're an adversary just place absurdly large bets which incentivize the opposition to do what you want. (i.e. bet so you "lose" the bet when the enemy changes their posture to gain the profit). Politics is already full of these pay to play incentives but now anyone with enough cash can influence world events.
- SJMG 6mo ago
  This kind of nation-level hedging has been talked about for years in betting market-aware communities. It's honestly a much better use than fleecing nobodies with insider knowledge.
  - stubish 6mo ago
    We should be more worried about who placed the losing bets then. Russia, Israel and China having a market for government and military officials to accept their bribes is kind of a bigger story than insiders fleecing gamblers.
H8crilA 6mo ago
The oil trade structure actually does make sense, because this is how you buy oil, or really any commodity that takes so much space and weight. You order it ahead of time, then if you hold till the contract settles you are allowed to pick it up from the place and in the way designated in the contract specification. In fact you are obliged to pick it up, that's why prices can go negative in exceptional situations. Prediction markets are then just a clean cash-only derivative. Most of the other prediction markets seems rather stupid to me (they are completely detached from any real world activity), other than their prices being a fairly reliable source of information for bystanders.
- slg 6mo ago
  >The oil trade structure actually does make sense, because this is how you buy oil, or really any commodity that takes so much space and weight. You order it ahead of time, then if you hold till the contract settles you are allowed to pick it up from the place and in the way designated in the contract specification. In fact you are obliged to pick it up, that's why prices can go negative in exceptional situations. Prediction markets are then just a clean cash-only derivative. You just described what is happening, you didn't actually provide any reason for why this is good for anyone but the individuals profiting from it.
  - Tade0 6mo ago
    Airlines in particular prefer to have a predictable price of fuel, whatever it might be, so they buy futures.
    - lesuorac 6mo ago
      Do they? Afaik, they don't [1]. > WONG: However, Gerry says most of the major airlines in the U.S. eventually soured on fuel hedging. One reason - the Wall Street transaction fees to make these hedges got expensive. > WOODS: Plus, Gerry says the airlines found that they could make money the old-fashioned way by raising prices. Today, none of the major airlines in the U.S. are hedging. Hedging is one of those things that sounds cool but then when your service is x% more expensive than a competitor and you lose customers you just stop doing it. It's kinda like being on AWS; when everybody has an outage together nobody asks "oh what can be done differently". [1]: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/27/nx-s1-5759203/fuel-hedging-once-kept-airline-prices-down-now-passengers-bear-the-brunt https://www.npr.org/2026/03/27/nx-s1-5759203/fuel-hedging-on...
airstrike 6mo ago
> Say whatever you want about the merits of prediction markets Go on, I'll wait for those "merits"
- boringg 6mo ago
  Lining the pockets of the vcs who funded them and the other insiders. Nothing but an extractionary industry with no underlying benefit.
- austhrow743 6mo ago
  More accurate information about the world allows for more effective decision making.
  - airstrike 6mo ago
    If people are insider trading so blatantly, there's no "more accurate information" here until it's too late and it's already news. You're just getting scammed
    - wallst07 6mo ago
      The hole point of a prediction market is to surface insider trading and information asymmetry by voting with what matters most [in trading markets], money. In other terms, it allows people to transfer risk to money , or information for money.
      - airstrike 6mo ago
        No, that is not the point of a prediction market, though many people have been led to believe as much.
    - austhrow743 6mo ago
      What do you mean "it's already news"? As in it's already happened? I don't understand why insider trading would only happen as something becomes news. The inside knowledge haver is risking the information leaking some other way before they make their bet. Some very risk averse insider traders (lol?) may do so, but others are going to make their bets when they learn their information. Assuming that they don't though, and every insider trader only ever makes their bets right before an event, I don't see how that changes anything? People working with non-insider knowledge are still going to be betting against each other before that point. They are still going to establish a likelihood of a thing happening that's more accurate than I would by myself. The potential for scamming is high at low dollar figures sure. At some point of volume though, it's going to become too expensive to do.
TZubiri 6mo ago
