With Iran War, Kalshi And Polymarket Bet That the Depravity Economy Has No Bottom

Both Polymarket and Kalshi have decided to go with the line that letting people bet on war, politics, and the general nature of reality will not distort reality through the insider trading we’ve already repeatedly seen, but will somehow improve public trust in the reporting of news.

This is, conveniently, a stance that allows Polymarket to continue to profit from death and war, and allows its customers to continue to bet on it.

The obvious farce of all of this is that Kalshi’s line that “we design the rules to prevent people from profiting from death” is obviously untrue on its face, it’s just that the company would rather let you bet on the deaths and suffering of civilians rather than dictators and presidents. Betting that Khamenei would stay in power is an explicit bet that he would be allowed to continue silencing dissent and killing those who oppose him; betting that he would be deposed is an explicit bet on what has already become a very deadly, illegal regional war.

We are discussing the ins-and-outs of which random gamblers get paid out during an illegal war in which already hundreds of school children have been bombed to death feels like the type of grotesque sideshow that is only possible because the U.S. government is only interested in regulating its perceived political enemies, and which only feels possible because much of the American economy feels held together by cope and the gobs of money being thrown into AI, data centers, and gambling, Jason Koebler writes.

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