When I was coming of age, gambling was a “back-alley vice.” My mother, raised during the Depression, pinched pennies her whole life and admonished me throughout my youth to stay away from the sins of gambling.
Today, gambling is literally everywhere—a striking contrast to my earlier experiences. A majority of ads during sporting event broadcasts, from the NHL and NFL to MLB and Curling, are from online gambling sites. Ads for casinos fill the remaining spots not taken by ads for expensive cars and high-end drugs.
Reflecting on my own journey, my attitude toward gambling changed as I grew up. I became a pretty avid gambler in business and on games of chance, not unusual for someone with an addictive personality. One or two trips to Las Vegas every year usually satisfied my craving for Blackjack, Craps, and even Roulette.
This personal experience with gambling expanded after Minnesota legalized parimutuel betting on horse racing. A friend of ours seduced the Bohunk into a partnership to buy a thoroughbred colt. For us, the track became another place to gamble and socialize. Being in that partnership taught me the nuances of parimutuel wagers and the cost of maintaining a racehorse.
Living in Las Vegas after the turn of the century, the appeal of gambling actually wore thin over time, except for the various wagers on the golf course. My dear friend from that energetic community arrived in Las Vegas about the same time we did. An Australian-based slot machine maker recruited him to serve as its North American CEO. Before starting the new job, the Nevada Gaming Commission thoroughly investigated his background. It was about as intrusive an investigation as you’d undergo. Investigators went back to his childhood to review school records, talk to kids he grew up with, and examine every financial transaction he’d had since his paper route. Gambling in Nevada is heavily regulated; online, not so much.
Beyond traditional gambling, the financial markets have long functioned as another way to wager. Stocks, bonds, futures, and commodities amount to money wagered on building a fortune or losing a shirt. The markets are regulated, but not guaranteed.
As if we don’t have enough places to gamble, prediction markets are springing up to appeal to those looking to risk a buck or two to make millions. These are decentralized platforms where users buy and sell “shares” in the outcome of future events. Companies like Polymarket and Kalshi, which track the “wisdom of the crowd,” have become a gambling industry in their own right. They take bets on the probability of future events, from Federal Reserve interest rate changes to the exact date of a ceasefire in a global conflict, even on highstakes political outcomes.
The regulation of these markets is a chaotic frontier. While Polymarket is overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the platform finds itself at the center of a fierce jurisdictional battle. Federal regulators argue that these markets are financial “derivatives” subject only to national oversight. Several states—most notably Nevada and Massachusetts—have filed lawsuits to classify these event contracts as “unlicensed gambling,” arguing that bets on basketball scores or election outcomes fall under the strict purview of state gaming commissions.
Focusing on the local scene, the 2026 Minnesota midterm election markets are among the most active “state-level” contracts on prediction market platforms. Because Minnesota is seen as a “blue-leaning” state that occasionally flirts with “purple” results, it’s a favorite for high-volume speculators. With Governor Walz stepping aside, the DFL nomination market is essentially a “winner-take-all” for the general election in bettors’ eyes. DFL Senator Amy Klobuchar is the dominant favorite for the DFL nomination. Her “Yes” shares are trading at 90¢ (90% probability). Lisa Demuth is the current market favorite for the Republican nomination at 52%. The market for “Winning Party of MN Governor” is trading at 91% for DFLers. Bettors are signaling they don’t see a path to a Republican pickup in the current climate.
While we wait for the “official” results in November 2026, the real-time “price” of our democracy is traded every second. The most unsettling aspect of this ‘everythingis-a-bet’ era isn’t the politics—it’s the ghoulish proximity we now have to profiting from human catastrophe.
For example, just last weekend, as the U.S. and Israel launched “Operation Epic Fury” against Iran, blockchain analysts flagged a cluster of new Polymarket accounts that netted over $1 million by betting on the exact timing of the strikes just hours before the first explosions. Suspicion of “insider trading” abounds.
When war becomes a “tradable asset,” and our local leaders are mere “event contracts,” the human element of trust in the system vanishes entirely.
In the end, we are a society of “speculators” rather than “savers.” Mama would not be pleased.
