Well corporate stocks have the same dynamic. People are banding together and manipulating reality in unproductive ways to make their stocks go up.

Countries literally go to war so that weapon dealers can sell weapons and banks can later sell loans to rebuild the country.

The real problem is centralization of power.

Within the horrible context of the current situation, it's a good thing that at least there is a force to drive outcomes that seem random as opposed to just being around money. It democratizes the horrors a bit so that rich people who have money and live in corporate stock lala land can get a slight taste of the negatives of large-scale vested interests collaborating towards dystopian outcomes.

That said, a better solution would be to shut down all public markets and companies.

My view is that if a company is so well recognized that government officials can reference it by name in congress, then that company should be shut down automatically. We know it didn't get there by economic efficiency... It almost certainly got there by voting and sociopolitical manipulation.

You can't shut down betting markets without shutting down the public stock markets because they are betting markets themselves.