John Oliver recently turned a segment over to platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. The online outlet More Perfect Union has produced its own exposé. Prediction markets are moving from internet curiosity to serious political, financial and ethical debate.

People now bet on wars, elections, tariffs, deportations, recessions and ceasefires in language once kept for stocks and commodities. A missile strike, a cabinet collapse, a riot, a border clash or a failed truce can each become part of a cycle of anticipation, probability and payout. Somewhere along the way, the language of building the future quietly gave way to the language of betting on instability.

The real question is not whether these markets are moral. It is why societies are starting to find them so believable.

Part of the answer lies in a wider collapse of trust. For two decades, large numbers of people have watched confidently delivered narratives crumble against reality. From Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction to ever more theatrical media elsewhere, many no longer feel that official certainty deserves automatic respect.

Indian television news has shown this with force during recent tensions with Pakistan and on its domestic stories. It was once thought that only states with vast repressive machinery could keep such a grip on the narrative. Yet here is a country of 1.45 billion showing the world the way while still being called democratic and capitalist.

When propaganda outlives its half-life it produces two kinds of audience. One keeps consuming the same spectacle because identity and comfort matter more than truth. The other loses faith and turns elsewhere for scraps........

© The Express Tribune