Intrade Shutdown Hurts Academics

New submitter jader3rd writes "Intrade, a popular Irish website that lets people bet on anything, has shut down. In addition to being used by gamblers, Intrade has been used by academics and pundits to track public sentiment. '"... broad crowds have a lot of information and that markets are an effective way of aggregating that information," says Justin Wolfers, "and they often turn out to be much better than experts."' Being forced to lose their U.S. customers couldn't have helped.

Comments

The question

[Anonymous Coward]

The question isn't whether other people "should have" the right to gamble.

The question is whether YOU should have the right to employ violence (meaning physical force or threat thereof) against other people in an attempt to stop them from gambling.

Now that the question has been properly rephrased, it can be properly answered.

Re:The question

[Aglassis]

It is actually a more general question. The question is whether the government has the right to use force (i.e. the police busting into your house with a SWAT team and shooting your dog) to prevent a person from doing an act that harms nobody but themselves or another fully consenting and knowledgeable adult. Drugs, polygamy, gambling, legal age prostitution, etc., could all be arguably classified under victim-less crimes. And not surprisingly, all of these are crimes against morality (except when there in a financial interest such as the lottery or alcohol sales).

Re:The question

[Anonymous Coward]

What a stupid argument. Make something criminal and then complain that it gets associated with other criminal activities, so it's alright it's criminal. Complete circular nonsense.

Re:The question

[Aglassis]

An acquaintance of mine whose husband snorted both of their entire retirement funds up his nose might question that. So might a friend whose father consistently gambled away most of his take home pay. There's more to consider than just the direct participants.

Yes, but you are using today's drug math. If cocaine wasn't illegal, it wouldn't be so expensive. And if it was well regulated, the dosage could be monitored.

But what if he blew his money on the stock market or a crazy investment? There are a million stupid ways people lose their retirement savings. You can't put people in plastic balls to protect themselves from everything in the world and you don't need to burn down crops and indirectly fund insurgencies in Colombia because some asshole snorted cocaine. It is amazing that you talk about considering people other than the direct participants while supporting the War on Drugs.