Sports Betting and Other Vices

In the early morning hours of January 3, 2026, Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke  using the insider information he had gained at work about a top-secret operation to kidnap Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, placed a bet of $32,537 on Polymarket, a prediction market betting site, that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro would be “out by January 31, 2026.” That bet plus some other smaller bets netted him winnings of $409,000. To their credit, Polymarket reported the suspicious activity to the Department of Justice and Sargeant Van Dyke was arrested.

People have been betting on horse races, cockfights, dog fights, bear baiting and all sorts of other things since before recorded history. Gambling dates back to the paleolithic period and archeologists have found five thousand year-old dice in Mesopotamia. And as long as there has been betting there has been cheating. Gambling is not only inherently corrupt, it is also corrupting - tempting the gambler to take ever more riskier chances and wagering more than they can afford. Bankrupting not only themselves but also their families. Gambling triggers the brain's reward system, releasing dopamine—a chemical that causes pleasure—similar to drugs or alcohol. It alters brain chemistry and structure, reducing activity in the prefrontal cortex  which control impulsive behavior and intensifying reward responses in the striatum, which can lead to compulsive betting, addiction, and decreased enjoyment of daily life. Gambling is just as addictive as heroin or cocaine.

The gambling on predictions markets and sports betting has reached heights never dreamed of in today’s America. But gambling diverts money from more productive uses (like feeding your family) and many Protestant religious sects view gambling as harmful and even sinful as does Islam. But gambling on predictions markets widens the scope of events on which bets can be made and enhances the possibility of cheating and insider trading. But betting in predictions markets have even wider implications as bets can now be made on foreign policy events such as the kidnapping of a foreign leader such that using non-public or top-secret information to make a bet, as was the case with Sargeant Van Dyke, is the equivalent of treason. And if Chinese hackers weren’t trolling the predictions markets before January 3^rd, they sure are now.

The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) passed by the US Congress in 1992 blocked states from authorizing sports betting. However, the state of New Jersey sued to overturn the law charging that the law violated the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution. In 2018 the Supreme Court agreed with New Jersey that PASPA unconstitutionally usurped the states’ authority to regulate gambling stating that powers not delegated to the US government by the Constitution are reserved for the states.

Interestingly, New Jersey’s effort to overthrow PASPA was originally opposed by the NBA, the NFL, MLB, the NHL and the NCAA who were afraid that unlimited sports betting would harm  the leagues and their reputation. The New Jersey politicians, however, were enamored by the lure of all fees and taxes that legalized gambling would bring to the state. After the Supreme Court’s decision the politicians of many other states jumped at the chance of additional revenues from sports gambling. Sports gambling in now ubiquitous across our television screens with FanDuel, DraftKings and others striving to become the “official” sports book for various leagues. But because gambling is just as addictive as the most potent drugs, crime and corruption has quickly infested professional and college sports. Last fall, six people including former and current NBA players and coaches were arrested by the FBI for using insider information to profit from illegal betting activity. And just last month, the NCAA reported that it was investigating Texas Tech transfer quarterback Brendan Sorsby for making thousands of on-line bets in violation of NCAA rules.

It’s so bad that even 95 year-old Warren Buffet, the sage of Omaha and former Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, deplores all the legalized sports gambling and calls it a "tax on stupidity" that destroys wealth for the many to benefit the few. Going on he said we have never had people in a more gambling mood than now. He also has warned that prediction markets are more similar to gambling than speculative investing.

But it is not just gambling on sports and prediction markets that are a problem. There seems to be a malaise that is spreading through America. Recently, President Trump issued an executive order to reclassify marijuana as a schedule III drug, allowing greater access to the drug for medical research and greater control over the use of marijuana by the states. This despite increasing evidence that the long-term use of cannabis has serious side effects including mental impairment, mental health disorders and respiratory problems. The American Addiction Center reports that “it has been estimated that people who begin using marijuana before age 18 may be 4–7 times more likely than adults to develop a marijuana use disorder.”

And Heather MacDonald reports in City Journal about a New York Times podcast “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?’ Why petty theft might be the new political protest.” In the podcast three trendy progressives showed what Ms. Macdonald called “a breezy indifference to lawbreaking” as long as it was done as a protest in support of left wing causes. The trio also called the 2024 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood on a Manhattan street “effective political action” and “political consciousness-raising.” While overall crime is down, political violence is up.

In the United States, current events dominate not only the news headlines, but also our limited attention spans. Kidnappings of heads of state, decapitation of regimes, assassination attempts. These are the things that demand our attention. But underneath all this attention grabbing excitement there are longer term trends to which we need to pay attention. It is not that Donald Trump has caused all the changes, it is rather that these longer term trends caused Doanld Trump.

It goes beyond gambling addiction, drug addiction , political violence and other vices. There is a rot in America. Charles Murray wrote about the rot in lower class Americans in his 2012 book, Coming Apart, where he discusses the unraveling of the culture that held Americans together. Murray discusses how the problems afflicting poor Americans (both black and white) are cultural problems, fatherless children, drug addiction, poor education and persistent unemployment. But while this unproductive culture of dependency was concentrated in poorer Americans, it now seems to be spreading irresistibly into middle and upper classes. The middle class values that sustained America for many decades are now sneeringly called the habits of white supremacy.

Something is not working right in America. Democrats blame billionaires. Republicans blame immigrants. Sorry, they are wrong. Its us. We are the ones that have to change.