The Betting Economy Runs On Misplaced Faith

The prediction market is booming. 

In April alone, it was estimated that Polymarket and Kalshi recorded nearly $24 billion in trades. Prediction markets are, essentially, digital platforms where you trade shares on specific outcomes. You sign contracts with other users and can bet on the result of just about anything. 

Still don’t understand? Think of it this way: On top of the Roman soldiers gambling for Jesus’ tattered clothes during his crucifixion, imagine the crowd that called for his execution also placing bets on when he dies. The modern twist would be that the soldiers who were killing him could also place bets on when he would draw his last breath. It’s quite sinister.

A major reason that these betting markets have become so popular is for a reason that Colin Martinez Longmore explained for Sojourners in April: “When the job market compresses, house prices rise out of reach, and institutions feel fragile, bold bets start to look responsible, even virtuous.” 

For many, participation in the gambling economy becomes another example of what Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan referred to as an act of “common sense”: When life appears extractive rather than constructive, the public scrambles to feel materially and spiritually secure regardless of the wider consequences of their actions. Gambling under the pretext of an emergency is not just a personal moral failure; it is an act of collective desperation.

We should be sympathetic. People are desperate to feel safe. Considering the uncertainty of the future of our democracy and the increasing wealth inequality of our society, it makes sense that people are looking for some way to profit from the chaos of our world. The gambling economy, and especially prediction markets, offer an illusion of control in a world that feels increasingly unstable. The pursuit of actual political and economic agency becomes replaced by mirages of security.

READ MORE: The Devil Is Real. He Lives In Betting Apps

However, the dangers prediction markets pose are not just about the pursuit of quick profits. They’re an outgrowth of ideologies among the ultra-wealthy that depend on the worship of capital growth and an escape from democratic accountability. Evangelists of the prediction market believe that their businesses will create an optimal political order where only dollars comprise your share of power. They view social change as exclusively linear, manageable, and priceable, another tradeable commodity to be sold. Prediction markets are not democracies, but exploitative casinos that gamify society and extract money from working people who will ultimately bear the greatest cost of the bets they make.

Six months ago, Kalshi founder Tarek Mansour celebrated the prediction market's raising of $1 billion from investors who valued the company at $11 billion (now $22 billion) with an announcement video where he said:

Since the beginning, we’ve tried to understand what comes next. We predicted. We argued. We believed. But for the first time, belief has structure. Conviction has value. Outcomes are priced. Because the future was never meant to be a mystery. It was meant to be a market.

Prediction markets are ultimately self-fulfilling prophecies. The more money someone raises to produce results, the harder they will work to make these outcomes happen. Small groups of market manipulators are keen on using any means necessary to influence wins. In practice, the “conviction” Mansour describes boils down to insider trading. These platforms distort decisions of policymakers who either believe that prediction markets somehow reflect situational reality or, worse, push some to use internal knowledge to change the outcome of an event to line their own pockets. 

We cannot assume that prediction market users are going to place their bets with ethics in mind. Take disgraced former congressman George Santos, who was just accused of betting against his own appearance at the State of the Union address after sharing publicly that he would attend. Santos was referred by Kalshi to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Department of Justice, which have each subsequently opened insider trading investigations.

The gambling economy encourages people to make cynical bets on social unrest. Thousands of addicted users are being preyed upon to make this possible. As traditional institutions like government, universities, and even churches continue to lose the trust of young people, youth have particularly become determined to create meaning out of whatever systems remain. When career possibilities now vanish before they can even kick off, trying your luck at gambling can seem like a win-win proposition.

Of course, once these platforms sink their claws into users, they are exposed to the allure of prediction algorithms that have few guardrails against abuse. Meanwhile, prediction markets skirt gambling regulations by melding financial language throughout their sites to create an appearance of fair monetary exchange.

Prediction markets are increasingly coming under fire for this exploitation of “common sense” and their shameless attempts to monetize our desire for financial security. Unfortunately, as philosopher James K.A. Smith observes, many common desires have become objects of worship that have been sent wildly off course by consumerist culture. Even worse, Kalshi, Polymarket, and other platforms appeal to people’s desire to risk everything for an idea of the “good life,” all while incentivizing wagers on casualties of catastrophes. There’s something spiritually unnerving when real people would choose to spend millions of dollars on whether hantavirus will become another global pandemic for some extra cash.

Gambling on the fraught future of humanity reeks of mythological hubris. Christians have the power to reject the false sense of security that prediction markets offer. 

Mansour’s celebration claims prediction markets will help us determine all possible futures. In contrast, as Søren Kierkegaard identified, belief exists within “the contradiction between the infinite passion of the individual’s inwardness and the objective uncertainty.” 

To put this simply, authentic Christianity accepts the value of what appears unknown, no matter how strong our individual convictions may be. Faith relies on mysteries that defy expectations and explanations. This ancient wisdom speaks against modern delusions that all outcomes can be fixed, and, in agreement with Lonergan, it critiques the “common sense” of our gambling age. 

In a time of algorithmic oppression, taking space and time to live spontaneously may be the greatest way to reclaim actual control over life from the specter of predictions. Reconnect with an old friend; attend an event entirely outside of your comfort zone; create controversial (human) art and build new cultures within your local context.

Serious policy work must continue to be done to rein in prediction markets. Yet, we cannot discount that building up the beloved community requires both robust socioeconomic change as well as finding spiritual rest within the unknowns that we cannot manipulate. The possibilities of an alternative future come from our faith in shared resurrection. That’s the sort of future that mechanization could never predict, no matter how hard they try.

Christians have the power to reject the false sense of security that prediction markets offer.