The very fact that this article calls to mind a Roald Dahl short story is probably a red flag

 Victor Tangermann writing for Futurism.

 New Platform Lets You Gamble on CCTV Footage

Thanks to the rise of sports betting and prediction markets, gambling has turned from an activity sequestered to casinos and scratch tickets into something that practically anybody with an internet connection can dive into headfirst — something that has experts warning of a surge in gambling addiction, especially among young, impressionable minds.

Platforms like Polymarket mean that gamblers are no longer limited to betting their hard-earned cash on red or black during a game of roulette or mindlessly pulling the lever of a slot machine — now they can bet on whether Jesus Christ will return before the long-awaited release of the video game “GTA VI,” or by what date the United States will strike Iran.

And now, a new gambling game called Rush Hour CCTV on the crypto casino platform Roobet is taking the phenomenon to an even more ludicrous conclusion. As casino publication Win.gg points out, gamblers there are betting on how many cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, or pedestrians are crossing a specific point within a predetermined time period on a street in live, licensed CCTV footage being streamed from big cities, including Tokyo, Bangkok, New York, and London.

It may sound banal — and it many ways it is — but instead of relying on traditional random number generator mechanics (RNG) that determine the outcome in slot machines, the new game relies on the real world instead.

The game is deceptively simple. Each round kicks off with a simple message: “How many vehicles?”

Gamblers can then bet on how many vehicles will cross a point within the next 55 seconds. They can also give a range as an answer, which will give a significantly lower payout than guessing the exact number.

 

 The rest of the article focuses appropriately on the rise of gambling and gambling addiction, particularly among young men, but there’s another issue worth noting. (For more on that, check out this USA Today article.)

Whenever you can bet on something, there’s a temptation to try to rig the outcome. The best-known example is the almost universally condemned practice of fixing sporting events. As far as I can tell, even among the wackiest libertarians, there’s no great push to legalize point-shaving or to allow jockeys to bet against their own horses. Even compared to other forms of cheating, throwing a game—or even simply making sure your team doesn’t cover the spread—is seen as especially unacceptable.

But just to play devil’s advocate, isn’t this level of social opprobrium a bit excessive given the actual social harm? Sports, despite all the mythology we build up around them, are fundamentally trivial. Historically, the primary victims of things like point-shaving schemes have been people who were engaging in the generally illegal activity of sports betting. Yes, the winners were even less sympathetic—professional gamblers and organized crime—but we’re not exactly talking about bilking widows and orphans out of their life savings here.

We can certainly be impressed by the skill and dedication of a performer. We can appreciate the aesthetics of a great athlete (Muhammad Ali, Wayne Gretzky, my personal choice, fourth-quarter Joe Montana). But we could make a similar case for almost any form of entertainment. It’s not unheard of for an actor who is pissed off at the producers of a film to deliver a bad performance, but I’ve never heard of anyone suggesting they should be banned for life from the movies.

When, however, you start betting on real-life events, the potential consequences of rigging the outcomes can get very big very quickly. I can think of lots of ways to guarantee low traffic at a given intersection at a given time. None of them are things we would like people doing.

Roald Dahl explored this idea—and the possibility of its unintended consequences—in his classic short story “A Dip in the Pool.” It’s well worth checking out. You can find it in many anthologies online, including the Internet Archive, or you can check out one of the adaptations. It was filmed for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, starring Keenan Wynn (though that version does not appear to be streaming). If you don’t mind ’80s videotape cinematography, I’ve embedded a version from Tales of the Unexpected starring the fine character actor Jack Weston.