alt Hacker NewsI don't think I can make a good ELI5 argument for (or against) that one as-written, because there are multiple differences going on at the same time. For example:
1. When you "lose" shorting a stock your potential loss is infinite, because you might be on the hook to buy (and then give away) GOOG at an arbitrarily high price. In contrast, the super-bowl bet is probably a fixed amount.
2. In the opposite direction, it's hard to see how the Super Bowl bet can really be hedging to reduce how much you're relying on chance in your life... not unless you happen to own a store selling single-team merchandise and you want to limit how much money you might lose if nobody wants to buy it.
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P.S.: Let's flip it around: If we assume shorting GOOG is the same as sports-gambling, then why (AFAIK) has no bookie or casino ever even tried to offer the same kind of bet, where you get $X now but you're obligated to supply $THING later?
Does that absence tell us something about an important difference between them?
I picked (for some reason) a random example of a made-up put option position, and most of the above response seems centered around the special qualities of short positions and put options. But there's just as much stock market gambling on the "bullish" direction, which doesn't have most of those same properties.
This part rings true partially though: "hedging to reduce how much you're relying on chance in your life" ... so you're saying that it's bad for society when people rely very much on chance in their life?
Is it the proper role of the government though, to put people in jail because they relied on chance too much in their life? Because that's what gambling bans amount to. And on top of everything, these exact same governments (including New York!) purport to "help" society by banning gambling, while still selling lottery tickets themselves.