This is significantly reduced with markets—hedge fund managers in general are perfectly happy to own Walmart’s stock—and even more so if bets are anonymous. I’ve never encountered any credible argument that (wealthy) hedge fund guys have trouble pricing Discount Retailers or Tobacco stocks just because their customers are from a different social class.
Is this a good analogy for prediction markets, though? The stock prices don’t feed directly into policy decisions about taxes and regulations, but prediction market prices would under futarchy (unless you limit their scope to exclude specific policies), from my understanding. Betters have a better path to influence policy in their favour through these prediction markets than through stock markets. I don’t know how large these effects would be, but this is discussed in the section “(5) Buying policies: manipulation through extreme wealth”.
Of course, in many countries they can directly lobby governments or make large campaign contributions, but those could be strictly limited separately.
Is this a good analogy for prediction markets, though? The stock prices don’t feed directly into policy decisions about taxes and regulations, but prediction market prices would under futarchy (unless you limit their scope to exclude specific policies), from my understanding. Betters have a better path to influence policy in their favour through these prediction markets than through stock markets. I don’t know how large these effects would be, but this is discussed in the section “(5) Buying policies: manipulation through extreme wealth”.
Of course, in many countries they can directly lobby governments or make large campaign contributions, but those could be strictly limited separately.