[HN Gopher] Legalizing sports gambling was a mistake
___________________________________________________________________
Legalizing sports gambling was a mistake
Author : jimbob45
Score : 983 points
Date : 2024-09-26 15:24 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Maybe there could be some sort of identity based limit on how
| much anyone can gamble in a month?
|
| Couldn't fully read the article though.
|
| If betting wasn't allowed it would be significant income loss for
| sports teams as well. Maybe you might think that they don't need
| that much money, but that is subjective.
| liquidpele wrote:
| hell, make it opt-in even!
| sickofparadox wrote:
| I think the core of the issue is that, much like social media
| addiction or nicotine pouches, the source of addiction is
| instantly available at any time in your pocket. There is no
| barrier to initiate the activity, even with smoking/vaping at
| least you had to go outside to get your fix.
|
| When I was going to college I had multiple friends that would
| compulsively gamble whenever there was down time. They wouldn't
| have lost half the money they did if gambling only took place
| at Casinos, or at least at dedicated terminals.
| supperrtadderr wrote:
| I like nicotine pouches because its just plant fibre
| soaked/sprayed with nicotine. Its convenient like gum.
|
| That being said I only do the 4mg option and usually after
| work with a beer. I dont think I'm addicted to them because I
| dont do them compulsively.
|
| I know some people use nicotine to deal with anxiety or
| restlessness or something. I kind of like the buzz, since
| nicotine is a poison sourced from a plant.
|
| Sorry tangential rant lol
| andrewla wrote:
| How do sports teams derive income from this? Is it just in the
| sense of increased viewership and the possibility of
| sponsorships from the gambling companies? As far as I
| understand they do not get any money from sports gambling
| directly and are mostly not allowed (through internal ethics
| rules) to do any gambling themselves.
| 5555624 wrote:
| "Miller says the NFL doesn't get a cut of the amount wagered
| with these companies. But the NFL and its television rights
| holders, which pay the NFL more than $13 billion a year to
| broadcast games, have seen a boon from advertising by the
| legal gaming industry."
| (https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/10/business/nfl-super-bowl-
| sport...)
| andrewla wrote:
| So we're talking about the indirect income from
| advertising.
|
| The article is poorly worded -- yes, advertisers spend a
| lot of money, but were those advertisers to disappear,
| other advertisers would buy those spots. So the question
| becomes, to what degree does the induced demand raise the
| marginal profit for advertising spots. And how that in turn
| affects how much networks are willing to pay the NFL for
| licensing, and that in turn affects how much the teams get
| in kickbacks from the NFL. So likely marginal at best.
|
| The flipside is also how much viewership increases because
| of sports gamblers watching that would otherwise not watch.
| Also difficult to confidently assert the value of.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| Betting companies are willing to pay far more compared to
| other industries since they gain the most from this
| sponsorship as well.
|
| I am not from the US and NFL could probably handle it,
| but I am from a smaller country with smaller clubs. If
| betting companies sponsorship was banned many clubs, even
| in the top league, couldn't play on the pro or even the
| semi pro level.
|
| They gain the most, but in addition they benefit from the
| sport being popular so they are willing to help invest in
| making sure that would be the case.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I live in a smaller country and all sponsors pretty much are
| betting companies. These sponsors by far are most lucrative
| compared to your usual brands exactly because of how much
| they make from betting. Other industries wouldn't be able to
| pay as much for sponsorship since due to not so large
| viewership they wouldn't gain all of it back.
|
| Negatives aside if you are fine with the losses it could be
| viewed a bit like donating to the football clubs.
|
| Larger football clubs could be fine taking pay cuts etc, but
| there would likely be many smaller clubs that can't pay their
| players on the pro or semi pro level any longer.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Gambling is a vice, and we should allow it but make it expensive
| and somewhat stigmatized.
|
| At the very least, ads should be banned or require nasty images
| like tobacco products.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| I would also suggest capping the amount that people can bet per
| week or month to prevent too many weak human minds from ruining
| their lives and worse than that ruining the lives of their
| wives and kids.
| dgoldstein0 wrote:
| But his would those amounts be set? For some people $100/week
| would be a lot of money; for higher earners it'd be basically
| nothing.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| that would be a good system, base it on income or wealth --
| you're limited to $100/week or whatever unless you can
| validate you can afford more
|
| let's means test the rich for once
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I have participated in a few meetings of some lottery boards,
| and I have heard that there is a tension here between the
| illegal market and the pricing of the legal market. Some states
| charge the (relatively low) commissions that the illegal market
| charges because they would prefer to stamp out the illegal
| market, and others take your position but have a thriving black
| market for gambling. Those are basically the two options.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think illegal sports gambling was less pernicious. The
| usual bookie offered bets on the outcome of games which are
| much harder to manipulate than the stupid prop bets that
| people get addicted to now. The stigma of being involved in
| something illegal also slowed things down, you had to
| actually call up a bookie and not just press a button on an
| app.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| For what it's worth, I agree with you, but that's the
| counter-argument: if prices are too high, you're going to
| essentially get people either circumventing restrictions
| (eg with VPNs) or turning to gangs.
