[Planktonne]

> In retrospect their misuse as a loophole for sports gambling was an obvious outcome.

This isn't a 'benefit of hindsight' thing; a lot of people called this out in advance, just like all the other tech you listed.

We need to stop listening to the people who are wrong about everything, rather than pretending the maximalist seeking of profit with no regulation is a reasonable position. We know it doesn't work.

[fwipsy]

I guess most of my positions on prediction markets came from Scott Alexander, e.g. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-market-faq which was posted in 2022. The implicit argument seems to be "We should come up with some way to regulate these so that it's less harmful than existing forms of gambling." I think the part that was harder to foresee was the Trump admin suddenly seizing on them as a loophole to override state regulation of sports betting. Certainly there does not seem to have been any careful consultation with prediction-market experts to determine the most robust, socially beneficial laws.

I understand that "Things would be great if they'd done it right!" is in some sense unfalsifiable. But also I think it's pretty clear that the current regime is geared solely towards maximizing the profits of prediction market companies and Trump Jr.