From gambling to Gaza, Matt Yglesias and the Democratic elite have engaged in a shameless lying campaign to protect their pockets and prestige. And they'll only getting worse as we approach 2028.
It boils down to that Upton Sinclair quote that you can’t make someone understand something if their paycheck depends on them misunderstanding it. Now that journalism has morphed into commentary, and social media has turned pundits into brands, their analysis is meant to cultivate and capture a certain audience. A lot of the time, it’s not even outright lying as much as it is deceptive aspirational branding, which is arguably even more insidious. There is no reasoning with these people because their POV is informed by clout, a paycheck, and career advancement.
That's the heart of it, which we all need to understand. Most of us approach politics thinking, "How can we operate in what's best for the country and people?" Matt and his ilk approach it as, "What's best for me?"
They also have such low opinions of everyone else that they don't realize this doesn't fly with voters. They convinced themselves Harris was a progressive and say it constantly, but no one outside of their group texts thinks this. So when Matt says it, it only makes him sound detached from reality.
I'm not one who thinks these people don't mind losing. They hate it. Rather, I think they would rather be in control of the Democratic Party. If they're not, then losing and winning become irrelevant to them.
Maybe get all of Yglesias’s stances right before moving forward with such a critique. And calling Kamala Harris a centrist moderate right off the bat almost blows up this entire piece. So many assertions just plain wrong.
It’s not a centrist vs leftist issue. It’s a billionaire vs middle class issue. This rhetoric isn’t helpful. You are a smart guy challenge yourself to think along a different continuum
I think your assessment of the information utility of prediction markets for important world events is plainly misleading. The Jesus Returning prediction trades at 4% as opposed to ~0% because the smart money returns aren't there below 4% due to transaction fees and opportunity cost. It's not perfect but it's only off by 4%. If a person went from 50/50 (no idea) to only 4% that's on net a huge success.
A better real world example is two prediction markets set up in 2024 about whether conditional on Trump/Harris being elected will the USA by at war with Iran by 2027. I suspect both of these markets would have traded well above 4% and there would be real informational value if say the Trump line was 10 points higher than the Harris line.
I'm not sure exactly what the right regulatory framework is but if the goal is to maximize the information utility of the world events prediction markets it seems to me the MY framework is essentially correct. Use sports betting (with vig) to subsidize (and in some sense market) no transaction fee world events betting by capping sports betting at some greater than zero percentage of total bets. You don't have to be bought out to come to the conclusion that this framework is reasonable. It's clearly coherent to think it's more reasonable than the status quo.
Your first point makes my point. "Prediction markets" are just there to make money. Not give us accurate percentages of what's happening. MY's argument is that they're accurate, but you point out that this isn't true.
Alternatively, why should we do that? Exchange markets already exist. Polymarket and Kalshi don't provide any new value.
> "Prediction markets" are just there to make money. Not give us accurate percentages of what's happening.
Yes. Prediction markets are operated by for profit entities making money. The information is a side effect of them. Just like alcohol isn't there to act as a diuretic. It's a side effect.
I'm not sure where MY used the term "accurate" on skim. I see: "prediction markets, in theory, generate useful information externalities". Something can not perfectly accurate and still be useful. If the smart money needs 4% or more favorable odds to bet then that means that any market has an implied +/- 4% relative to the face number. That's useful information in typical contexts (e.g. odds of war with Iran) even if it's not perfectly "accurate."
And as noted the cross subsidy approach to prediction markets can reduce these accuracy limitations.
But he's arguing Polymarket's "useful" information is worth addictive gambling, which his publication has repeatedly pointed out is terrible for society.
MY writes: "sports happens to be...an area where the information externality has relatively little value."
MY is running a run of the mill tradeoff analysis. Roughly speaking I think MY's claim is that on matters of social insignificance (e.g. sports outcomes) the costs of gambling addiction and adjacent outweigh the informational externality. Whereas on matters of social significance (e.g. will Trump invade Iran) the costs of gambling addiction and adjacent don't outweigh the information utility.