|
| Some of the other games that state lotteries are adopting
| are almost as bad as sports betting in terms of their
| availability (look up instant-play gaming), but sports
| betting feels like a game of skill, which certainly makes
| it worse from a psychological perspective. I still think it
| should be legal if people are going to do it anyway. Maybe
| banning the "specials" on combo bets or requiring them to
| be labeled as "this is still a bad bet" could help.
|
| For the record, I have a vested interest in sports gambling
| being banned because I sell products involved in instant-
| play and other forms of gaming that are not involved in
| sports betting.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Did people do illegal online sports gambling before it
| was legal? Did it do as much harm as it does now?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yes they did, and I don't know if we have harm data. It
| certainly provided a lot of funding to criminals. It
| probably did not cause nearly as much direct harm as we
| see today.
| fidotron wrote:
| > Some states charge the (relatively low) commissions that
| the illegal market charges because they would prefer to stamp
| out the illegal market
|
| Slight tangent, but I am now of the view the state should not
| be allowed to tax legal vices. (Drugs, gambling, alcohol
| primarily). The reason is it keeps pushing amazing conflicts
| of interest, and the state ends up incentivized to maintain
| the behavior it supposedly does not want.
|
| Either [vice] is wrong and should be illegal, or is tolerated
| and regulated but in no way profited from by those that do
| the regulation.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Taxing vices is how you control the amount of them while
| still allowing people to do them. Taxation is an important
| form of regulation.
| fwip wrote:
| Sort of. It's how you bankrupt poor people addicted to
| the vice while not meaningfully affecting the well-off.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Ideally you would make it extremely expensive to get
| started, but inexpensive if you're already addicted and
| beyond the point of thinking rationally about money.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That's one theory. Another Theory is that the state is
| simply piling on and further exploiting these people.
|
| A third theory is that the state shouldnt be in the
| position of playing nanny or parent, influencing
| behavior. If it is illegal, prevent it from happening. If
| it is legal, it shouldn't it shouldnt interfere.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > A third theory is that the state shouldnt be in the
| position of playing nanny or parent, influencing
| behavior. If it is illegal, prevent it from happening. If
| it is legal, it shouldn't it shouldnt interfere.
|
| This sort of black-and-white position basically means
| either a complete ban (presumably with a harsh penalty
| for people who participate in the activity) or no
| regulation at all. A ban will just get circumvented if
| you don't penalize people for getting around it, so
| you're going to have to penalize addicts for illegal
| gambling, not just the people who enable that gambling.
| If you want to take the other extreme, are laws that
| force people to put lung cancer warnings on cigarettes
| "playing nanny"?
|
| In real life, we usually take middle ground positions,
| and that means doing things that influence behavior,
| whether they are taxes or restrictions on labeling.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yes, I do think government should be more black and
| white, and the government should stay in it's lane. I
| support regulation that empowers and informs individuals
| to make their own choices.
|
| Labeling of side effects, calories, and similar topics
| fall into that category of empowering the citizen.
|
| Sin taxes dont educate or empower, they simply punish and
| try to prevent individuals from acting on their own
| choices.
|
| The two are very different.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| So do you believe that any behavior should be prohibited?
|
| Do you think sales of raw milk, which have been known to
| cause listeria outbreaks when people drink from an unsafe
| batch, should simply force labels of "this milk may be
| unsafe" or do you think that should be prohibited?
|
| Do you think rhino horn should be legal to sell with the
| label of "this likely came from poached animals"?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yes, lots of behavior should be prohibited. Specifically
| when they cause direct and indisputable harm to another
| person.
|
| I think raw milk should be legal, and the labeling
| requirement should depend on the actual risk level, not
| just a vague possibility.
|
| rhino horn is a tricky one. Poaching animals is a form of
| stealing, so it is clearly illegal. Off the cuff, I think
| selling recently harvested rhino horn should be legal but
| required to have evidence that it was not poached.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Inversely, Do you think the state should be able to
| criminalize selling or owning farmed Rhino horn?
|
| Do you think think states should be able to ban the sale
| of meat or specific types of farmed meat?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Raw milk should _absolutely_ be allowed for sale if
| properly labeled. The risk is miniscule, and it should be
| up to individuals if they are ok with it or not. I myself
| grew up drinking raw milk every day, and nobody from my
| family got sick even once. It 's absolutely ridiculous
| that it's completely banned in the US.
| autoexec wrote:
| > A third theory is that the state shouldnt be in the
| position of playing nanny or parent, influencing
| behavior. If it is illegal, prevent it from happening. If
| it is legal, it shouldn't it shouldnt interfere.
|
| A lot of things are only able to be legal because they
| are regulated in some way. I absolutely want the state in
| the position of "playing nanny" when it comes to things
| like telling companies they can't dump a ton of toxic
| chemicals into the rivers or how much pollution they are
| able to spew into our air.
|
| It's legal to sell tobacco, and it should be, but I'm
| very glad there are rules against selling cigarettes to
| children. It's legal to drink alcohol, but it's a very
| good thing when the state influences behavior like drunk
| driving.