As a foreigner, some view making business with the US as shady in of itself. I usually stand by the US legal system, (which even american citizens might find laughable), but this is by far the most likely reason I would distance myself from doing business. It helps that some states are bringing criminal charges vs these companies. But it looks like a no contest as to how we'll look back to these kinds of things in 5 years. Betting on war is war, you may argue that it's an individual's right to participate in war, (I don't think so, I think that it's a war crime for unmarked civilians to participate in war), but funding bellicose action is war.
jaredklewis 6mo ago
The current setup does sort of seem like a tax on being stupid. Why would any non-insider participate in these markets? You’re just asking to get screwed. Though it’s not that different from the stock market, where the folks at WSB happily give their money to Citadel, Jane Street, and friends, because every once a while, one of them hits it big after going all in that the ball lands on green. Gambling is a hell of a drug and there are good reasons why it is illegal in so many places. Prediction markets have some good externalities (information), but it’s another addictive outlet for those vulnerable to gambling addiction.
- lostlogin 6mo ago
  > The current setup does sort of seem like a tax on being stupid. More like a tax on being ethical or having any morality.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - jaredklewis 6mo ago
    What is unethical? The good point of prediction markets is that they provide information. This information is available to everyone, for free, which benefits everyone. Insiders help achieve this. Insiders have information and by participating in the market they then expose and share that information. So this is good. If we ban insiders, we're just banning accurate information from getting into the market. If we do that, we might as well just ban prediction markets altogether. I don't have a strong opinion either way on that, but a prediction market without insiders is pointless.
    - jackyinger 6mo ago
      Insider trading is unethical, and has long been recognized as such. It is outrageous for you to suggest that it is a good thing. It is not a free market if there is insider trading. If insiders are trading other market participants are by definition getting screwed by what was advertised as a fair, impartial system. You certainly wouldn't participate in a market where you did not think you had fair odds. Tho maybe you're inclined towards the rigging side of things. Finally, since you're trying to work the information angle, would you care to share any legitimately meaninful information you've gained from prediction markets?
Buttons840 6mo ago
[flagged]
luxuryballs 6mo ago
what you’re describing kind of sounds like the wild west or the settlers frontier or the Industrial Revolution, all things that were actually quite beneficial, however in our current environment where everything has been regulated and captured by corporate lobbied legal machinery it’s much worse to have heavy restriction on the masses with the monied upper class able to grease the wheels, if we’re going to have the freedom we need to boom a healthy economy for everyone we need far more wild west from top to bottom
easterncalculus 6mo ago
> That's not healthy on an individual level or cumulatively at a societal level. This is a product of a secular neoliberal culture (certainly including this website) that there is no 'society', really, or at least nothing that's BAD for society - effectively the same thing. If profit is king above all else, there's nothing wrong with vice, with scams, anything to chase the bag. It used to be that neoliberals understood community, but even suggesting that the health of society exists is considered reactionary now.
busyant 6mo ago
> You'll need to look for your own individual scheme, ethics be damned.... That's not healthy on an individual level or cumulatively at a societal level. I was thinking about what you said w/r/t the proximal issue (gambling in prediction markets) and my 1st though was "why is this a big deal? If you're not an insider, just don't participate in these markets ... and then the insiders don't have a counterparty to fleece." But I thought a little more about and I think you're right. Insider's fleecing others in prediction markets just erodes trust everywhere. And we need a considerable amount of trust in people we don't know for society to function properly. I don't know the owner at my local hardware store, but I trust that he won't sell me shoddy tools. The same goes for every societal interaction. We need to trust people we don't know. If that gets eroded, we go back a several centuries.
hashstring 6mo ago
Well said.
jfil 6mo ago
>>You'll need to look for your own individual scheme, ethics be damned This is remarkably similar to how workers in the Soviet Union got ahead. Your job provided a lot of ways to make money on the side, none of them were beneficial to productivity/trust. I think this kind of reality might just be normal for societies in collapse (also, "gerontocracy")
munksbeer 6mo ago
> That's not healthy on an individual level or cumulatively at a societal level. No it isn't. When this sets in, it becomes insidious and distorts the entire system.
SergeAx 6mo ago
"Prediction markets" are just scams where insiders trade against suckers. So those who are not insiders should understand that their money will be alleviated by insiders, end of story.

