Prediction Markets Are the Latest Sign of Our Spiritual Disintegration

As I write this, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of bets have been placed on Polymarket, the massive prediction marketplace, regarding how many people will die in the Iran War over the next several weeks and under what circumstances. For instance, a successful $100 bet that Oman will be hit by Iranian missiles on March 31 will result in approximately $1,750 in winnings – a stunning payoff. A similar bet that America will invade Iran on the same day – an event that would lead to thousands of immediate casualties – wins the successful bettor $670.

These markets are, of course, wildly corrupt and dangerous for our political process. These are not markets on events with unknowable outcomes like a basketball game. These are events entirely within the control of one or a small handful of people, who know the answer to the question the wager poses. Imagine a high-ranking U.S. military leader, who has wagered $50,000 on a U.S. invasion, pushing for war at the Situation Room table not because it is necessary for our national security, but because he stands to get rich quick from his bet. Imagine the powerful people close to President Trump using classified and highly sensitive inside information about the war to place highly lucrative, successful wagers based on their proximity to power.

Of course, you don’t have to imagine these scenarios because they are already happening in real life. The day before the U.S. launched its first strikes against Iran, a rush of unusual, high-value bets were placed on Polymarket that the war would begin the next day. These were clearly people who worked for Trump, or were in the White House’s inner circle. Many of the bets paid out in excess of $100,000.

This corruption keeps me up at night. But it’s not what worries me the most. No, there is something much more insidious about America’s newfound interest in prediction markets that allow us to place bets on high-stakes public policy and the often fatal consequences of those decisions.

What does it do to our soul, as human beings and as American citizens, when questions of life and death, misery and famine, war and peace, stop being matters of morality and become ways to cash in and make money? The United States clearly rushed into war with Iran without thoroughly or properly vetting our targets. That’s likely what got over a hundred little girls killed when a U.S. Tomahawk missile hit an elementary school in Tehran. But several very powerful people were cheering that day because they made money off of that tragedy. Every day, prediction markets allow Americans similar opportunities to make money off of the death and destruction caused by war.

I think the transformation of moral questions into financial questions hardens us to suffering, or at the very least, excuses us from grappling with the complicated questions of right and wrong in public decision making.

And these prediction markets are just the latest example of American culture erasing virtue from our public dialogue. Our economy today is built around an insatiable cult of profit and capital efficiency. Every private sector decision is deemed virtuous as long as it results in a company making money or boosting shareholder value. The lives ruined by closing a factory or selling a poisonous product don’t matter as long as the company turns a profit. In the same way that prediction markets gamify government decisions, stripping them of their moral character, the choice to view economic decision making through only a profit lens absolves us from asking harder questions of whether those decisions are morally right and wrong.

I worry that something really important dies inside us when we stop thinking about the big questions of how to organize our collective economic and political life through a moral lens. I think we are built to be moral creatures; we naturally care deeply about the suffering of others. When we can make money off of that suffering, or simply view government decisions that cause suffering as a game that we wager on, it hollows us out in unseen ways.

And that leads me to my second worry. Maybe there is so much interest in these novel markets because it’s a way for increasingly powerless citizens to feel personally connected to the biggest public issues of the day. Maybe all this wagering on war is happening because people have lost faith that more traditional means of political involvement will have an impact.

Today, millions of Americans view our government as captured by billionaires and corporations. And they are largely right. So they’ve given up on using tools like protest or political mobilization as the means by which they involve themselves in the public square. But prediction markets provide an illusion of connection to these big debates, just like your March Madness pool makes you feel much more connected to the NCAA tournament than if you didn’t have a little money riding on it. The problem is that we don’t need to be actual participants in March Madness; we are supposed to be active participants in our own democracy, and when prediction markets give us an excuse to simply act as voyeurs, it degrades our already fragile system of self-governance.

I’ve introduced legislation to ban prediction markets that offer wagers on government action like military strikes and ground invasions. I think the corruption it incentivizes is an urgent issue that demands our attention. But the damage these markets will do to us spiritually, as our national moral conversation degrades further and betting becomes an empty substitute for true civic participation, should concern us too. Not everything needs to be a commodity. There is not reason yet to give up on influencing government through traditional political action. Humans are built to feel and act on empathy, and to engage with our fellow citizens in common action. That is what makes us feel fulfilled and happy. Prediction markets threaten to rob us of that opportunity to think morally and act collectively. Before we choose to normalize their integration with public decision making, we should think hard about the spiritual cost on our already weary nation.