Imagine any business decision that would strongly benefit from e.g. J.D. Vance not becoming the acting president and Trump remaining in his place for the rest of the year/term. Does making such a decision "essentially be offering a reward for someone to prove you wrong", those someone's being your business competitors/rivals?
Or you could even dial the timeline back to right before the last elections, where this question could literally be about the Republicans literally losing their candidate due to sudden expiration.
My point is, if someone sees that you hedge financial well-being on e.g. you country not slipping into the civil war over the next few years, and orchestrates exactly that to profit themselves — this is not your moral failing, it's theirs, and even the "well, you kinda tempted them, technically" argument is bogus.
For example, I'm in Canada. There's a trade war going on. Every business in Canada is now having to hedge their bets for whether and how long and how bad the trade war is going to be. And we all know the trade war is being driven by one person. So yes, "what are the odds of a change in who is running the country?" is part of that risk assessment.
That's not the same thing as saying, "here's $100k if something were to happen to the man in the funny hat".
Technically, you could construe both as hedging your bets. But in the first scenario I'm just making a decision for my business. In the other, I'm offering a reward to make it happen.
Now, that being said, I could see the water getting murky for a publicly traded company that positions itself in such a way that it would truly benefit from such an event, because then a violent member of the public could buy their stock and benefit financially from commitment that violence. But that's not what we're talking about with polymarket.
Polymarket is all about tying a specific financial outcome to a specific real world event that people could choose to influence. It incentivizes outcomes. Some outcomes would be hard to influence this way. For example, I don't think any bet of any size would influence who would win an election. But if the bet was "It would be terrible if someone did X, I'm betting $$$ that no one will", then the only question is whether the $$$ is worth it to someone with the ability to commit X.
I'm not questioning whether it would be worth it. I'm questioning how that would work, and am very much open to being wrong here. I just don't see how it would work.
For example... let's say I bet a trillion dollars that the Canadian Communist Party (a party on the extreme fringes that few Canadians even realize exists) would NOT win the election. How would that incentive lead to them winning? What could anyone do to make that reality happen in order to claim the money?
That's not to say there aren't other ways to use money to influence an election. Of course there is. But you need to spend it in the run-up to the election, not offer it as a prize afterwards.
Am I being naive? (A: Probably. Wouldn't be the first time.)
I've mulled over your comment for a couple days and I still don't really understand what you're saying... feel free not to reply in light of the delay (or to stop the conversation from spiralling), but:
> Throw a baby in water and it can swim, no naiveté anywhere.
Are you suggesting I'm doing something akin to intentionally throwing a baby in water to see if it drowns?
> 1) Putting out a bet that a vulnerable person will take is immoral. But that’s not what we are discussing.
Agreed... I'm just asking if Polymarket can effectively be used as an assassination market, and if so, isn't that a bad thing?
> 2) How would putting out such a bet, a call option, lead to hedging?
I fully admit I'm not an investment expert, so maybe I'm not using the term correctly. But in my mind, "hedging" is putting in place some type of mechanism to benefit or at least limit your losses in the case of your preferred outcome not working out. So in this scenario, a business person could simultaneously make decisions on the assumption of an ongoing trade war, as well as make other decisions that would only be beneficial in the case of the end of the trade war due to someone's demise.
(For clarity, I'm NOT advocating anyone's demise. I'm a peacenik and am not cheering for harm to fall on anyone. I'm simply discussing hypotheticals in an attempt to understand IF Polymarket could be used as an assassination market, and purely because if it could, I feel that should probably be regulated.)
> 3) This can turn into a long ass discussion that I’m not sure you wanna go on.
You're probably right, but I'm not sure where you feel this conversation is headed.
> Driven by one person? The one that said they needed nukes and allies to defend themselves from their neighbour?
Canada doesn't have nukes and has long advocated for nuclear non-proliferation. We're still not looking to have any nukes of our own.
Trump is openly calling for the annexation of our country, and has started a trade war that no Canadian political leader of any stripe wants.
Seriously just put yourself in the shoes of a Canadian. We've supported the USA in everything they've done other than the Vietnam War, and history proved us correct in taking a pass on that one.
The USA called for Free Trade. We said OK.
The USA called for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization. We said OK and agreed to never have nukes of our own, taking the USA at its word that it would never violate our sovereignty. Now the so-called Leader of the Free World won't shut up about taking over our country.
The USA called for NAFTA, we said OK. Then Trump tore that up and forced a new trade deal on us. We said OK again. Then he said whoever negotiated that was an idiot who did harm to the USA, to which we still say, "Ok, that's weird, it was your deal, Donald. But let's talk."
And now we're in a trade war that no one wants on our side of the border, and that a vast majority of Americans don't want either.
So yes, driven by one person: Trump.
As for the "new world order" comments, Freeland isn't talking about some conspiracy. She's literally referencing that Trump has set aflame to the existing world order (that was largely engineered by the USA) thereby creating a "new" world order. It's a poor choice of words, but I hardly take this as sufficient evidence that Canada is the belligerent nation in this trade war.
I mean, seriously, what are you even trying to say?
The largest volume of short puts ever purchased on DJT / TMTG (Truth Social / Trump Media Stock) was made shortly before the assassination attempt at the Butler PA rally. The investment firm Austin Private Wealth, however attributed it to a clerical error of a 3rd party that accidentally multiplied their transaction by 10,000. Oops.
>My point is, if someone sees that you hedge financial well-being on e.g. you country not slipping into the civil war over the next few years, and orchestrates exactly that to profit themselves — this is not your moral failing, it's theirs, and even the "well, you kinda tempted them, technically" argument is bogus.
As a third party, I don't particularly care who's in the wrong if I'm living in the middle of a civil war.
Or you could even dial the timeline back to right before the last elections, where this question could literally be about the Republicans literally losing their candidate due to sudden expiration.
My point is, if someone sees that you hedge financial well-being on e.g. you country not slipping into the civil war over the next few years, and orchestrates exactly that to profit themselves — this is not your moral failing, it's theirs, and even the "well, you kinda tempted them, technically" argument is bogus.