The prime directive of contemporary technology companies is simple: if you can do it, you should do it. A corollary follows: if you can make a profit from it, you must try. Any consequences, damages, or negative externalities are secondary concerns, if they are concerns at all.
The rise of “prediction markets,” and their creep into every facet of existence from sports to politics and pop culture, illustrates the point. These platforms, backed by big money from venture capital funding, let individual or institutional bettors wager on potential outcomes through contract exchanges: who’ll get elected, who’ll win an award, who’ll break their ankle walking into the stadium. If you can imagine it, you can wager on it — or, as proponents of the markets might prefer, “predict” it. It’s a gloss on the old idea of putting your money where your mouth is. You think Taylor Swift’s album is a lock for best of the year? Why not put a cool $100 on it? The Cowboys are going all the way this year? Does your wallet agree, tough guy?
On X, a user laid bare the nature of these newfangled exchanges, writing “name a better rebrand than gambling becoming prediction markets.” The insight is spot-on. Prediction markets are casinos that facilitate online gaming at scale. They’re bookies. They claim otherwise, but that’s what they are, even if they function differently from the bookies of old.
Unlike traditional gambling, today’s online bookies, rebranded as prediction markets, enjoy a scale, reach, and network effect that presents their operation as a mechanism to “aggregate” public opinion, preference, and expectation — and then commodify it in one of the worst ways imaginable. Any position one might take becomes something to package and trade, a new financial instrument that can earn or lose a fortune overnight. It’s a demented form of day-trading, which is itself a grotesque mutation of investment. And it gets worse.
The recent proliferation of…
Auteur: David Moscrop
