Can Prediction Markets Price Reality? Insights into the Political Economy of Post-Truth

This article analyzes contemporary prediction markets as financialized infrastructures that convert uncertain future events into tradable claims under conditions of post-truth and overaccumulation. It argues that platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket do not invent speculation on uncertainty, but reorganize older forms of event wagering through exchange-like platforms, continuous price formation, and formal procedures of verification and settlement. Bringing Marxist political economy into conversation with critiques of postmodern epistemic instability, the article shows how financialization expands accumulation into increasingly abstract domains where expectations, interpretations, and public recognition become objects of exchange. Prediction markets price not simply future outcomes, but the institutional processes through which those outcomes are classified, verified, and settled. The article further argues that artificial intelligence intensifies this recursive logic by scaling automated judgments about others’ expectations. Prediction markets thereby appear as financialized mutations of betting and as mechanisms through which post-truth conditions enter circuits of capitalist accumulation.