|
| Nobody wants arbitrary laws restricting private
| individuals for no reason, but communities should have
| the power to decide that some behaviors or actions are
| harmful to the group and are unacceptable. Communities
| have always done that in one way or another. We've just
| decided that rather than stick with mob justice we would
| put away the tar and feathers and allow the state, our
| public servants who are either elected by us or appointed
| by those we elect, to enforce the rules for us. I'm glad
| we did. I've already got a job and can't go around
| policing all day.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont think stopping companies from polluting rivers is
| playing nanny. It is against the law, destroys others
| property, and the government should act.
|
| Drunk driving is illegal too, for good reasons.
|
| Im not against laws.
|
| What I am against is the state taking things that are
| explicitly _legal_ , and making your life hard and
| penalizing you if you do them.
|
| The role of the government should be enforcing law.
| Enforcing social judgement and incentives on legal
| behavior should be left to non-governmental society.
|
| Sin taxes are a classic example of this.
| autoexec wrote:
| I'll admit that sin taxes imposed on the general public
| aren't usually a very good idea. For example, I'd much
| rather see government subsidizing the costs of healthy
| foods rather than add a tax on sugar.
|
| I can see taxes and tariffs imposed on corporations being
| useful to limit the amount of certain harmful goods or to
| help offset the costs of externalities caused by those
| products. I'd still rather see companies regulated and
| held accountable for what they do more directly in most
| cases.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think that is most closer to my position.
|
| In my mind, the government is a heavy hammer, backed by
| lethal force. As such, it should be used sparingly to
| prevent concrete damages, enforce laws, and enforce
| property rights.
|
| If a person or company is causing people real harm, that
| should be actionable by the government. If they are
| poisoning someone or killing their land, that is well
| within the remit.
|
| Inversely, the government should not be a tool for
| optimizing society, or increasing the subjective
| efficiency or morality.
|
| Government is a powerful tool, but that doesnt mean it
| the right tool for everything. Restraint and respecting
| other people's autononomy is a difficult skill to lean
| when you have the power to simply force compliance and
| "know" you are right.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Subsidizing the cost of health foods and adding a tax on
| sugar are exactly equivalent due to how monetary policy
| works.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| How are they roughly equivalent, let alone "exactly
| equivalent"? It seems to me that are vast differences any
| way you compare them.
|
| Economically, there are major differences in who pays
| them, There are differences in impact/cost. There are
| also huge moral differences between subsidizing desired
| behavior, and penalizing undesirable behavior.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Subsidies increase the amount of money in circulation and
| taxes decrease it. The price of goods is set relative to
| the amount of money in circulation (this is what
| inflation does). Hence, exact equivalence of taxing sugar
| and subsidizing foods without sugar.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Seems like a very narrow definition. If I take $100 from
| your wallet, or give $100 to your neighbor, is that
| exactly the same to you?
| autoexec wrote:
| Subsidizing the cost of health foods would actually be a
| lot more expensive. In fact, ideally it'd include
| increasing the accessibility of healthy foods while a tax
| on sugar would be much easier to implement.
|
| It'd result in more people eating better though (instead
| of just eating slightly less worse, or eating worse
| differently while still not getting enough healthy food)
| and so there'd also be savings in the cost of health care
| and improvements in productivity.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I think the taxes thing is mainly to appease the voting
| public. People want the profits of the bad things to pay
| for the good things. It makes the ugly pill possible to
| swallow.
| fidotron wrote:
| The tempting comparison is the tendency, at least in
| England, for things like church maintenance fundraisers
| to be funded by lotteries, by another name (raffle). i.e.
| donate money, and you might win.
|
| Either gambling is bad or it's not, but in practice
| people like to be incredibly selective about it, as here,
| where as you point out sports betting lacks the positive
| externalities which for some part of the population
| offset the negative effects.
| cameldrv wrote:
| A church raffle only happens once a year, and the time
| between buying the ticket and getting the reward is
| relatively long. That is not going to lead to an
| addiction.
|
| Having the TV blaring gambling commercials at you
| constantly and having the ability to place a bet from
| your phone at a moments notice is completely different.
| You're comparing having a glass of wine on a special
| occasion with downing a fifth of whiskey every night.
| fidotron wrote:
| > You're comparing having a glass of wine on a special
| occasion with downing a fifth of whiskey every night
|
| No one pretends one of those isn't drinking though,
| whereas everyone pretends raffles aren't gambling, or
| churches could hardly go in for it so much.
|
| > That is not going to lead to an addiction.
|
| So while the public described by the person I was
| replying to consider positive externalities sufficient to
| get around the "gambling bad" label for you it is all
| about how addictive you think an individual form of it
| would be for other people?
|
| There are people that think all drink is addictive, and
| some people for whom this is true, but suggest banning
| alcohol and you are considered a crackpot.
|
| I have known people that worked in the gambling industry
| and their descriptions of the addicts are mind bending.
| For example, they would show up at the offices and demand
| to gamble in person because they couldn't find enough in
| life to bet on. Such people would find board games
| problematic, let alone a raffle situation.
