And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy

Here’s a very interesting essay (gift link) on how three forms of gambling — sports, prediction markets, and financial markets — are merging on the smart phones of, in particular, young men. What’s happening here is that open political corruption, in the form of, for example, degenerate dope fiend Donald Trump Jr. being bribed for his “consulting” services — is removing all regulatory barriers to what can be called frictionless transactions. This is creating a world in which entire retirement accounts can be dumped into the wagering markets by a single touch on a phone screen:

If it feels as if gambling is everywhere, that’s because it is. But today’s gamblers aren’t just retirees at poker tables. They’re young men on smartphones. And thanks to a series of quasi-legal innovations by the online wagering industry, Americans can now bet on virtually anything from their investment accounts.

In recent years, this industry has been gamifying the investing experience; on brightly colored smartphone apps, risking your money is as easy and attractive as playing Candy Crush. On the app of the investment brokerage Robinhood, users can now buy stocks on one tab, “bet” on Oscars outcomes on another, and trade crypto on a third.

Given a recent explosion in unsafe gambling and growing evidence of severe financial harm, one might ask whether the government should be permitting 18-year-olds to effectively bet on the Dallas Cowboys with the same accounts they can use to invest in Coca-Cola. Under President Trump, who has a son serving as an adviser to two entrants in the sports prediction marketplace, the answer appears to be a firm yes.

A fascinating side story is the role the Supreme Court has played in all this:

For large swaths of American history, gambling has been heavily restricted as a dangerous vice. In 2018, the Supreme Court removed a major roadblock by allowing states to legalize sports gambling. Then the pandemic — combined with the ease of online gambling via smartphones — turbocharged the industry. Many Americans, primarily young men, also began gambling on the stock market, their wagers enabled by platforms offering unlimited day trades. Next came prediction markets, which allow users to bet on anything — from Taylor Swift album sales to the weather — while avoiding the regulations that inhibit licensed gambling companies.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if the Legitimate Internet Businessman’s Association could somehow get access to where most Americans who have any savings have placed them?

Now the fast-growing industry is coming for the biggest money pot out there: retirement accounts. In March, a leading prediction market, Kalshi, announced a partnership with Robinhood that allows investors to place wagers via the same app they use to manage stocks and retirement savings.

What could go wrong?

What already makes online gambling so dangerous is its lack of friction. Rather than travel to Las Vegas, withdraw cash from an A.T.M., and go to the tables, gamblers can simply pull out their phones and start betting. And now bettors can start wagering without having to transfer money from their bank accounts into gambling apps.

The piece goes on to describe the various regulatory shenanigans, enabled via open legal bribery, that have allowed entrepreneurs with an eye to the main chance to turn the whole goddamned country into The House of the Rising Sun.

As to who exactly is at the center of this you get one guess:

Following the same playbook it used for cryptocurrencies, another popular gambling vehicle, Mr. Trump’s family is cashing in on the very business his administration oversees. In January, Kalshi hired Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s son, as a paid strategic adviser. And the venture capital firm where Mr. Trump Jr. serves as a partner made a multimillion-dollar investment into Kalshi’s rival Polymarket, where he has also joined the advisory board.

Always the dollars.

I’m going to once again recommend the historian David Courtwright’s book The Age of Addiction, which is a fascinating history of how exactly we got to where we are now. That story is also a reminder that the entire progressive political movement in this country arose out of the realization that a a nation that had been transformed by capitalist raiders into a combination saloon/casino/brothel/open air drug market was not the kind of republic worth keeping, and that it would die with an awful sound.