> But traders weren’t just active on Polymarket: there were similar surges of oil futures trading activity just hours before Trump announced updates to the conflict that would lower oil prices.
Prediction markets are all the buzz, but banning them isn’t fixing the problem. This has happened forever. Let’s not forget there was an unusual amount of put option buying right before 9/11: https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jnlbus/v79y2006i4p1703-1726.ht...
I don’t know if just one instance means direct democracy is bad. For example, in the US referendums have been used a lot for issues that are popular for voters, but politicians won’t touch.
(Weed legalization in many states, Abortion protection in Missouri I believe)
You could also argue Brexit. Ultimately, most of the UK was okay with shooting themselves in the foot to feel more independent like the good olds days. Maybe was wrong long-term, but if it’s what the people wanted, then maybe it’s good. Politicians never would have done it despite the people wanting it.
I'm anti-Brexit (not that it matters, not British) but also pro-referendum in general. One modification I'd like to see is higher thresholds for more significant actions, especially ones that are difficult to reverse like this was. I don't think something as huge as Brexit should be decided on the basis of 50%+1. There should be a bias towards the status quo, and this should require maybe 60% or 2/3rds to overcome.
I'm afraid that could lead to political instability. Maybe not, but I imagine if 59% of people vote "X" but 60% were needed, people could revolt or at least drastic and unpredictable changes in voting in the next elections could happen - "how can this political regime ignore the voice of the majority?!".
You'd need most of the people to understand why 60 or 66.(6)% of people are needed to decide something and really believe in this threshold. And Y% of the populace is different psychologically than Y% of elected officials (in cases where a supermajority of officials are needed to pass Z in a forum like parliament/house/senate).
It doesn't seem like it's strictly true that they don't charge trading fees.
From their docs, it looks like they charge fees to bet "takers" (as opposed to makers), but exclude the geopolitical and world-events markets where they don't charge fees.
I have to imagine that may be related to some of the blow-back towards prediction markets about profiting on topics like war & their potential for manipulation.
Given it sounds like the bot bets everywhere other than sports, many of those categories would likely have fees in this case.
Polymarket charges “taker” fees (people removing liquidity by matching listed orders) on most markets. Geopolitics markets are exempt. A portion of the collected fees then get redistributed to “makers” (people who provide liquidity by listing orders for others to match). Presumably the rest of these fees make up polymarket’s revenue.
Which is essentially also providing a platform for making the book for the other platform, on which 'bookie fees' are charged, but Polymarket itself only keeps a certain cut of it, for facilitating but not actually book-making.
> 12 trading ships from Black Sea ports made desperately incompetent efforts to dock alongside the harbour walls. Then the reason became devastatingly clear; very few of their crews were still alive. The living were emaciated skeletons, covered with black boils that oozed blood and pus.
Can’t imagine what that must have been like to witness in medieval Italy.
Had this conversation with a friend, but I think as an America you can be very optimistic about the institutional strength of democracy in the country.
People are very pessimistic recently, but if anything, we are seeing that our system works well. A person got into power that a majority voted for, but when he oversteps, the courts and other institutions (even judges and fed reserve chairs he picked!) seem to hold him to the rules.
I get the pessimism, but for the most part, I kinda think the system is working.
I'm not an American but unfortunately I don't share the optimism. Your president shows time and time again he does what he wants, whether it's immoral or illegal or not within his power to do. And a majority turn a blind eye, especially his party. Some examples (correct me if I'm wrong): starting 2 wars; very questionable anti deportation methods by ICE; a DOGE that was ruthless and dumb; renaming a branch (ministry of war) in effect while in theory not having such power; pardoning crypto currencies pundits who have business with him; ties to pump and dump scams. Not to mention ties to Eppstein.
My prediction: in a vendetta, because they chose to contradict him publicly, and his cronies will put high pressure to have anthropic out of everything touching the government, and any rebel will be fired for an unrelated cause. The high profile CEOs (those we were attending his inauguration) will avoid anthropic, lest they find their selves out of some profitable contract or in some unrelated tribunal issue. Anyone in his party will surely avoid them too.
Anthropic is a good example of my point, judges are blocking that action.
The president has always had these powers, starting wars hasn’t been a congressional power since World War II. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq twice were all police actions by the president.
For the most part he can do what he wants at first, but the system eventually pulls back. It’s happened with ICE, it’s happened with Anthropic, it’s happened with interest rates and pressure to effect fed reserve chairs.
