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it quite obviously isn't a good deal for society

Person A enjoys movies and spends $100 a week at the theater.

Person B enjoys gambling and spends $100 a week on prediction markets.

Both A and B got entertainment value for their hundred bucks but B also expects to get about $95 back. Why is everyone obsessed with B's is behavior?

A more flushed-out, considered answer involves positive-sum cooperation, or production (vs negative-sum non-coop, or transfers)

-> theater crew make something for customers (and society at large, e.g. culture). They create something from others' willing sacrifices.

"Prediction" markets — at least the steelman version — don't create anything but spillover information (the sillier the contract, the stupider the info). And they do so antagonistically, with the losing bet being the sucker/money pit.

Tldr: the contract losers aren't morally/economically equivalent to consumers.

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Why is looking at colors on a screen morally superior to testing your knowledge against reality?

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Theatre isn't screen, but fine you said "movies." But yes, it is. (Insert considerations about art)

Also, nobody (but the handful of sharps, anyway) is testing whatever. They're playing, gambling, and since it's the opposite of creating, it's less moral than creating, etc etc.

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"Creating" smuggles in the assumption that one is valuable and the other isn't, otherwise they'd both be creating or neither would be. Also, wtf is art and isn't it worthless in the digital era anyway?

People do enjoy testing their knowledge. That's why sports betting is so popular and why lots of people prefer it to games of pure chance.

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because B is generate, and because the theater is refined.

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Counterpoint: Sharknado

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No idea what that is

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