Unions are a cancer, and in this case they are slowing the spread of sports gambling, unjustly hurting the profits of sports gambling investors. Unions, along any other organization that stands in the way of exploitation for profit, should be banned outright. Otherwise, we'll never have true freedom and will continue to live in an over-regulated dystopia.
How is it unjust? A company is not owed any profits, if it gets rekt by an union then it gets rekt. It cannot say "oh its not fair you guys are fighting me, only I can fight you in a just fight!" Ridiculous logic.
> GP is in favor of unions and thinks they perform beneficial public services. They don't.
They don't provide beneficial public services. The beneficial public service is squeezing the most you can out of every employee, which unions resist. Every employee should be isolated to the greatest extent possible.
"Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it."
– Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, describing how he stopped using sarcasm in his essays because it provokes hostility. He goes on describe the ironic person as a "pest to society."
I would say prediction markets are more dangerous since they don't claim its gambling while sports gambling is much more explicit (not that the industry is a saint by any means)
At a minimum, if it was going to be legal why could they not have restricted the advertising like we do with tobacco ads? At this point the sports broadcasts themselves are advertisements.
I really don’t understand how these markets survive a competent DOJ considering the rate they’re having to ban people for “insider trading”. Fully appreciate the Unions position here.
Most competent people at the DOJ have either been fired or left. And the current administration seems to love insider trading, so long as they can be the insiders doing the trading.
It lasts for now, it won’t survive when the political pendulum swings back. “Make hay grifting while the grifters shine.” is the current MO. “Temporary economic strip mining operation.”
Insider trading is legal in commodities markets. If I am engaged in a hedging transaction I am doing so because I know about risks that I want to offload, and the buyer does also. You don't come to commodities markets without information.
Hedging is not insider trading. Insider trading is trading based on material non-public information in breach of a duty or obtained through fraud. In that sense, it's more of a principal-agent problem.
Also -- hedging is generally not done based on material non-public information, but rather to guard against known risks. Joe the farmer sells a bunch of wheat futures when he plants his wheat, not because he thinks the price will go down, but rather because if it does he goes bankrupt and he'd prefer to accept a known rate-of-return now.
Just for context that’s not quite accurate. There certainly is a distinction in the rule versus securities markets, which I know is what you mean.
But it’s more accurate to say participants can trade on lawfully obtained material nonpublic information absent some independent duty not to use it, which is much narrower than saying insider trading is generally legal.
Exactly. Pit mine sees who's buying what and is worried copper will go down. Datacenter people see who's inking deals and are worried it's gonna go up. They both need to get big fancy loans from their bankers to execute their upcoming projects. The bankers won't like to see unbounded risk on their balance sheets. A futures contract exists to solve this problem.
Not that this excuses some of the absurd stuff that goes on on the online betting platforms...
Unfortunately, this shows how much facts and reality have been turned into nothing more than a loyalty test by both sides of our political debate.
> A partnership between The Times (for The Athletic) and Kalshi would also provide validation that their prediction market data should be taken seriously as an indicator of the future. Facts prove otherwise.
They could have objected to the partnership on any number of valid grounds, like the fact that predicting the outcome of sporting events provides no valid benefit and can only ever be gambling, or that the integration is probably going to be pretty lame and provide no benefit to the reader.
Instead, they felt compelled to make a trivially false claim, the claim that prediction markets do not accurately predict the future. It's trivial to prove that this claim is false, because if it were true, it would be very easy for anyone to make a huge amount of money on prediction markets.
It's even more telling why they made this claim, to avoid "providing validation". Not because of any harms caused by sports gambling addiction, but because it could provide a tiny piece of political ammunition to a product that has been slotted into the opposing political tribe. Reading this statement, one gets the impression that they would be completely OK with sports gambling on The Athletic, as long as it was provided by a more traditional casino-style bookie operation.
I'm guessing that anyone in the room when this statement was written who even brought up the question of the facts could be safely sidelined and ostracized by the union as being insufficiently loyal to their political position.
Got really confused as why my granola bar company was signing a deal with the NYT and The Athletic, and why this was deemed so controversial, then I used Google and learned the difference between Kashi and Kalshi.
Someone tampered with the weather equipment at Charles de Gaulle airport for a Polymarket bet. This sort of thing is going to become so much more common going forward.
what happened with Bill Simmons bragging about using his daughter's boyfriend to place proxy bets for him on FanDuel (who Bill is partnered with) is endlessly entertaining
Trump Jr. just pumped 300 million into Polymarket and also has a stake in Kalshi so, i'm not sure who thinks the DOJ will really do anything. this is fentanyl on the phone but there will have to be a few examples like some low-levels House members or state senators alongside sports casualites
I find it really interesting that online sports betting, which has been a thing in my country for 15+ years and largely a non-issue, is suddenly a total shitshow once it gets legalised in the US. I feel like the US always takes things too far. I watch quite a few US sports and former athletes giving betting suggestions during broadcasts is absolutely insane. How can you go from being so restrictive to having absolutely no limits overnight? To make matters worse I get the feeling the TV companies here are taking pointers from their US colleagues and starting to force us down the same path.
