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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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I strongly dislike gambling. Especially sports betting. Im usually a libertarian/"let people enjoy things" kind of person but society is clearly barely able to handle online gambling, and it's fucking with young men especially. I hate it.

However, the prediction markets have found a good straddle, and I would like you to try and draw a line. How do you separate gambling from futures contracts/forwards? Where do we draw the line? It's really hard. Obviously from a "know it when you see it" perspective, "who will win the hockey game" does not provide the same economic benefit as "I would like to lock in the price of wheat 6 months from now".

But, in a world where we banned all sports/online gambling but Robin Hood allowed trading of fractional wheat forwards, and all the men aged 20-30 started being degens in the wheat futures market, what do we do?