THE CASINO NEVER CLOSES

By now, everybody has heard about the tragedy that befell five super rich dudes who dropped $250,000 each to grab a sliver of space on a submersible designed to drop 13,123ft to view the wreckage of the Titanic.

To get a little perspective on the numbers consider this: If we dropped the world’s tallest building, the Burl Khalifa, down into the ocean it would go down about 2,717 feet. The submersible, known as the Titan, would be dropping almost five times as far as that.

A space that far beneath the waters is dark, freezing, and inhospitable to most forms of life.

And that $250,000 figure?

Well, only 7% of U.S, households pull down $250,000 or more per annum.

In other words, that quarter of a million money drop far exceeds the annual income of 93% of U.S. households.

It’s probably worthwhile to note that as weird and as dangerous as this might sound to you, some are suggesting that there’s a growing trend amongst high net-worth individuals to compete with and outdo each other by engaging in a form of adventure that’s straight up minacious.

These extreme and dangerous adventures include (but is not limited to):

• Coughing up $55 million to board the SpaceX and be blasted to the International Space Station

• Paying $100,000 to arrange a trip to the South Pole

• Grabbing your private jet and a couple of your rich buddies, jetting off to Antarctica, and doling out $200,000 to climb Mount Vinson

Such adventures have next to nothing to do with science.

It’s primarily about the super-rich engaging in something just for the thrill of it, and to gain bragging rights for doing something that separates them for their well-heeled club members.

It’s one of the ways in which the rich and the reckless flex.

Just as wild, though, is this: Just a day or so before debris from the Titan was found, there was this:

An active market had developed wherein people were actually placing bets on whether the submersible would be found before midnight of June 23rd.

Yeah, you heard that right.

A prediction market cropped up where people were attempting to make some quick cash by forecasting the fate of that submersible carrying five members of the super-rich.

PREDICTION MARKETS: A QUICK AND DIRTY EXPLANATION

Prediction markets, in brief, allow people to place bets on the binary outcomes of future events. You can bet, for instance, on whether a political figure will get assassinated by, say, August 1st.

Or: whether Putin will pull up on Yevgeny Prigozhin and take him out before September 23, 2023.

Or: Whether the Mavericks will win the 2024 NBA championship.

Or: Whether Trump will end up in the joint.

Or: Whether Biden will win the next election.

Or: Whether Bitcoin will reach an all-time high in 2023.

Or: Whether a former sexual partner of basketball player Zion Williamson will drop a sex tap featuring…well…Zion Williamson.

Or, for that matter:

Whether a submerged and lost contraption will be found before the “passengers” die from lack of oxygen or an implosion of the submersible.

By Wednesday, June 21st, the magazine Mother Jones was reporting that users of Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction market, had gambled more than $300,000 in bets on whether the lost submersible would be found by June 23rd.

Another source estimated that, by June 22nd, 62% of Polymarket participants had wagered that the Titan would not be found before the 23rd and 38% constituted a gambler’s version of a “keep hope alive” chorus.

Anybody who was part of that “no, that thing ain’t gonna be found” group made a good bet and ended up putting themselves in the position of collecting some coins.

MORAL STENCH AND ROLLING THEM BONES

The very idea and practice of buying and selling shares in whether someone is headed toward death reeks of moral stench.

Just think about it: If you wager that they’re not going to make it, that they’re not going to be found, you can’t and won’t secure that bag unless they, in fact, don’t make it.

You don’t collect unless they die.

You become financially vested in their demise.

Even if you’re the hopeful type that had bet they would be found, you’d still be engaged in a practice that contributes to the commodification of life.

Personally, I think those inside that tube were likely full of hubris and reckless.

Personally, a wave of disgust washed over me as I read about people dropping large sums of money on something as colossally as stupid as this when millions can’t: get enough food in their bellies, secure jobs with livable wages, inhabit safe and secure housing at reasonable cost, or gain access to high quality, affordable health care.

Personally, I thought—and think— that the whole thing underscores, even in microcosm, the utterly dystopian nature of our political economy: the glaring gap in wealth and income inequality, and the urgent need to jack up the marginal tax rates on the rich to curb the outsized power they possess in relation to their numbers.

But there ought to be something morally unsettling about making bets on whether someone will live or die.

Rolling them bones in these types of markets is straight up funky, and not in a good way.

The casino, it seems, never closes.