Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaw12 | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to discuss this here, when YC also invested in one of those destructive companies Kalshi: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kalshi

Betting of any type is bad for humanity

View on HN

Unfunnily ironically, Kalshi is one of, if not _the_ worst because it's not limited to one type of betting. It also seems to have lobbying power behind it that has shielded it from the kind of (laughably minimal) regulation that sports betting companies have to, because their lobbyists use weasel words like 'markets' in order to make it sound sophisticated rather than what it actually is: entirely degenerate.

Shameful.

Even worse because rigging professional sports is illegal, but similar manipulation in any other betting category is perfectly fine. Kalshi and co. are being used pretty openly by insiders. Trump's own family are major stakeholders and advisors of both Kalshi and Polymarket.

It's sad to see when an actor you respect seems to have no problem shilling for their product during the world cup.

How is investing not a form of betting in and of itself? At this point, getting out of bed in the morning is a form of gambling. Driving your car or even just getting in a car is gambling. Everything can be given odds, and once you tell someone the odds, it's gambling.

Reductionism and semantics playing is quite tiresome, if you need to redefine what something means just to have a semblance of an argument you do need to spend a lot more time on the philosophy of it to be convincing rather than simply reducing it to meaninglessness...

No, you don't get it, it's information discovery, it's a financial derivative, it's arbitraging opportunity.

You should allow people to bet sums on whether you're gonna get shot tomorrow, so you can have the best possible information!

Of course there's no incentives for acting badly against you, and if there are it's again, just price discovery.

I would laugh harder, except we hear arguments exactly like this posted regularly to HN as someone's seriously held belief. It's hard to tell satire anymore.

I wonder why they don't allow betting if the Kalshi offices are going to be fire bombed? It seems like they are missing out on important wisdom of the crowd information!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com