I wouldn’t use the term misandry because they also are interested in damaging women.
“Turbowoke”, sure but we’re really just talking about mainstream American elite culture which is progressive. And young men are a particular target because they are generally the main threat to the status quo.
Basically the NY Times is precisely an agent of the status quo.
Google was not helpful to me, but what exactly is the deal being discussed? Is NYT going to allow readers to place kalshi bets on their website / app? That would be even more damaging to young men IMO.
I'm placing a bet on "at least one NYT editor caught manipulating news stories so he can win Kalshi bets within one year" if a deal like this goes through.
How will that bet be resolved concretely, will you base it on a NYT headline?
In some grim way it will be interesting to see the how this evolves. I mean, in a way betting markets are parasitic on news agencies that have a reputation for objective reporting, in the sense that they need something that can be treated as objective to evaluate their bets. How will it shake out if reporting institutions become “part of the game.” If “editor at NYT” or “knows and editor at NYT” become an advantages that can be leveraged (either for advanced outcomes or to manipulate outcomes themselves).
Maybe the betting groups will eventually need to built institutions that are known for objective/prudent reporting that can be accessed equally, haha.
GP is in favor of unions and thinks they perform beneficial public services. They don't.
They don't provide beneficial public services. The beneficial public service is squeezing the most you can out of every employee, which unions resist. Every employee should be isolated to the greatest extent possible.
– Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, describing how he stopped using sarcasm in his essays because it provokes hostility. He goes on describe the ironic person as a "pest to society."
Also -- hedging is generally not done based on material non-public information, but rather to guard against known risks. Joe the farmer sells a bunch of wheat futures when he plants his wheat, not because he thinks the price will go down, but rather because if it does he goes bankrupt and he'd prefer to accept a known rate-of-return now.
But it’s more accurate to say participants can trade on lawfully obtained material nonpublic information absent some independent duty not to use it, which is much narrower than saying insider trading is generally legal.
Not that this excuses some of the absurd stuff that goes on on the online betting platforms...
The question answers itself.
> A partnership between The Times (for The Athletic) and Kalshi would also provide validation that their prediction market data should be taken seriously as an indicator of the future. Facts prove otherwise.
They could have objected to the partnership on any number of valid grounds, like the fact that predicting the outcome of sporting events provides no valid benefit and can only ever be gambling, or that the integration is probably going to be pretty lame and provide no benefit to the reader.
Instead, they felt compelled to make a trivially false claim, the claim that prediction markets do not accurately predict the future. It's trivial to prove that this claim is false, because if it were true, it would be very easy for anyone to make a huge amount of money on prediction markets.
It's even more telling why they made this claim, to avoid "providing validation". Not because of any harms caused by sports gambling addiction, but because it could provide a tiny piece of political ammunition to a product that has been slotted into the opposing political tribe. Reading this statement, one gets the impression that they would be completely OK with sports gambling on The Athletic, as long as it was provided by a more traditional casino-style bookie operation.
I'm guessing that anyone in the room when this statement was written who even brought up the question of the facts could be safely sidelined and ostracized by the union as being insufficiently loyal to their political position.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/23/hairdryer-or-l...
On another note, I had no idea the athletic was owned by NY Times.
Trump Jr. just pumped 300 million into Polymarket and also has a stake in Kalshi so, i'm not sure who thinks the DOJ will really do anything. this is fentanyl on the phone but there will have to be a few examples like some low-levels House members or state senators alongside sports casualites
sorry, but some of you are really deranged if you seriously expect the NYT to run "men should die"
“Turbowoke”, sure but we’re really just talking about mainstream American elite culture which is progressive. And young men are a particular target because they are generally the main threat to the status quo.
Basically the NY Times is precisely an agent of the status quo.
In some grim way it will be interesting to see the how this evolves. I mean, in a way betting markets are parasitic on news agencies that have a reputation for objective reporting, in the sense that they need something that can be treated as objective to evaluate their bets. How will it shake out if reporting institutions become “part of the game.” If “editor at NYT” or “knows and editor at NYT” become an advantages that can be leveraged (either for advanced outcomes or to manipulate outcomes themselves).
Maybe the betting groups will eventually need to built institutions that are known for objective/prudent reporting that can be accessed equally, haha.