In terms of addictive gambling being terrible. I and I think MY also think drug addiction and drug induced accidents are terrible for society while also believing that prohibition is not a good policy. Policies have tradeoffs and one can believe that gambling addiction is terrible and that sports gambling lacks much informational value while also believing that a regulatory policy that enables prediction markets with positive informational value to flourish is a net positive for society.
What kind of ethical calculus is required to determine that the "informational value" outweighs the harm of normalizing addictive gambling? Can you attach a number to that? Do you personally engage in this gambling?
I have played in casual low stakes poker games (e.g. $20 buy in) with friends on and off over the years. I have probably put as many as $20 in slots in my lifetime (e.g. staying at an Native American hotel/casino for a friend's wedding). And I have made a few friendly wagers with friends on sports outcomes or fantasy sports probably totaling less than $100.
> What kind of ethical calculus...the harm of normalizing addictive gambling.
First of all "normalizing" seems like it's moving the goalposts. To use the drug induced accidents example again having legal alcohol etc. does not per se normalize driving drunk.
Philosophically speaking my general thoughts are:
1. I have a pretty strong bias towards freedom and non-paternalism in general.
2. Ignoring addiction, typical gambling seems super zero sum. Unlike drugs where in principle it can be win/win for consumers and producers the core structure of gambling is that the casinos do as well as the consumers do poorly. I can't per se get into the headspace of how someone derives enjoyment from making negative E(V) bets. Gambling is the only market I can think of that has this property. And yes I have read some literature on why people like slots etc.
3. In principle outside of sports I think there are "prediction markets" that have high informational utility (e.g. the Iran war conditional probabilities I mentioned up thread) and ones that have lower informational utility (e.g. who will be the next president). Notably, I don't think there's a good substitute for the former.
4. The no substitute issue can't easily be understated. The cleanest example I can think of is the US invasion of Iraq. The elite, media and ultimately public consensus in ~2002 was way way over confident that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, it was hugely negatively consequential that the US invaded Iraq, and it's highly plausible that an effective prediction market would have sussed out that the consensus was out of touch with reality as the folks on the ground were far more skeptical. I am not saying prediction markets would have been decisive but I think it's plausible that they could have been and that would be a massive massive positive externality if so.
Given those four points, philosophically speaking I think that:
A. Prediction markets with a useful information externality points 1 and 3 and 4 dominate.
B. Prediction markets that don't have a useful information externality point 2 plus gambling addiction dominates.
The precise regulatory framework that balances these tradeoffs is sort of a devil's in details but for which "allow prediction markets but limit sports betting specifically" seems directionally reasonable to me.
You're changing Matt's argument. Slow Boring has continuously called for the abolition of online gambling. Now that they're being paid, they're saying it should be encouraged.
On April 18th 2024 Milan specifically wrote in a comment on the post “Larry Summers isn't worried about secular stagnation anymore”:
"Prediction markets are good because there is social value in knowing how likely someone is to win the election; this is not early the same for sports betting which should be illegal."
Moreover, the anti-gambling posts that you reference pretty consistently explicitly reference sports gambling or other ~0 information utility gambling. Ben’s is explicitly about sports gambling and all of Milan’s examples on skim covered ~0 informational utility gambling. Their co-authored piece also explicitly uses the phrasing “sports gambling.” And MY’s December piece uses the phrasing “sports gambling” earlier in the paragraph you quote. In context “gambling” is pretty clearly a reference to ~0 informational utility gambling not positive information value prediction markets.
Furthermore, MY has a record of valuing the use of predictions with “stakes” to improve epistemics since at least 2020 (e.g. How to be less full of shit).
Now let's take a look at the February 12th piece you mention from MY:
“voters do not bother to inform themselves about the actual difficulties involved in assessing policy problems, they wrongly conclude that everything they don’t like reflects corruption or self-interested behavior from elected officials.”