by slg 6mo ago

colechristensen 6mo ago

I think the bigger risk is changing major decisions (like war) based on the profitability of bets. Forget about drone war doctrine, if you're an adversary just place absurdly large bets which incentivize the opposition to do what you want. (i.e. bet so you "lose" the bet when the enemy changes their posture to gain the profit). Politics is already full of these pay to play incentives but now anyone with enough cash can influence world events.

SJMG 6mo ago
This kind of nation-level hedging has been talked about for years in betting market-aware communities. It's honestly a much better use than fleecing nobodies with insider knowledge.
- stubish 6mo ago
  We should be more worried about who placed the losing bets then. Russia, Israel and China having a market for government and military officials to accept their bribes is kind of a bigger story than insiders fleecing gamblers.

H8crilA 6mo ago

The oil trade structure actually does make sense, because this is how you buy oil, or really any commodity that takes so much space and weight. You order it ahead of time, then if you hold till the contract settles you are allowed to pick it up from the place and in the way designated in the contract specification. In fact you are obliged to pick it up, that's why prices can go negative in exceptional situations. Prediction markets are then just a clean cash-only derivative. Most of the other prediction markets seems rather stupid to me (they are completely detached from any real world activity), other than their prices being a fairly reliable source of information for bystanders.

slg 6mo ago
>The oil trade structure actually does make sense, because this is how you buy oil, or really any commodity that takes so much space and weight. You order it ahead of time, then if you hold till the contract settles you are allowed to pick it up from the place and in the way designated in the contract specification. In fact you are obliged to pick it up, that's why prices can go negative in exceptional situations. Prediction markets are then just a clean cash-only derivative. You just described what is happening, you didn't actually provide any reason for why this is good for anyone but the individuals profiting from it.
- Tade0 6mo ago
  Airlines in particular prefer to have a predictable price of fuel, whatever it might be, so they buy futures.
  - lesuorac 6mo ago
    Do they? Afaik, they don't [1]. > WONG: However, Gerry says most of the major airlines in the U.S. eventually soured on fuel hedging. One reason - the Wall Street transaction fees to make these hedges got expensive. > WOODS: Plus, Gerry says the airlines found that they could make money the old-fashioned way by raising prices. Today, none of the major airlines in the U.S. are hedging. Hedging is one of those things that sounds cool but then when your service is x% more expensive than a competitor and you lose customers you just stop doing it. It's kinda like being on AWS; when everybody has an outage together nobody asks "oh what can be done differently". [1]: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/27/nx-s1-5759203/fuel-hedging-once-kept-airline-prices-down-now-passengers-bear-the-brunt https://www.npr.org/2026/03/27/nx-s1-5759203/fuel-hedging-on...

airstrike 6mo ago

> Say whatever you want about the merits of prediction markets Go on, I'll wait for those "merits"

boringg 6mo ago
Lining the pockets of the vcs who funded them and the other insiders. Nothing but an extractionary industry with no underlying benefit.
austhrow743 6mo ago
More accurate information about the world allows for more effective decision making.
- airstrike 6mo ago
  If people are insider trading so blatantly, there's no "more accurate information" here until it's too late and it's already news. You're just getting scammed
  - wallst07 6mo ago
    The hole point of a prediction market is to surface insider trading and information asymmetry by voting with what matters most [in trading markets], money. In other terms, it allows people to transfer risk to money , or information for money.
    - airstrike 6mo ago
      No, that is not the point of a prediction market, though many people have been led to believe as much.
  - austhrow743 6mo ago
    What do you mean "it's already news"? As in it's already happened? I don't understand why insider trading would only happen as something becomes news. The inside knowledge haver is risking the information leaking some other way before they make their bet. Some very risk averse insider traders (lol?) may do so, but others are going to make their bets when they learn their information. Assuming that they don't though, and every insider trader only ever makes their bets right before an event, I don't see how that changes anything? People working with non-insider knowledge are still going to be betting against each other before that point. They are still going to establish a likelihood of a thing happening that's more accurate than I would by myself. The potential for scamming is high at low dollar figures sure. At some point of volume though, it's going to become too expensive to do.