| autoexec wrote:
| > There are people that think all drink is addictive, and
| some people for whom this is true, but suggest banning
| alcohol and you are considered a crackpot.
|
| Suggest reasonable restrictions on alcohol though and
| nearly everyone would agree that's a smart thing.
|
| > I have known people that worked in the gambling
| industry and their descriptions of the addicts are mind
| bending... Such people would find board games
| problematic, let alone a raffle situation.
|
| You can find equally horrific stories about alcoholics.
| We'd have to deal with greater numbers of "such people"
| if we didn't actively take steps to regulate addictive
| substances. Even with alcohol we have limits on where and
| when it can be used, and how it can be advertised.
| Gambling is available anywhere at anytime and ads are
| pushed right to addicts phones night and day to remind
| them to keep paying and broadcast to everyone during
| sporting events.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > No one pretends one of those isn't drinking though,
| whereas everyone pretends raffles aren't gambling, or
| churches could hardly go in for it so much.
|
| The raffles I see have a token amount as a reward,
| compared to the money raised. I think that makes a big
| difference, both rationally and emotionally.
| freejazz wrote:
| > There are people that think all drink is addictive
|
| And? Should we legislate based on some peoples' belief
| that the rapture is imminent?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| FYI charity raffles are actually lotteries that would be
| illegal if not for the charitable use of the funds and
| exceptions in the rules on lotteries. A lottery generally
| has three things:
|
| 1. A prize
|
| 2. Consideration - you must pay to enter
|
| 3. A game of pure chance - this differentiates a lottery
| from a tournament or a silent auction, for example
|
| A raffle fits these definitions, but nonprofits are often
| allowed to run them specifically because they get an
| exception to the rules. That is also why many "buy my
| shit to win a prize" promotions have a way to enter
| without buying something (getting around the
| consideration rule) and some of these have a short math
| test that you need to do to claim your prize (making it a
| game of not pure chance).
| dole wrote:
| All the big sports betting companies are now dumping
| money into political television commercials with school
| teacher testimonials and happy classroom shots urging how
| passing Bill X will benefit state schools, yet years into
| legalized sports betting, teachers still have some of the
| lowest compensation rates.
| jsnell wrote:
| I mean, yes, that is a theory one could reasonably believe
| in. In the absence of evidence, it's not obvious at all
| whether it is true or false.
|
| But this submission is about research showing that the legal
| market isn't just replacing the illegal market. It expands
| the market and the bad effects.
|
| That is, they're able to track the deposits made to betting
| sites and other spending. Bets to illegal bookies are
| obviously not in that dataset. But if the legal gambling had
| replaced illegal gambling, the money going into legal
| gambling would appear to be coming from nowhere. Most likely
| a reduction in cash withdrawals? But that's not the effect
| they're observing. The money going into gambling is
| displacing other spending, including spending on +EV
| investments.
|
| Given there is now evidence that the theory isn't correct,
| there's probably not much value in talking about it as if
| there really was a legitimate tradeoff here.
| jayski wrote:
| There's some evidence ludopathy has a genetic component (aside
| from obviously environmental).
|
| I think it's cruel for us as a society to allow that to be
| exploited for financial gain.
| neaden wrote:
| This is basically where I am at. I live in Illinois and it used
| to be you could bet at the race track or a couple Off Track
| Betting locations, otherwise you would have to go to a casino
| which was probably a distance away. Then they legalized Video
| Gambling and it popped up in a bunch of bars, restaurants, and
| stand alone places. You even see it in gas stations sometimes.
| Now with sports betting online there are constant
| advertisements for it all the time. In just 15 years legalized
| gambling went from something relatively niche to extremely
| prevalent.
| paleotrope wrote:
| Slippery slopes and all that
| autoexec wrote:
| There's a scene in Idiocracy where a the main character goes
| to a hospital and there are slot machines in the background
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70UdQJDzj4k). The last time
| I saw it I immediately thought of Illinois. Every time I
| travel to chicagoland I'm shocked to seem them everywhere.
| Their presence somehow makes otherwise normal places look
| very sad.
| shaftway wrote:
| Higher res and earlier shot where the slot machines are
| focused on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcYbYhjdUb4&t=6
| 9s&ab_channel...
|
| Bonus for phrases on them like "Play while you wait" and
| "Win free medical care"
| willcipriano wrote:
| SpongeBob is the voice of the doctor machine.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Tobacco bans are the way of the future, with existing smokers
| grandfathered out of the ban to minimize political opposition.
| If you're born after X date then it will never be legal for you
| to but it.
|
| Opposition to bans is sort of a libertarian dogma, they say
| bans never work and only make the problem worse or introduce
| new problems, and usually cite alcohol prohibition in America.
| But a lot of bans do work, and even that one apparently
| succeeded in reducing alcohol consumption even if it did
| empower organized crime. What's more, it's pretty easy to
| ferment alcohol in your basement but it's a lot harder to hide
| fields of tobacco. Political dogma never captures the nuance of
| reality.
