Kalshi, Polymarket, and the commodification of everything

This past October, an Austin-based Twitch streamer who goes by the handle “Fandy” gave birth to her daughter Luna. She decided to have her baby at home, aided by a midwife and surrounded by her husband and some close friends. That news, in and of itself, would not have made headlines if not for one crucial factor: She let viewers see the entire 8-hour long process online, topping out at 50,000 at one point. Fandy claims to have not financially benefited from the event and gained only the intimacy of sharing such a special moment with her followers. But if the creator economy has taught us anything, it’s that those willing to share the most of themselves come out on top.

Content creation has become an offramp from unfulfilling work or potentially dire financial straits, and the phenomenon starkly reveals the economic problems many younger Americans are struggling to avoid. The world that the yuppies made—of workaholism as the way to a comfortable retirement—is becoming less achievable and thought of as a matter of nostalgia. From skyrocketing housing prices in many areas to scrambling to find well-paying professional careers likeliest to outlast AI’s flooding of practically every aspect of the job sector, many are understandably desperate for schemes to escape dead-end drudgery. Some turn to cryptocurrency while others to more unseemly avenues such as OnlyFans. Now, there’s the future itself to turn into a profit.

Unlike typical betting, the model for both Kalshi and Polymarket is centered around “prediction markets,” or, in more human-friendly terms, odds on what may or may not happen in real life. One man managed to bring home around $300,000 for correctly guessing that a gay couple would be televised live whilst sharing a kiss during the New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square. On Polymarket, another netted $400,000 with an oddly prescient call on when Venezuelan autocrat Nicholas Maduro would be deposed. That one turned into big trouble. For many, these bets seem harmless and practically irresistible. These platforms inevitably face their own long road to total legality, as the possibility of a payout might believably lead bettors to force preferable outcomes. That doesn’t make those who clearly see them as their monetary salvation go away.

Rather than trying to fix any actual problems within our economy, prediction betting only serves to distract us further from working towards any long-term solutions. Furthermore, the constant projection of the overidealized, highly curated lifestyles of social media influencers and other purportedly self-made masters of the universe of the digital age make many think that the only way forward is to gamify reality for a chance at riches just because they can. Mainstream voices would have us believe that getting as many experiences and possessions under our belt and living as long as possible before our time runs out is the key to happiness, for should the music stop for too long, we’d have to consider the vanity of it all.

Kalshi and Polymarket work to render the vice of gambling into an innocuous instrument for getting ahead. The prospect to win big perpetually remains on the horizon, with the pixelated bait hiding the hook of debilitating addiction and inexorable loss. Being able to bet on quite literally anything with the convenience of a smartphone app turns them into the literal slot machines many whistleblowing tech gurus claim they were engineered to be. Even in seasons of genuine want, we aren’t justified in trying to use a future not of our own making to determine how well off we might be within it.

A robust, classical vision of the good life can counteract attempts to overcome a lack of material prosperity through illegitimate means. Raising a family, contributing to a community, and cherishing that which cultivates beauty and flourishing are perpetually available to those willing to order their loves and priorities accordingly. Irrespective of how bad of a generational hand one might get at the market level, there remains plenty to be reaped right now according to the creation order. Monetization of the mundane cannot fill the void of denying divinely stamped purpose.

Economic downturns will always be with us. What we only get one shot at this side of eternity is how we steward our resources for advancing the gospel and the redeemed future of humanity it ensures. Banking on the right thing can in fact last forever.