Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Why Kalshi Won’t Pay Winners: Kalshi has refused to pay $54 million to traders who won their bets on when Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would leave office. Gamblers will put up with a game, if it’s the only game in town, even when they know the game is rigged so that insiders will win. What they won’t put up with is no one winning. So, why is Kalshi risking its reputation? Why won’t Kalshi pay winners? A legal quagmire facing prediction markets when it comes to actually paying out. The regulatory cracks are already showing. (Gambling and the Law)
• It turns out that legalising gambling is bad: The gambling industry is huge, even if you exclude the stock market and newfangled “prediction” sites. But how healthy is it for society? Fortunately, a perfect natural experiment in the US offers an easy way to find out — so easy that Alphaville is a little surprised we haven’t seen research like this before. (Financial Times) see also We Haven’t Seen the Worst of What Gambling and Prediction Markets Will Do: Derek Thompson connects the dots between sports betting, prediction markets, and the gamblification of everything. The house always wins, and the house is getting bigger. (Derek Thompson)
• What’s Going on With the IRS? The Trump administration’s budget cuts are looming over Tax Day. DOGE cuts plus an already understaffed agency equals a looming disaster for taxpayers. (The Atlantic)
• The broligarchy’s war on journalism: The capture of US media by Trump allies is accelerating and the UK is the next in line. Plus: the mystery money behind my old newspaper. (Broligarchy)
• Inside the Turmoil at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s C.D.C. Forty-three current and former C.D.C. employees on the changes they say are replacing science with ideology — and making Americans more vulnerable. (New York Times Magazine)
• A Dunning-Kruger War, Courtesy of the Dunning-Kruger President: Ignorance plus overconfidence gets you the Iran War. (The Cross Section) see also Crazy, Stupid, False, Impotent, and Blind: The Cognitive Biases of the Iran Coverage (emptywheel)
• It’s the ‘Worsties’ – Listing the 25 Worst People in News Media: A delightfully savage ranking of the most harmful figures in media. Agree or disagree, you’ll enjoy the carnage. Being awful pays off in today’s attention economy, but it also deserves ridicule (Stop The Presses)
• MAGA’s Mueller Myths: The Bulwark dismantles the revisionist history around the Mueller investigation. The myths are politically useful, but they don’t survive contact with the actual record. The 7 lies that Trumpists still cling to. (The Bulwark)
• Trump showed classified map to passengers on his plane in 2022, memo says: The document offers a snapshot of an early moment in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation and adds new shading to the public understanding of Smith’s probes. Another day, another revelation about classified documents being treated like in-flight entertainment. The casual disregard for national security is staggering. (Washington Post)
• Is Doomscrolling Giving You Wrinkles? You May Have ‘Tech Neck.’ Growing anxiety about the affliction has sparked a race for a cure; ‘I am too young for this.’ (Wall Street Journal)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Judd Kessler, the Howard Marks Endowed Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The winner of the Vernon L. Smith Ascending Scholar Prize,he is the author of is Lucky by Design The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want.
Why Americans think other Americans are bad people
Source: The Argument
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