Here is an entirely coherent argument from a MY perspective:
1. Assessing the outcomes of policy is hard. Even for elites. Even for arrogant ass MY. And especially for elites without deep domain knowledge in the relevant field.
2. Prediction markets on positive information utility questions (e.g. 2002 Iraq has WMDs, one of MY’s big eggs over the years) are as good a tool as we have for sussing out what the actual outcomes of certain policies might be.
3. As such positive information utility prediction markets would enable elites to make better policy decisions AND
4. As such positive information utility prediction markets would normalize the idea that some policy outcomes have deep uncertainty associated with them. If Iraq has WMDs is betting at 40% in 2002 it implies that smart people putting their money where their mouth is don't exactly know the answer and them getting it wrong therefore doesn't *always* imply corruption.
Overall I think the overwhelming weight of the evidence is that the consistent position of MY and adjacent is that ~0 informational utility gambling is net bad and (sufficiently) positive informational utility gambling is net good.
you can catch him around 13th and S streets NW most days, he used to post pictures of people illegally parked there on twitter until someone pointed out he’d basically self-doxxed.
The two party system is dictated by the constitutional setup of congress and very basic game theory. People who complain about the two party system are fools. Stop complaining and show up at the primaries and elect party members that better represent you.
It boils down to that Upton Sinclair quote that you can’t make someone understand something if their paycheck depends on them misunderstanding it. Now that journalism has morphed into commentary, and social media has turned pundits into brands, their analysis is meant to cultivate and capture a certain audience. A lot of the time, it’s not even outright lying as much as it is deceptive aspirational branding, which is arguably even more insidious. There is no reasoning with these people because their POV is informed by clout, a paycheck, and career advancement.
That's the heart of it, which we all need to understand. Most of us approach politics thinking, "How can we operate in what's best for the country and people?" Matt and his ilk approach it as, "What's best for me?"
West Wing taking more Ls by the day
the complexity grift from centrists is showing more and more to just be them intentionally muddying the water to avoid having any moral clarity
it is good to be strategically adaptable, but only cowards have no qualms for rapidly changing their principles
They also have such low opinions of everyone else that they don't realize this doesn't fly with voters. They convinced themselves Harris was a progressive and say it constantly, but no one outside of their group texts thinks this. So when Matt says it, it only makes him sound detached from reality.
All the evidence we have suggests the majority of swing voters opposed Kamala because they saw her as being too far left!
What evidence is that
Matty Greasyass & company took “Trickle-down”, filed off the serial numbers, and gave it a fresh coat of paint. Presto: “Abundance!”
Well put!
"Brace yourself. The bullshit is coming."
Indeed!
The thing I've just never understood about their mission, Joe, is why? Why would you want to feel self important about LOSING?
I'm not one who thinks these people don't mind losing. They hate it. Rather, I think they would rather be in control of the Democratic Party. If they're not, then losing and winning become irrelevant to them.
I wrote a satire post about these reactionary centrist pundits here: https://migraineur1.substack.com/p/im-a-centrist-democrat-please-stop?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=dnvqf
You're not kidding wow that was long
😂
Maybe get all of Yglesias’s stances right before moving forward with such a critique. And calling Kamala Harris a centrist moderate right off the bat almost blows up this entire piece. So many assertions just plain wrong.
Matt called Harris a centrist though.
Harris tried running to the middle. Doesn’t mean she’s a centrist moderate. And the GOP hung on her past comments she made that were way to the left.
That it was in describing her campaign I believe, not her political stances.
What
It’s not a centrist vs leftist issue. It’s a billionaire vs middle class issue. This rhetoric isn’t helpful. You are a smart guy challenge yourself to think along a different continuum
Centrism benefits billionaires. Leftism benefits the working class. The status quo works for the rich. Moderation benefits the rich.
