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I don’t think they allow bets regarding if someone is going to die or not?
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something is deeply wrong with some humans
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Its just a dark mirror episode. I can't imagine waking up and thinking "boy I'll really make some money if we kill Ayatollah Khomeini today"
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The other side of that argument could be something like: "Dude, Khomeini better not be killed, it'd suck for me, an average iranian dude. I'd probably bet he dies so I can hedge my personal financial wellbeing for that case"
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So there are several intertwined things which bother me about the "these are good because they let people hedge" argument, which I'm having a hard time disentangling here. However, at least one facet is that the new shiny betting-market can be an inferior form of hedging. (Mankind has a lot of prior-work in this area.)

For example, statistically speaking Iranian Dude might be better-off using their bet-money for targeted purposes, like stocking up on imported durable goods that may become scarce, ideally ones that would have resale value even if nothing catastrophic happened.

The convenient online prediction-casino doesn't require people to have more than a general sense of worry to place a bet, but that also limits how effectively anyone can defend themselves. If you're worried about famine, better to have a payout of food than a payout of cash that won't be able to buy anything.

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Which is also hardly imaginable.
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It’s icky to see someone make a moral argument to have something banned, and even worse if they want the government to be the arbiter of morality.

Did we really kill God to have some bloodsuckers in suits tell us what’s right and what’s wrong?

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So I take it you have a problem with laws against murder, fraud, theft, etc.

Aside from the government, who is it that you prefer to do judgment and enforcement?

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I’m not saying immoral things can’t be banned. I’m saying that to ban something we must be able to construct an argument that does not hinge on morality. For example, theft is bad because it deprives you of your possessions. No need to invoke morality.

And yes, you can construct an argument to ban polymarket that does not rely on morality too. But don’t try to sell it to me with a “we will ban it because it’s eeeeevil”.

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> to ban something we must be able to construct an argument that does not hinge on morality. For example, theft is bad because it deprives you of your possessions. No need to invoke morality.

Ok, I'll bite. Why is it bad to deprive you of your possessions?

And given that the house always wins, is it not depriving the gamblers of their possessions?

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Gambling creates addicts, and addicts are more likely to act in desperation. They might steal or kill themselves and are less productive members of society. I bet societies with lots of addicts are much less likely to thrive because they carry a ton of dead weight. Thus we should ban or at least curb gambling because it hurts us all in general.
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Which human law does not ultimately hinge on morality?
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To deeply simplify - why do we ban things?

I'd say, because we as a group decide they are "bad".

Not sure how you can remove moral judgments from any discussion of banning

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That literally is a type of morality, utilitarianism. Kantian deontology is not the only form of morality structure there is.
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If your argument supports "murder for hire should be legal," then the problem is your argument.
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>It’s icky to see someone make a moral argument to have something banned

Which are valid arguments in your opinion?

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well I see more problematic the people actually doing the Iran attacks and murder of heads of state. Betting on those is distasteful, but doing those things is where the damage lies.
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It's not because specifically with these markets there is an amplification effect where the one doing the bet creates incentives for what it's betting in favor or against to materialize in the world.

In other words the money spent on bets that involve killing directly foments more killing.

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the entire point of the argument is that they're the same people. Military bets appear to have significantly higher rates of insider trading than baseline[1], which implies two things, both catastrophic. One is that the markets leak classified information (which is the entire point of the market and it should be a national security no brainer to close it for that reason alone) but the even worse scenario is causality in the other direction, that a bet leads someone to take a military decision.

[1]https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2026/04/30/polymarket-s-mil...

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