> there seems to be no upside whatsoever

There's the same upside as pretty much all other forms of gambling. Plenty of people enjoy it and it can be used to generate tax revenue for the state.

Don't get me wrong, there's tons of harm that can come from it, but the arguments to allow them are essentially the same arguments for allowing sports betting.

Whenever I see something weird happen in a sports game, or even a lack of effort by individual players, my first thought is if sports betting was responsible.

> I wonder if it can really be enforced.

At the very least maybe it would make the advertising (tv, college campuses, etc) of prediction markets illegal in Minnesota?

That alone seems like a good thing.

Prediction markets ensure that there is always produce in your store.

How is it different from the stock market?

No upside whatsoever? Clearly you're not an insider trader.

I get a lot of value from prediction markets and query for them most days. Today for the Los Angeles Mayor's race and the Kentucky 4th district Representative race. In both cases I saw a big difference between the market and the vibe on my feeds. I believe that the market emits higher quality predictions.

Each market is a community with a financial incentive to think outside of the bubble.

there is one upside, its a big incentive to indirectly leak things like album release dates and military operations. anything that helps get some secrets out is a positive in my book

Do you also believe there is no upside in crowdsourced information found in, say, commodities, equities and futures markets?

Thanks to crypto it can't be enforced and is here to stay, like all forms of online gambling.

Information aggregation is the theoretical upside of prediction markets. Granted, their effectiveness in that role is an empirical question. For gambling in general, the upside is that people obviously enjoy it, not to mention the right/freedom to make choices about how one spends time and money as a responsible adult.

If harm to the consumer and societal burden are the downsides you're concerned about, you could justify banning smoking, alcohol, and junk food for the same reasons. We don't generally do that because we recognize that where there's demand there will be a market, whether it's legal or illegal. So you also need to weigh the potential harms of a black market against those of a legal and regulated market.