alt Hacker NewsI sense a large number of Polymarket apologists in the comments. Polymarket's existence is a symptom of the ubiquity of Adam Smith's libertine, some would even label satanic ("Do what you wilt"), "free" market thinking. We ought to take it to its natural extreme -- where Polymarket encourages gambling on when specific celebrities, politicians, or even random individuals might die (there is already a name for this: "death pools"). I am sure if they followed through on this openly there would still be advocates and defenders of the practice and counter-claims "there wasn't unequivocal evidence that Polymarket influenced their murder" etc.
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As someone generally against gambling, I think there's a fair point to be made that Polymarket and similar sites are not fundamentally different from e.g. sports betting.
The issue of bribing/threatening a sports player to throw a game has existed for over a century. It's not a new problem. The only thing special about Polymarket is the expansion of surface area.
My preferred solution would be to just ban it all, or if you really want to allow sports betting only allow betting on the outcome of events happening in the venue one is physically in.
The existence of sports betting absolutely encourages people to throw matches and the existence of X betting absolutely encourages people to try to make X come about.
Strong regulation and legal consequences could potentially fix this. We don't see tons of people shorting a company and then bombing that company's HQ.
Adam Smith actually would be against stuff like this. He gets misrepresented.
For some reason people tend to forget the most important part of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law", I guess it because the words "Love is the law, love under will" doesn't sound satanic enough. If you take the time to actually read some of his material you'll be surprised how much he (the 'satanist' Crowley) talks about God and angels (as positive forces).
> I sense a large number of Polymarket apologists in the comments.
This is a bad faith start to any argument. It speaks past the conclusion that one side needs apologetics/advocates in the first place.
Look, it's not the point your making, but Adam Smith was not a laissez-faire capitalist. If you want to do the "capitalism bad" thing, I would suggest learning a bit of history, or at least understand that the "laissez-faire" in laissez-faire capitalism is a political ideology, not an economic ideology.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/11/the-gu...
More to your point... I don't think economic theory has anything to do with it. I'm a capitalist and I think that "prediction markets" is just an idiotic rebranding of "legalized gambling" and generally speaking, gambling more than a token sum (say, less than $100) should not be legal exactly because any benefits of gambling is far outweighed by the mountains of externalities it brings. Yes, this includes the obvious incentives to threaten random people. It's bad for society, so it should be effectively banned. The only reason why it has suddenly become legal everywhere in the US is because many states have found themselves under mountains of deferred liabilities and are scrambling to raise revenues however they can without raising taxes. It's shameful.
On one hand, it isn't all that different than derivatives and other established securities. On the other, the extremes of gambling are deterimental.
You can either take the libertarian view that it should be allowed until someone is put in harms way, or take the prohibitionist view that it should all be illegal.
With the latter approach, you will be doing more harm than good potentially, because it will just become an underground betting market, fully unregulated and with the worst of people abusing it.
I see no problem with betting on who will win a sports match, or who will become the next presidential race nominee. At least no more than options trading, or betting on the price of oil, or a poker match.
I agree that betting on someone else coming into harms way, be that violence or other types of harm (loss of property, livelihood, wellbeing,etc..) shouldn't be allowed. A sports team losing, or your preferred politician losing are not someone coming into harms way.
I've commented on these lines before, but reactionary extremist approaches will always do more harm than good.
also, politicians shouldn't be allowed to bet in even so much as a poker game!
There are lots of bets on Polymarket about when certain politicians cease to be the leader of the country. Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, Mojtaba Khamenei, Zelensky, etc. If they die, those markets are resolved in a predictable way. Death pools already exist, and it's a matter of time before we see an assassination attempt motivated by it.
My apologist response would be that Polymarket isn’t the root cause—it’s more of a mirror. It simply makes the incentives and speculation already present in late-stage capitalism more transparent and accessible for anyone to participate in.
You argue that platforms like this encourage speculation about things like celebrity deaths. But celebrity culture is already heavily monetized—think Page Six, Access Hollywood, livestreamed royal weddings, or endless coverage of Taylor Swift’s personal life.
Conceding the point to you that death pool bets increases a significant security risk to celebrities (never mind the appeal to emotions), would that such a risk acceptable to have a more accurate and non-biased informational poll of who might be next U.S. president or who/when will US/Israel strike next made available to the wider public?
I don't know you, but I do know that you haven't studied Adam Smith.
edit: lol bring the downvotes, I actually read The Wealth of Nations PLUS Smith's other essays.
Adam Smith's libertine didn't allow the concept of rent-seeking entities. It sure as well wouldn't allow polymarket gamblers
"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."
"[the landlord leaves the worker] with the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more."
"The landlord demands a rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interest or profit upon the expense of improvement is generally an addition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides, are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly demands the same augmentation of rent as if they had been all made by his own. "
"RENT, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances. In adjusting the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock"
"[Landlords] are the only one of the three orders whose revenue costs them neither labour nor care, but comes to them, as it were, of its own accord, and independent of any plan or project of their own. That indolence, which is the natural effect of the ease and security of their situation, renders them too often, not only ignorant, but incapable of that application of mind"
"[Kelp] was never augmented by human industry. The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it"
"every improvement in the circumstances of the society tends... to raise the real rent of land."
- Adam Smith (Ch 11, wealth of nations) [Pasted this from a highly relevant reddit thread(0)]
Adam Smith has wrote extensively about how much he disliked Landlords. It's a great tragedy that most people consider him with only his capitalist aspects but he was worried (from what I feel like) about landlords and many people forget that.
So my point is, that Adam Smith would definitely be against polymarket betting because its a form of renting in some vague sense but more importantly an insider trading and just all the weird shenanigans that we also associate with the parasitic nature of landlords can be associated to polymarket gamblers/degenerate betters too (which is what this article talked about)
(Pardon me if this got long but I genuinely feel puzzled by the fact that not many people in the world know that adam smith, the father of capitalism, even he was against the rent-seeking practices which I feel like can also be talked about to how large social media/corporations are feeling rent seeking on their platforms/algorithms too)
A little ironic at the same time as well on how we justify the existence of these very things in the name of capitalism too. My feeling is that Adam Smith would feel some-what betrayed by what rent-seeking social media hubs and polymarket betting and crypto bro thing is being done in the name of capitalism, when he was so against the practices of rent-seeking.
(0): YSK: Adam Smith spoke of landlords as cruel parasites who didn't deserve their profits & were so "indolent" that they were "not only ignorant but incapable of the application of mind." : https://www.reddit.com/r/adamsmith/comments/zche7/ysk_adam_s...
> Adam Smith's libertine
What on earth does this even mean?!
Yes famous libertine Adam Smith, up there with Marquis de Sade and Ami Perrin
Your logical conclusion is a slippery slope. Lets follow your argument to it's logical conclusion, humans are evil therefore, regulate all their actions, imprison them, kill all humans OMG you are sooo evil I'm absolutely shook. How could you!
Why ought we take your misunderstandings to the"ir natural" extreme?
> … libertine …
Seriously? At least look up what words mean before you thesaurus them into your ideas.
> libertine
I think you mean libertarian. Unless there’s some spicy details of Adam Smith’s life that the history books left out.
Wild misunderstanding of Smith. He considered it a moral defect, wrote several pieces criticizing gambling, and criticized state run gambling.
"The over-weening conceit which the greater part of men have of their own abilities, is an ancient evil... their absurd presumption in their own good fortune, is even more universal."