It's more like the early bits of Jurassic Park: the T-Rex bashing away at the restraints while everyone assures you that they spared no expense to make it secure.
lol judges have ruled 100s or 1000s of ICE detentions in various states illegal by now. None of that has stopped ICE from doing what it's doing. This kind of optimism in the law seems naive today because there is no mechanism to actually enforce it. All federal agents have very substantial legal & civil immunity, heads of departments have immunity as well. The head of the legal system is Pam Bondi who isn't even prosecuting child rapists, or Donald Trump who is one.
Even after Kristi Noem ruined countless lives and was responsible for deaths of innocent people, the only consequence she faced is being demoted to some made up job where she still gets paid to do nothing - no fine, no jail, not even being out of work, no accountability, no justice. None of the ICE agents involved have faced any consequences besides a leave either, we don't even know most of their names. The justice system is not working.
People who don't follow the news like most of the tech community are living in some dreamland of a system or treating it as a purely mental battle of optimism/pessimism vs. actually seeing what is happening.
> judges have ruled 100s or 1000s of ICE detentions in various states illegal by now. None of that has stopped ICE from doing what it's doing.
This is a weird one because ICE has lost so many habeas cases, mostly by dropping them, only for the 8th circuit court of appeals (which covers Minnesota) to overturn that the other day:
So this is pretty weird now, legally, since a ton of lower courts have assumed things didn't work this way and the appeals courts are now saying they're wrong.
This is a case where a person who actually was illegally present is denied release on bond and the court sided with ICE. It does not address illegal detentions or deportations without hearings. There are countless other cases where people are detained despite providing evidence of legal status, of inhumane conditions in detention centers, of ICE directly ignoring court orders, of ICE agents on tape lying about people ramming their car and assaulting, detaining or killing them, of ICE releasing detainees without any of their possessions or IDs on the side of the road in freezing weather, and more.
> It does not address illegal detentions or deportations without hearings.
It certainly doesn't address all of ICE's legal issues, no, but it does say they don't need to give this guy a bond hearing:
> Accordingly, we find that the district court erred in holding that the Government could not detain Avila without bond under § 1225(b)(2)(A) and in granting habeas relief on that basis.
My understanding from talking to a criminal defense attorney who practices in MN about this is that this seems to give ICE broad powers to hold people without bond which many, many lower courts had rejected not wanting ICE to have such a broad power for all the reasons you mentioned.
For a problem the size of Trump, the intended function of the institutions would have been removing him from office by now. Not to mention ignoring basically all of his more publicized executive orders (I don't know about more obscure ones).
The judiciary sort of holding it together to issue orders that are mostly ignored is not the system working.
Trump or various departments of his administration have a 90% success rate with cases at the Supreme Court, as compared to a roughly 55-60% success rate at lower courts. The judiciary can still work, but the highest judiciary in the land is pretty soundly in his pocket. Trump's most significant defeat at the Supreme Court, overturning his signature tariffs policy, was viewed by some as a sign that the Supreme Court remained independent and defiant... but that's pretty clearly not the case, at least not up to this point.
It's insane to to say that the system is working when the ones responsible for enforcing the laws are the ones who are ignoring the laws. A judge said. Uh huh. And what's the judge going to do when they ignore it like they've done so many times before? The Trump DOJ is still in violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was passed nearly-unanimously by Congress months ago, and continue to withhold content that implicates Trump in a child rape and sex trafficking ring.
We have a war in Iran that was not approved by legislature. Run by a Fox news host with no experience who has committed multiple war crimes on camera now. A war we are not exactly winning (now raising the enlistment age and losing million dollar aircraft to thousand dollar drones), having an enormous and lasting impact on the global economy - making us look downright stupid. And position us to be unable to defend allies in the region, sure, but perhaps even other critical regions like Taiwan.
We kidnapped a foreign leader and are talking about an invasion of Cuba - who we are committing human rights violations against by preventing them from having electricity.
We have tariffs across all our prior allies. Multiple trade deals have been ruined. America's reputation is permanently damage. Well, more than that, Trump has threatened to invade Canada and Greenland. And apparently our (former) allies took it so seriously they had begun to develop new strategies and elevate their military preparedness and make security talks with their allies.
