Comment Text:
Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi allow for monetary incentives attached to outcomes to be so compelling that they risk becoming financial instruments for extracting wealth from pure speculators to actual market movers and insiders. It is an unfair marketplace that allows for bad actors to either capitalize on private information at the public's expense, or incentivizes manipulating outcomes to satisfy financial returns at the expense of a neutral or natural outcome to the event. Do we really want a perceived market opportunity to interfere with elections, sporting events, geopolitical conflicts, the health and wellbeing of any person of note? That is is possible now and what we are seeing happen before our eyes. If there is a societal benefit to these platforms besides the enrichment of a privileged few, I don't see it. Let's aspire for a better world than that.
