[PunchyHamster]

Just ban gambling. That solves good part of it.

Then ENFORCE EXISTING LAWS. That solves good part of it.

Talking about any other solutions will have to wait for govt that's not crooked. It doesn't need revolution, it needs to not have criminals at helm

[theptip]

Rather than banning gambling I think you need to ban congress critters from trading. Polymarket is a quick and anonymize way of making long bets on your inside information.

But there are plenty of other stock-based bets they already do make to trade on confidential info.

They should be allowed to hold an ETF with fully locked contribution schedules. Anything more is corruptible.

(Also, if congress critters’ wealth was coupled to the index instead of specific interests, maybe we’d get less pork overall.)

[triceratops]

Ban gambling advertising. Ban online gambling. It will solve a lot of the issues without allowing criminals to profit from illegal gambling.

[monooso]

I'm a little confused by your comment.

Insider trading is already illegal (this case proves it). If the problem is under-enforcement, then I agree that better enforcement is the fix.

Banning gambling is a completely separate intervention addressing a different activity, and clearly wasn't required to bring charges in this case.

The tendency of governments to create new laws instead of enforcing existing ones is how we end up with absurdly complex legal systems and the loopholes that come with them.

[wraptile]

I think OP's point is that gambling creates so many additional incentives that it overloads the system and we can restore it by just banning gambling.

Personally I think the system shouldn't be so easily overloaded.

[criddell]

How would you define gambling? Would it make trading stocks illegal?

[triceratops]

Lots of countries have managed to legally define gambling and ban it without making stock trading illegal. Even the US. This isn't some gotcha.

[epistasis]

That would require a functioning legislative branch that could pass laws. However a major political program of the past decades has been to gum up Congress and prevent its functioning. There's very limited bandwidth to accomplish legislation, and there's hundreds of good fixes that can't fit through, so I doubt the US will be able to fix this anytime soon, unless there's bigger scandal.

[hrimfaxi]

This would make sense if Congress never passed laws. They can and routinely do. That they don't limit their behavior is unsurprising.

[epistasis]

The passage of some laws is completely consistent with my description of a dysfunctional system that can not get many good reforms through.

Getting some bills passed does not equate to adequate legislative capacity.

[Tangurena2]

If it is based on chance, then it is gambling.

Until the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, Collateral Debt Obligations were regulated differently in different states. Some said it was insurance, and thus regulated it like insurance. Some said it was gambling and banned it outright. Instead, regulation was handed to a toothless new agency who got little funding for enforcement and the rest of the world got the 2008 financial crisis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernizatio...

[criddell]

> If it is based on chance, then it is gambling.

Is there much difference between picking a horse at the track or a stock on an exchange?

[sleepybrett]

> Just ban gambling. That solves good part of it.

does that include the stock exchange?

[joquarky]

I think a good compromise there is to get rid of shorting.

And tax capital gains at a rate inversely proportional to how long the shares were held. E.g., 90% if held less than a second, 10% if held over 10 years.

[sleepybrett]

what makes 'shorting' special? I understand what shorting is from a non-market-junkie point of view (essentially betting that a stock will go down).. is that just more 'gameable' than buying stock.. i guess i don't see the difference between 'i bet this will go up' and 'i bet this will go down' it's still a bet.

[dysoco]

I assume it must be much easier to modify the market to make a stock price go down (e.g. hack the CEO account to say something silly/dangerous) vs trying to make the stock price go up.

[hrimfaxi]

You could hack the CEO account to say something positive, too though.

[interestpiqued]

What if I’m a farmer who wants to short whatever commodity I grow as a hedge.