And our "corporate stability" benefit is quickly falling apart as agencies and courts are rapidly being replaced with sycophants whose most important decree is "bribe or otherwise adorn dear leader with praise". Bills attempting to bring back manufacturing are dead. Infrastructure bills are dead. We're back to the rot.
ICE is acting as a Gestapo, who show no badges and wear masks and plain clothes. They have killed multiple people and faced zero repercussions and has been expanded to airport security where they have already assaulted citizens. And that's before we get into the concentration camps.
The president attempted a coup on our government in 2020, where he directed his supporters to storm the capital and stop the ratification of an election he lost - and faced absolutely no punishment. He is now nominating judges who are refusing to state in their Senate hearings that he lost the election. We have also passed a bill called SAVE that effectively makes creates a secret poll tax for married women, whose both cost and expediency are gated by a department directly controlled by the executive. That's if we even have a fair one, of course: Trump has floated numerous times cancelling the election in times of war or deploying armed ICE agents to key polling locations. He has made it very clear they cannot lose midterms.
And that executive is vaporized. Trust in public careers has been killed by DOGE, alongside the careers and decades of knowledge and progress destroyed by them simply hammering apart institutions . The department of education is dead. The fed, one of the last and most important hold outs, is losing independence and will soon by led by a yes man who will blindly slash rates for Trump to enrish himself - at any cost for the economy.
The SCOTUS, of which an entire third were placed by Trump - who is eyeing yet a fourth - have given Trump enormous wins, most famously the ruling that he is essentially immune from all laws and can do anything he wants. And they're looking like they may erode the state right to self-managed elections and/or ban mail-in votes. A ruling that essentially destroyed our ability to punish Trump for his colluding with a foreign nation to rig our democratic system with the help of the technofeudal corporations.
Which, funny enough, brings us full circle to the war in Iran. Where his actions now allow him to stop all support for Ukraine and drop sanctions on Russia without people noticing all too much. Yet again, benefiting the crooks a significant portion of the intelligence community believe - including our own - compromise the now president.
I cannot fathom how you can sit there and say that the system is "working". Has the frog seriously been sufficiently boiled? It was this easy? It's been one single year!
> No one cares about people who don't bother to vote. If you can't manage even that you don't deserve an opinion.
It's not so much that people 'don't bother to vote',, it's more that 'we' aren't prepared to vote for crooks that will campaign on one or two issues, but actually have several agendas running. Etc, etc.
The opinion I may not 'deserve', is that I'm not playing your/ this game.
No, I don't have a better solution (apart from many, many, referendums), but don't forget that 'just' my opinions may have changed somebody's pov regarding their vote, as i don't have a horse in the race, and regard the vast majority of politicians in very low regard.
> The opinion I may not 'deserve', is that I'm not playing your/ this game.
It's your game regardless if you vote or not. Not voting is in practice the same as voting for who wins. That is the only choice you have at election day. Beyond election day you can try to participate in a movement that pushes congress to implement ranked voting or help get other primary nominees etc, but anything other than voting for the least bad candidate in a two party system is naive.
You're not voting for someone you agree with. You're voting for someone who you think will give in if pressured by protest and the courts. It matters less what individual issues they think they're going to "solve" while they're in office and more whether they have any shame or willingness to change in the face of protest or court order.
>Are you saying that if all eligible voters were forced to vote, Trump may have lost the popular vote?
I've recently heard a commentary by a man with PhD in international relations* about why has Trump won the elections.
Specialist said that a lot of people who would have voted against Trump didn't vote. That was due to many grave mistakes made by the democrats.
Usually when populists win, it's because the other side blatantly ignores some public issues. This time it was economic hardships, immigration/border control.
There is also the long trend of turning away from the working class and focusing on protecting/supporting the DEI people instead. The working class might feel betrayed and vote against them instead.
"The cost of hubris" - as one of the Minmatar militia missions from Eve online was called.
At least we have a pardon czar now. So many people have been coerced into committing crimes, with said coercion taking many different forms, there needs to be mass pardons across the board.
I hate Trump as much as the next guy but this feels like nitpicking. You're obviously right, but if you choose not to vote then you're implicitly approving of whatever outcome you get.
Prediction markets are all the buzz, but banning them isn’t fixing the problem. This has happened forever. Let’s not forget there was an unusual amount of put option buying right before 9/11: https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jnlbus/v79y2006i4p1703-1726.ht...
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