| paleotrope wrote:
| You seem to have the assumption that libertarian opposition
| to bans is based on the practicality of such and not the
| principle of allowing adults to make their own choices
| inquisitorG wrote:
| It never ceases to amaze me how much people love to tell
| other people what to do even when it has absolutely nothing
| to do with them.
|
| I think sports gambling is stupid and has largely ruined
| sports for me. Most people I know though seem to really
| love it, gamble completely responsibly and seem to enjoy
| sports they did not enjoy previously.
|
| Unfortunately, there is no story to click on without some
| kind of moral outrage or "mistake" that the "smart" people
| need to correct. Especially appealing if it can bent into
| some kind of political bullshit narrative .
| golergka wrote:
| > they say bans never work and only make the problem worse or
| introduce new problems
|
| No, that's not what we say. The primary argument for it is
| because we do not subscribe to a utilitarian morality. If we
| know that some decision leads to better outcomes from the POV
| of general quality of life and the like, we still wouldn't
| support it if it trampled individual freedoms, because we
| consider the latter to be more important.
|
| It's not a difference of opinion over whether a certain
| theorem proves true or false. It's a matter of different set
| of axioms altogether.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Expensive in terms of effort, yes. There must be several
| opportunities for higher brain function to over-ride the
| reptile brain before a bet is placed.
| nerdponx wrote:
| New federal law: all gambling bets must be placed by fax or
| mail accompanied by a legible signature, with results to be
| released no less than 24 hours after betting closes.
| chillydawg wrote:
| You jest but a serious proposal on the table in Brasil
| right now is constant/ongoing facial recognition on online
| betting sites to authorise the session.
| tgv wrote:
| Indeed. Expensive in terms of money it already is, and it's
| not effective.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Sports betting sites generally have margins well under 10%.
| That's not expensive IMO.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Just about everything that's fun is a "vice".
| thefifthsetpin wrote:
| There might be someone hopelessly addicted to amateur
| astronomy, frequently disrupting their sleep schedule and
| taking out usurious loans to pay for their equipment. But,
| that's not happening on a scale that we need societal
| regulation. Gambling is a different sort of vice than many
| fun activities.
| wavemode wrote:
| Playing tennis is a vice?
| ravenstine wrote:
| Tennis can certainly be viewed that way.
|
| It's done recreationally, costs money, costs time, can
| cause injuries and joint problems, and is not productive.
| There are health benefits, but nothing that can't be had by
| much safer and less costly means of exercise.
| wavemode wrote:
| Well, anything "can be viewed" in any way. That doesn't
| mean the view is correct or commonly used or accepted.
|
| So criticizing the concept of vice on the grounds that
| "everything that's fun is a vice" is somewhat of a
| semantic strawman - you're criticizing the word by
| changing its meaning.
| ravenstine wrote:
| No it isn't. It's an opinion as to whether something is a
| vice. There is no theoretical model of what makes a vice;
| no piece of kit to measure the viceness of something.
| There is no morality particle to reference. It's also an
| opinion whether a vice is actually something negative or
| just a necessary aspect of the human experience.
| tgv wrote:
| You have a bit of a point: things that are fun are much more
| addictive than things that are hard or boring. And vice
| versa: addiction makes people believe it is fun. An addict
| will accept any kind of rationalization before giving up the
| addiction.
|
| That doesn't mean it should be allowed. Not all fun is
| healthy. It's been known for over a century that gambling is
| detrimental, to both society and individual.
| ls612 wrote:
| The christian morality summed up in one sentence.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I'm not sure it would work to make it expensive, I've lived in
| London for a while, and tobacco products are very expensive
| there, they were expensive for me, I knew few Ukrainian guys I
| would buy cigarettes from, for 2-3 pounds a packet, while I had
| enough money to buy 13 pounds cigarettes after I found a better
| job. I know a lot of people from when I was there, they were
| still buying cigarettes from those Ukrainians. You make
| gambling expensive? I'm sure lower classes can find someone who
| can let them gamble for cheap. I am no libertarian, but I think
| when it comes to vices, it's a lost battle, prohibition works
| for a the better-off part of the population, it leaves the one
| who need government the most, outside the government reach. I'd
| say things should be legalised, but money shouldn't be spent
| for anything except help programs, social programs, better
| working conditions for those who suffer and find peace in
| gambling and/or drugs. Legalising gambling was probably a
| mistake, but it was a way to keep it out of reach of organised
| crime.
|
| I think being born and raised in Naples, I've lived all my life
| in direct contact with organised crime, but many people live in
| places and don't make the connection, but I'd suggest everyone
| who think about regulating or not, to keep in mind that in any
| place you're in, there are 2 governments, one you can see, and
| one you can not
| avazhi wrote:
| It's already stigmatised - have you seen the quintessential
| meth addict/crack whores that hang around gambling/gaming
| joints?
|
| There has to be a lower class. Not all but most of the people
| who inhabit it are just where they belong. Interventionist
| states with paternal social policies can't magically raise the
| IQs of the dumbest 20% of their populations by 50 points, alas.