I think your assessment of the information utility of prediction markets for important world events is plainly misleading. The Jesus Returning prediction trades at 4% as opposed to ~0% because the smart money returns aren't there below 4% due to transaction fees and opportunity cost. It's not perfect but it's only off by 4%. If a person went from 50/50 (no idea) to only 4% that's on net a huge success.
A better real world example is two prediction markets set up in 2024 about whether conditional on Trump/Harris being elected will the USA by at war with Iran by 2027. I suspect both of these markets would have traded well above 4% and there would be real informational value if say the Trump line was 10 points higher than the Harris line.
I'm not sure exactly what the right regulatory framework is but if the goal is to maximize the information utility of the world events prediction markets it seems to me the MY framework is essentially correct. Use sports betting (with vig) to subsidize (and in some sense market) no transaction fee world events betting by capping sports betting at some greater than zero percentage of total bets. You don't have to be bought out to come to the conclusion that this framework is reasonable. It's clearly coherent to think it's more reasonable than the status quo.
Your first point makes my point. "Prediction markets" are just there to make money. Not give us accurate percentages of what's happening. MY's argument is that they're accurate, but you point out that this isn't true.
Alternatively, why should we do that? Exchange markets already exist. Polymarket and Kalshi don't provide any new value.
> "Prediction markets" are just there to make money. Not give us accurate percentages of what's happening.
Yes. Prediction markets are operated by for profit entities making money. The information is a side effect of them. Just like alcohol isn't there to act as a diuretic. It's a side effect.
I'm not sure where MY used the term "accurate" on skim. I see: "prediction markets, in theory, generate useful information externalities". Something can not perfectly accurate and still be useful. If the smart money needs 4% or more favorable odds to bet then that means that any market has an implied +/- 4% relative to the face number. That's useful information in typical contexts (e.g. odds of war with Iran) even if it's not perfectly "accurate."
And as noted the cross subsidy approach to prediction markets can reduce these accuracy limitations.
But he's arguing Polymarket's "useful" information is worth addictive gambling, which his publication has repeatedly pointed out is terrible for society.
MY writes: "sports happens to be...an area where the information externality has relatively little value."
MY is running a run of the mill tradeoff analysis. Roughly speaking I think MY's claim is that on matters of social insignificance (e.g. sports outcomes) the costs of gambling addiction and adjacent outweigh the informational externality. Whereas on matters of social significance (e.g. will Trump invade Iran) the costs of gambling addiction and adjacent don't outweigh the information utility.
In terms of addictive gambling being terrible. I and I think MY also think drug addiction and drug induced accidents are terrible for society while also believing that prohibition is not a good policy. Policies have tradeoffs and one can believe that gambling addiction is terrible and that sports gambling lacks much informational value while also believing that a regulatory policy that enables prediction markets with positive informational value to flourish is a net positive for society.
What kind of ethical calculus is required to determine that the "informational value" outweighs the harm of normalizing addictive gambling? Can you attach a number to that? Do you personally engage in this gambling?
I have played in casual low stakes poker games (e.g. $20 buy in) with friends on and off over the years. I have probably put as many as $20 in slots in my lifetime (e.g. staying at an Native American hotel/casino for a friend's wedding). And I have made a few friendly wagers with friends on sports outcomes or fantasy sports probably totaling less than $100.
> What kind of ethical calculus...the harm of normalizing addictive gambling.
First of all "normalizing" seems like it's moving the goalposts. To use the drug induced accidents example again having legal alcohol etc. does not per se normalize driving drunk.
Philosophically speaking my general thoughts are:
1. I have a pretty strong bias towards freedom and non-paternalism in general.
2. Ignoring addiction, typical gambling seems super zero sum. Unlike drugs where in principle it can be win/win for consumers and producers the core structure of gambling is that the casinos do as well as the consumers do poorly. I can't per se get into the headspace of how someone derives enjoyment from making negative E(V) bets. Gambling is the only market I can think of that has this property. And yes I have read some literature on why people like slots etc.
