my life’s just like a bitch

The most glaring issue, IMO, is how these gambling apps are targeting the most irresponsible and dangerous group when it comes to financial responsibility, teenagers and young adults. I want to be super clear here and try and avoid sounding like “old man yells at cloud”. If you are in that age range, the reason you’re probably not financially responsible isn’t because you’re an idiot, it’s because you probably don’t have the experience of managing your finances. Yes, there is large amount of much older folk who are also financially responsible as well. But if you’re in that 18-30 age range, messing up your credit and getting into a gambling addiction will screw you over big time in the later years of your life. Bad credit is easy to accrue and monstrously hard to get away from.

Unlike other damaging addictions: smoking, drinking, drug use, gambling isn’t one that, at least in the US, is warned against nearly as much when you’re younger. Just like anything, the key is moderation. If you and your buddies have a work-pool on the next election or the World Series, then fine! You have a poker night or mahjong group that meets every few weeks? Also no problem. But if you’re opening an app to gamble on every sports game and (checks notes) celebrity deaths, Rotten Tomatoes score, the WAR IN UKRAINE AND GAZA, then you are wading into a very very bad surf.

there are the obvious problems: the lack of regulation makes insider trading completely legal. it encourages gambling addiction and actually infests our larger culture with an obsession with gambling. there are no limits on who can do it, and so even our politicians can place bets.

however, i realized something possibly even more dystopian than those things. what if i told you that the version the Kalshi COO told at a citadel securities conference, that their company wants "the financialization of everything, to create a tradeable asset [out of opinions]," is the SANITIZED version? putting a cut here so i don't clog the dash.