|
| No respectable person goes to a casino except as a gag to throw
| away expendable income. Some labourer spending 80% of his wages
| at Ladbroke's is a symptom of his stupidity, not the cause of
| it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I see so many younger cousins/niblings casually gambling on
| their phones all the time. And these are not poor kids/men,
| easily top 20% in the US.
|
| The sheer amount of advertising for gambling and revenue
| growth for these companies indicates there is little stigma.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| This is not the case in the US.
| rblatz wrote:
| That may be true for the UK, but in America it's very
| different. Most casinos are big fancy places, the local
| casino by me on the Indian reservation has world famous DJ's
| playing pool parties, an amazing restaurant, and valet
| parking with supercars out front every time I have been.
|
| Every football game has an announcer giving his lock of the
| week pick for DraftKings. Every stadium has a brand new fancy
| looking sports book attached or next door. Hell they built a
| draft kings attached to the local PGA course.
|
| Most people do it all via an app, no need to even leave your
| couch. People openly share their bets with friends. I don't
| even do sports betting, but it's basically all over and
| constantly in my face.
| chillydawg wrote:
| What state is that? Sounds pretty bad.
| rblatz wrote:
| Arizona
| boogieknite wrote:
| Im in the US, grew up in Washington where its legal to gamble
| at 18 and absolutely its stigmatized. I gambled somewhat
| frequently and a big part of the appeal was to be a jerk and
| go mingle with people we perceived as degenerate.
|
| Other comments mention how fancy casinos look, theyre still
| disgusting. Most casinos ive been to are not fancy at all.
| There are large "fancy" tribal casinos and the Vegas casinos
| but even those reek of smoke and are mostly filled with
| morbidly obese.
|
| Id go as far to say people who think theres no stigma in the
| US have only visited Vegas or seen it on TV and dont play pai
| gow in Spokane bowling alleys on weeknights.
| batushka5 wrote:
| As a step one online betting should be banned. Make access to
| it more difficult as with all substances.
| pushupentry1219 wrote:
| Its already expensive as it is, is it not? Like in a "people
| are losing heaps of money from their sour bets" kind of way.
|
| My thought is it being more expensive is not going to stop
| gambling addicts since they are already willing to lose heaps
| of money by making the bet in the first place.
|
| I agree about banning ads 100%.
| pinko wrote:
| Almost everyone involved knew it was a mistake, but was captured
| (directly or indirectly) by the profits to be made.
| Clubber wrote:
| Also it's hard to be against gambling if your state runs a
| lotto, which is gambling.
| tivert wrote:
| > Also it's hard to be against gambling if your state runs a
| lotto, which is gambling.
|
| How so? Different kinds of gambling have different
| characteristics that could make them more or less prone to
| problematic behavior.
|
| With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a time lag
| between action and response that intuitively it seems like it
| would be harder to get addicted or harder for addiction to
| become really problematic.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| State lotteries also run games like Keno, which run every
| 5-15 minutes. They have also started to run apps which have
| instant-play games, which are roughly equivalent to turning
| your phone into a slot machine. Keno and instant-play games
| still feel like chance, though, and the apps often have
| warnings and usage limits that the sports betting sites
| don't have.
| Clubber wrote:
| >With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a time
| lag between action and response that intuitively it seems
| like it would be harder to get addicted
|
| Addictions don't reason. Win $10 and some people are hooked
| for life.
|
| > or harder for addiction to become really problematic.
|
| Example: a school teacher spending $200 a week on lotto
| tickets, not life devastating, but do we really want this
| in our society? This happens a lot.
|
| Lottos just trick the people with less money into paying
| more taxes on the hopes of "winning it big!" It's
| essentially a hope tax for the lower and middle class. I
| can think of better ways of collecting taxes.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| >> With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a
| time lag between action and response that intuitively it
| seems like it would be harder to get addicted
|
| > Addictions don't reason.
|
| That argument was specifically based on how gambling
| feels and _not_ reasoning.
|
| > Win $10 and some people are hooked for life.
|
| That sucks, but ease of addiction is a spectrum.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Lottos just trick the people with less money into
| paying more taxes on the hopes of "winning it big!"_
|
| How do you explain the school teacher spending $200 per
| week, then? The teachers here collectively own one of the
| world's largest hedge funds. These are _very_ wealthy
| people.
| Clubber wrote:
| Whoever told you that, you should stop listening to them.
| randomdata wrote:
| It was the teachers themselves who told me, but sage
| advice in general. You're quite right that teaching does
| tend to an attract a crowd that are out to lunch.
|
| Still, the portfolio is public knowledge, so we can also
| verify what they say. In this case a stopped watch is
| still right sometimes.
| rty32 wrote:
| Indeed, you can't argue state lotteries aren't gambling.
| But hey, there is a wide spectrum of how bad each form of
| gambling is, and lottery is very much on the lower end of
| it.
|
| Very, very few people spend $200 a week on lottery
| tickets -- they spend a few dollars here and there a
| week. (Spending $200 is just silly and barely increases
| the chance of winning or return -- if someone can't see
| that, well, can't stop them from wasting money) Of
| course, I would like state lotteries to be further
| restricted, but that's still much much better than online
| sports betting -- people can lose six digits of wealth
| quickly, and that has a much bigger and immediate impact
| on lives than state lotteries.