TZubiri 6mo ago

As a foreigner, some view making business with the US as shady in of itself. I usually stand by the US legal system, (which even american citizens might find laughable), but this is by far the most likely reason I would distance myself from doing business. It helps that some states are bringing criminal charges vs these companies. But it looks like a no contest as to how we'll look back to these kinds of things in 5 years. Betting on war is war, you may argue that it's an individual's right to participate in war, (I don't think so, I think that it's a war crime for unmarked civilians to participate in war), but funding bellicose action is war.

jaredklewis 6mo ago

The current setup does sort of seem like a tax on being stupid. Why would any non-insider participate in these markets? You’re just asking to get screwed. Though it’s not that different from the stock market, where the folks at WSB happily give their money to Citadel, Jane Street, and friends, because every once a while, one of them hits it big after going all in that the ball lands on green. Gambling is a hell of a drug and there are good reasons why it is illegal in so many places. Prediction markets have some good externalities (information), but it’s another addictive outlet for those vulnerable to gambling addiction.

lostlogin 6mo ago
> The current setup does sort of seem like a tax on being stupid. More like a tax on being ethical or having any morality.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- jaredklewis 6mo ago
  What is unethical? The good point of prediction markets is that they provide information. This information is available to everyone, for free, which benefits everyone. Insiders help achieve this. Insiders have information and by participating in the market they then expose and share that information. So this is good. If we ban insiders, we're just banning accurate information from getting into the market. If we do that, we might as well just ban prediction markets altogether. I don't have a strong opinion either way on that, but a prediction market without insiders is pointless.
  - jackyinger 6mo ago
    Insider trading is unethical, and has long been recognized as such. It is outrageous for you to suggest that it is a good thing. It is not a free market if there is insider trading. If insiders are trading other market participants are by definition getting screwed by what was advertised as a fair, impartial system. You certainly wouldn't participate in a market where you did not think you had fair odds. Tho maybe you're inclined towards the rigging side of things. Finally, since you're trying to work the information angle, would you care to share any legitimately meaninful information you've gained from prediction markets?

Buttons840 6mo ago

[flagged]

luxuryballs 6mo ago

what you’re describing kind of sounds like the wild west or the settlers frontier or the Industrial Revolution, all things that were actually quite beneficial, however in our current environment where everything has been regulated and captured by corporate lobbied legal machinery it’s much worse to have heavy restriction on the masses with the monied upper class able to grease the wheels, if we’re going to have the freedom we need to boom a healthy economy for everyone we need far more wild west from top to bottom

easterncalculus 6mo ago

> That's not healthy on an individual level or cumulatively at a societal level. This is a product of a secular neoliberal culture (certainly including this website) that there is no 'society', really, or at least nothing that's BAD for society - effectively the same thing. If profit is king above all else, there's nothing wrong with vice, with scams, anything to chase the bag. It used to be that neoliberals understood community, but even suggesting that the health of society exists is considered reactionary now.

busyant 6mo ago

> You'll need to look for your own individual scheme, ethics be damned.... That's not healthy on an individual level or cumulatively at a societal level. I was thinking about what you said w/r/t the proximal issue (gambling in prediction markets) and my 1st though was "why is this a big deal? If you're not an insider, just don't participate in these markets ... and then the insiders don't have a counterparty to fleece." But I thought a little more about and I think you're right. Insider's fleecing others in prediction markets just erodes trust everywhere. And we need a considerable amount of trust in people we don't know for society to function properly. I don't know the owner at my local hardware store, but I trust that he won't sell me shoddy tools. The same goes for every societal interaction. We need to trust people we don't know. If that gets eroded, we go back a several centuries.

hashstring 6mo ago

Well said.

jfil 6mo ago

>>You'll need to look for your own individual scheme, ethics be damned This is remarkably similar to how workers in the Soviet Union got ahead. Your job provided a lot of ways to make money on the side, none of them were beneficial to productivity/trust. I think this kind of reality might just be normal for societies in collapse (also, "gerontocracy")

munksbeer 6mo ago

> That's not healthy on an individual level or cumulatively at a societal level. No it isn't. When this sets in, it becomes insidious and distorts the entire system.

SergeAx 6mo ago

"Prediction markets" are just scams where insiders trade against suckers. So those who are not insiders should understand that their money will be alleviated by insiders, end of story.