Pushy bureaucrats ban betting on politics unless you’re rich

What will happen in the future? Is there a way to find out?

There may be.

One method that predicts the future better than any other is prediction markets.

The stock market is one. This allows people to bet on the prospects of companies. The market often gives wrong predictions, but a rising stock price is a better predictor of a company’s success than 100 executives or 10,000 politicians. Falling stocks are also good predictors.

Prediction markets thrive thanks to The Wisdom of the Crowds, the title of a book by James Surowiecki.

Crowds? This seems strange. Crowds can be like that. . . mobs! Silly and out of control. “But if the crowd is large enough and diverse enough,” Surowecki says, “you get access to a lot more knowledge than if you went to an expert or even a group of experts.

We saw it on the old TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The participant could call an expert or interview the audience. “Experts” can be geniuses. The TV viewers were definitely not experts, but they were more likely to give correct answers than “experts”.

Defense Department officials once wanted to use the same principle to open up a market that could predict where a terrorist attack might occur. But then some uninformed senators called the idea “grotesque.” The Ministry of Defense abandoned this idea.

Today politicians are killing another good idea: PredictIt.org. This is a website that allows Americans to bet on elections, similar to the political futures market.

As I write, PredictIt players are saying that Joe Biden has a 27 percent chance of becoming our next president; Ron DeSantis has a 21% chance; The chance of Donald Trump is 20%.

This is useful information. But American bureaucrats who run a dreary agency called the Commodity Futures Trading Commission want to shut it down.

Why? Did PredictIt steal user funds? No. Did he lie to people? No. Harm someone? No!

In fact, his chances are being cited by the media around the world. My site, ElectionBettingOdds.com, averages odds from PredictIt and foreign betting sites.

Over time, PredictIt’s odds tended to be more accurate than opinion polls and experts. In 2020, the players correctly predicted Biden’s victory and correctly named almost all the states.

The closure is “grossly unfair,” Brandi Travis, director of marketing for PredictIt, tells me. “Heartbreaking”.

This!

Why can’t Americans bet on what we want? People bet on sports, cards, horses, etc. The stock market is a form of gambling! We are consenting adults! Leave me alone!

The arrogant CFTC bureaucrats won’t even answer a single question about why they’re killing a useful website.

But maybe it’s because of crony capitalism!

Bigger rival betting site Kalshi, which takes bets on things like inflation and gas prices, now wants to take bets on elections as well. Kalsi asked permission from the CFTC. Then representatives of the company met dozens of times with the CFTC. They even hired a former CFTC commissioner hoping it would help (I hate Washington so much).

In a statement, they complained that PredictIt (their only potential election betting rival) operates “without following a set of rules. . . regulations.”

Result? For now, regulators are trying to ban both Kalshi and Predictit.

Your government, busy with work, suppresses innovative competition.

Crush it for most of you, that is.

The CFTC allows very rich people to bet on a site called the American Civics Exchange. But to be eligible to bid, the government says you must have $10 million in assets.

Ordinary Americans are out of luck if PredictIt fails in court where he is fighting for his life.

Once again, American bureaucrats are killing something good.

John Stossel is the author of Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Fraudsters, and Fraudsters and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.

Content Source

News Press Ohio – Latest News:
Columbus Local News || Cleveland Local News || Ohio State News || National News || Money and Economy News || Entertainment News || Tech News || Environment News

Related Articles

Back to top button