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| https://archive.is/FeAy9
| wslh wrote:
| In Argentina, they recently legalized internet gambling, and now
| there's a 'pandemic' of teenagers facing serious problems. It's
| ironic to see gambling ads during football games alongside state
| ads promoting support for gambling addicts.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| Rest is Politics Leading recently had an interview with Frank
| Luntz who, as well as rebranding "global warming" as "climate
| change", rebranded "gambling" to "gaming". A really eye opening
| interview
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/5sSaRKxclEFwz80cH2FwJu?si=N...
| nuancedquestion wrote:
| Is climate change a sinister rebranding?
|
| Global warming suffers from "but it rained yesterday" and other
| misleading small scale variations making people disbelieve.
|
| "More fires, more hurricanes: Climate change" then rebrands it
| as scary: need to take seriously.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| The term "climate change" was used in research even back in the
| 50s. It isn't some new invention.
| atum47 wrote:
| It has become an epidemic in Brazil. Lots and lots of people in
| debt because of it. Celebrities, influencers, beautiful girls...
| Everyone pushing for it.
| FMecha wrote:
| Indonesia is also having an illegal online casino epidemic,
| too. That is in a country where gambling is currently illegal
| and will continue to be.
| left-struck wrote:
| "Beautiful girls" What. Why would they be affected any
| differently?
| locallost wrote:
| I believe things would improve if we raised kids explaining them
| that the house always wins. It's a rigged game. Most people can't
| predict outcomes better than picking randomly and that way they
| are guaranteed to lose money because of the margins the bookies
| have. So if you know that you can play for fun from time to time,
| but not get in over your head.
|
| But then I remember that so many are counting on the fact that
| people will stay uneducated so they can rip them off.
| andrewla wrote:
| This is a good argument against lotteries but not as good an
| argument against sports gambling. If you are better at sports
| prediction than the bookmakers, you can make money. Nobody
| gambles as an "average person", they gamble as themselves, and
| convincing an individual that they personally are bad at
| predicting outcomes requires more than saying "most people
| can't do it".
|
| People see it as a game of skill where they win money from
| people who are worse at that skill than they are.
| gensym wrote:
| Except if you are actually better than the bookmakers, the
| platforms will kick you off as soon as they detect that.
| locallost wrote:
| You can't be better or beat the bookies because you don't
| play the same game. Their game is to get the money placed
| evenly on all outcomes so that their payout is the same no
| matter what happens. And people betting are in the business
| of predicting the future which is a fool's errand. You might
| think you're above average, but once you realize the game is
| setup so that the house always wins, you realize it's tough
| to get out of the hole.
| fsckboy wrote:
| addictions are not cured by teaching people that they can play
| for fun from time to time but not get in over their heads.
|
| do you think heroin addicts and cigarette smokers never heard
| that it was bad for them?
| locallost wrote:
| It's only an addiction if it becomes one. If you prevent it,
| you've solved the problem before it became one, which is
| usually the most effective way of solving problems.
|
| For instance, Portugal had a crisis 25 years ago with sky
| high number of drug related deaths, HIV infections etc. The
| solution was decriminalization and education, e.g. about
| sharing syringes. And it worked, they went from the worst I
| drug related deaths to best. Heroin is still bad for you and
| I guess people still use drugs, but at least the outcome is
| not catastrophic anymore.
|
| So yes, I do think education cures a lot of problems.
| nba456_ wrote:
| Sports gambling is great and lots of fun. Also creates a lot of
| jobs and gives opportunities to make money from gambling if you
| are smart. I hope it expands more.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Like all gambling it also has disproportionately negative
| effects on people who are already poor.
| mock-possum wrote:
| 'Gambling is a tax on people who are bad at math'
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Not always in the case of sports betting - although there
| are definitely math "taxes" like parlays and point buys and
| heavy chalk. Plus all the predatory "promotion" stuff they
| will throw out. Sharp bettors do exist though, and do make
| quite a bit of money. They're less than 1% though.
| johngladtj wrote:
| Yes, always.
|
| There is nothing unique about sports gambling here.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| With all due respect, absolutely not? If a book puts out
| a line of +200 and you've determined there is a certain
| percentage chance of winning, your expectation easily can
| be positive. The "gambling is a tax for those bad at
| math" is a misconstrued quote that usually applies to
| completely negative expectation games, such as scratcher
| tickets, in which the more you play you will always lose
| in the long run. There are very precise mathematical
| terms for these things, and strictly, you are wrong.
|
| You can extend this to things like poker as well - is
| that a tax on people bad at math? Of course not, that'd
| be a stupid argument, because it's not a purely negative
| expectation game.
| Loocid wrote:
| >There is nothing unique about sports gambling here.
|
| Sports betting exchanges are unique compared to other
| traditional gambling options.
| nba456_ wrote:
| It disproportionately affects people who are dumb, not people
| who are poor. Though the two can be correlated.
