The technical term is that you must have an “insurable interest” in what you insure. Both of your examples are people protecting their insurance interest. Onwership is the most common insurable interest, but there are many other ways to have one.

This is done because the insurance company wants you to prefer that the covered event doesn’t happen, which avoids some conflicts of interest.

These prediction market events don’t have the usual insurance interests involved.

To perhaps be a bit more pendantic.

You're not allowed to take out life insurance on someone you don't know or have a relationship (business or otherwise) with.

Life insurance on a business partner works. Life insurance on your spouse as well.

Life insurance on the leader of a random country? Unlikely

No no I appreciate the pedantry, thank you for the correction

> I'm not sure where this false premise started but alot of people believe it.

It being the driving plot behind Double Indemnity probably started it. I always thought it was true until your comment, too.

> Well, you are privately allowed to bet on whatever you like with another individual.

What jurisdiction are we painting with that broad brush? This is far from universally true, even in the US.

Nope. "We're just an intermediary between people" is a 100+ year old yarn that casinos and bookies have been trying to spin. If you're presenting a point of entry to a betting line and taking a cut, congrats, you're the house. Doesn't matter if you adjust the betting line manually based on intuition or algorithmically based on betting volume. Sometimes it doesn't get enforced because of corruption, but if this was the case, then why aren't there tons of independent unregulated poker casinos where players just play against each other? If you facilitate and take a cut, you're the house.

That "facilitating" argument didn't work out for Silk Road.

What the hell are you talking about? You are absolutely not allowed to bet on whatever you'd like with another individual. Depending on what you're betting on (for example, the price of a stock or the throw of a card), it falls under varying different regimes. This is highly regulated and has been for most of the whole of human history.

Yes, there are de minimis exceptions. Your office NCAA pool, for example, is often legal, but it has nothing to do with what we're talking about and is also irrelevant to a business facilitating it via 18 U.S.C. § 1955.

Not fools, these bets are usually very close to a fair market price. But people are not willing to wager millions of dollars on the temperature registered in a certain place at a certain time. Or on if hezbollah missiles impact Israel land or whatever.

So, what you're discussing is basically, whales are going to be the bettors and it sucks that there'll always be a bunch of marks but: No ones going to stop the whales because there'll always be suckers.

Welcome to the grift economy, take a number.

The other side of that argument could be something like: "Dude, Khomeini better not be killed, it'd suck for me, an average iranian dude. I'd probably bet he dies so I can hedge my personal financial wellbeing for that case"

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You lived all your life without these evil companies. Life will go on when they are banished. I don't think you will miss "unusually high quality predictions" after a week.

A thought experiment: how would you feel about betting on a market that is an the outcome of a medical procedure? On a negative outcome? On a market for a negative outcome of your own procedure?

What predictions? Why is it useful to know what the odds are for Trump to the word “postage stamp” in a specific speech?

Why are the sports odds useful? Word mention market and sports market are the majority of bets after all. Seems like >90% of wagers are useless noise.

Name 7 recent useful ones you actioned based on, one for each day of the last week. I’m very curious what those may be that you use it daily.

When I looked a the site and checked out a few non sport/word wagers, the actual bets were pretty unhelpful because while their summary sounded potentially informative the actual fine print showed that a weirdly constrained timeline of a specific thing was the actual deciding factor, making them useless.

Show me the insider trading on polymarket that is providing you with this crucial info. Show it to me now.

A casino is by definition a house that takes rake and is not the government or one of its subsidiaries ...

I don't think you'd find anyone arguing that the lottery isn't gambling, so I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make here.

That's not collateral, that's the thing being wagered.

I think it's fine. Here renting (or teaching) light sails (light catamaran) needs a different license than renting (or teaching) any sail cruiser, including catamarans, despite being basically the same object (boats with sails). Feels that the small differences are enough to justify a different regime.

There are all sorts of different regulatory systems for all sorts of slightly different kinds of things.