3. In principle outside of sports I think there are "prediction markets" that have high informational utility (e.g. the Iran war conditional probabilities I mentioned up thread) and ones that have lower informational utility (e.g. who will be the next president). Notably, I don't think there's a good substitute for the former.
4. The no substitute issue can't easily be understated. The cleanest example I can think of is the US invasion of Iraq. The elite, media and ultimately public consensus in ~2002 was way way over confident that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, it was hugely negatively consequential that the US invaded Iraq, and it's highly plausible that an effective prediction market would have sussed out that the consensus was out of touch with reality as the folks on the ground were far more skeptical. I am not saying prediction markets would have been decisive but I think it's plausible that they could have been and that would be a massive massive positive externality if so.
Given those four points, philosophically speaking I think that:
A. Prediction markets with a useful information externality points 1 and 3 and 4 dominate.
B. Prediction markets that don't have a useful information externality point 2 plus gambling addiction dominates.
The precise regulatory framework that balances these tradeoffs is sort of a devil's in details but for which "allow prediction markets but limit sports betting specifically" seems directionally reasonable to me.
You're changing Matt's argument. Slow Boring has continuously called for the abolition of online gambling. Now that they're being paid, they're saying it should be encouraged.
On April 18th 2024 Milan specifically wrote in a comment on the post “Larry Summers isn't worried about secular stagnation anymore”:
"Prediction markets are good because there is social value in knowing how likely someone is to win the election; this is not early the same for sports betting which should be illegal."
Moreover, the anti-gambling posts that you reference pretty consistently explicitly reference sports gambling or other ~0 information utility gambling. Ben’s is explicitly about sports gambling and all of Milan’s examples on skim covered ~0 informational utility gambling. Their co-authored piece also explicitly uses the phrasing “sports gambling.” And MY’s December piece uses the phrasing “sports gambling” earlier in the paragraph you quote. In context “gambling” is pretty clearly a reference to ~0 informational utility gambling not positive information value prediction markets.
Furthermore, MY has a record of valuing the use of predictions with “stakes” to improve epistemics since at least 2020 (e.g. How to be less full of shit).
Now let's take a look at the February 12th piece you mention from MY:
“voters do not bother to inform themselves about the actual difficulties involved in assessing policy problems, they wrongly conclude that everything they don’t like reflects corruption or self-interested behavior from elected officials.”
Here is an entirely coherent argument from a MY perspective:
1. Assessing the outcomes of policy is hard. Even for elites. Even for arrogant ass MY. And especially for elites without deep domain knowledge in the relevant field.
2. Prediction markets on positive information utility questions (e.g. 2002 Iraq has WMDs, one of MY’s big eggs over the years) are as good a tool as we have for sussing out what the actual outcomes of certain policies might be.
3. As such positive information utility prediction markets would enable elites to make better policy decisions AND
4. As such positive information utility prediction markets would normalize the idea that some policy outcomes have deep uncertainty associated with them. If Iraq has WMDs is betting at 40% in 2002 it implies that smart people putting their money where their mouth is don't exactly know the answer and them getting it wrong therefore doesn't *always* imply corruption.
Overall I think the overwhelming weight of the evidence is that the consistent position of MY and adjacent is that ~0 informational utility gambling is net bad and (sufficiently) positive informational utility gambling is net good.
you can catch him around 13th and S streets NW most days, he used to post pictures of people illegally parked there on twitter until someone pointed out he’d basically self-doxxed.
Yep, the Democrats are fascism-light, and that’s all they ever want to be despite voters wanting something more.
The two party system is dictated by the constitutional setup of congress and very basic game theory. People who complain about the two party system are fools. Stop complaining and show up at the primaries and elect party members that better represent you.
The two-party system is not dictated by the constitutional setup. Washington's farewell address spoke against political parties.
That went well, didn't it?