The leaps being made here are genuinely astounding. Hanson is actually arguing that using insider information to make yourself richer is somehow akin to being a whistleblower. In fact, it’s really a form of public service, he suggests, because if you make a large and suspicious enough bet—one that no one else would reasonably make—you are effectively alerting the public that something big is about to happen.

How noble of these anonymous government insiders to graciously “inform” the masses, simply by pocketing tens of thousands of dollars for themselves!

We have now reached the level of late-stage capitalism where economists argue that the most reliable way to understand world events is to check Polymarket at odd hours of the night to see if anyone’s made any weirdly specific bets.