| returnInfinity wrote:
| I have friends who are extremely smart, but they find
| gambling addictive and lose control of themselves in a
| Casio.
|
| Its a genetic issue.
|
| You could end up with children who have the same issue.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| ...that's still bad?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I would say that it's proportional to both, even if you
| factor out correlations.
| fwip wrote:
| "Creating jobs" without creating value is a bad thing.
| nba456_ wrote:
| If you're saying entertainment is not value then there are
| going to be a lot of things that fall into that category.
| fwip wrote:
| Putting a wheel in a rat cage is good for the rat.
|
| Giving the rat a lever to randomly apply cocaine or an
| electric shock is bad for the rat, even if the rat is
| addicted to pulling that lever.
| ssharp wrote:
| The online (and IRL) sports books will severely limit the
| amount you can bet if you're a plus-EV bettor.
| dfedbeef wrote:
| Ah yes, gambling. The haven for smart people. /s
| ssharp wrote:
| Sure, the average gambler is not sophisticated but people who
| do find edges are generally pretty smart.
| baudpunk wrote:
| This take, while correct, ignores the fact that chronic
| gambling will regularly -- and predictably -- destroy people's
| lives by virtue of its addictive qualities. Meaning, if it is
| legal, then we -- as a society -- will be negatively impacted
| as a whole. We all understand that a society is the sum of its
| people's strengths and weaknesses.
|
| So if this is your take, then you should be perfectly willing
| to be heavily taxed on all of your bets so that those who can't
| control themselves can receive prompt and proper care to revert
| their addiction, and assist their families to recover from the
| financial ruin caused by forces outside of their control;
| understanding that an addiction is often uncontrollable without
| a lot of time and a lot of help.
|
| If you have a problem with that, then you are signaling that
| you only care about society's strengths, because you are
| benefiting from them, and not its weaknesses, because you have
| not felt the gravity of a boot on your neck in awhile. Thus, I
| believe that your opinion is moot and also in the minority.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Breaking windows with rocks is lots of fun and creates jobs
| too, but somehow no one is praising vandals.
| thefaux wrote:
| Gambling is also ruining professional sports for me because I
| find the frequent gambling promos during the games depressing and
| disruptive.
|
| Many years ago I worked at a company that had Ladbrokes in the UK
| as a customer. On my first visit to London, I noticed their
| storefronts and found them appalling. They were some of the
| sorriest, shabbiest public spaces I'd seen, clearly designed to
| extract resources from the least well off.
|
| I don't really buy any of the arguments in favor of widespread
| legalization (and I include state lotteries in this). I could be
| ok with legalization for a few big events like the NCAA
| tournament because clearly there is some demand that must be met,
| but we should not be enabling gambling as a widespread daily
| habit.
|
| Of course there will always be black market gambling and the
| state cannot protect its citizens from every evil, but nor should
| it actively enable them.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Walking through the UK really does not lead to a good view of
| sports betting. The store fronts do not look like places that a
| happy person would go to.
| drcongo wrote:
| The state of sports gambling in the UK is now such that Sky
| Sports (used to be a cable/satellite TV station catering purely
| to sports) is now basically just a series of gambling adverts
| with some sport thrown in to keep the punters hooked. They even
| launched a Sky Bet betting company which seems to have
| completely overtaken the TV channels - every sport is riddled
| with Sky Bet adverts and sponsorship. The biggest irony is that
| professional sportsmen (it's always men) keep getting bans for
| gambling on their own sport, and yet we somehow expect
| extremely rich young men in a "banter" culture to ignore the
| fact that every week they pull on a shirt with multiple
| gambling sponsors on it and then play in a stadium with endless
| gambling ads scrolling around the LED boards before being
| interviewed afterwards standing in front of a wall of gambling
| sponsors by a man with Sky Bet written on his microphone.
| alexdunmow wrote:
| It's the same in Australia. I've seen little kids who are
| into a particular sport parrot off the odds for the game.
| It's crazy.
| aiaiaiaiaiai wrote:
| Rule zero of bookmakers: No punter is allowed to have an
| edge. Rule one: see rule zero.
| FMecha wrote:
| >The biggest irony is that professional sportsmen (it's
| always men) keep getting bans for gambling on their own sport
|
| People pointing this out often leads me to an impression that
| athletes should be allowed to bet on their own games. Problem
| is, that leads to match-fixing.
| cafard wrote:
| Upvoted for the mention of state lotteries.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I think getting wiped out financially by lotteries is still
| pretty rare in comparison to stuff like sports betting and
| drug use.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| State lotteries at least fund positive things, instead of
| just private profit. WA State as an example:
| https://www.walottery.com/PressRoom/Details.aspx?id=12129
| oceanplexian wrote:
| My state makes lotteries illegal but I still support
| gambling. It's one thing for someone to get ripped off in a
| private transaction that you can walk away from.
|
| However the government is a monopoly, and has a monopoly on
| violence. Giving a mafia that can take your house away or
| put you behind bars their own casino is an incredibly bad
| idea.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I used to support SG legalization quite a bit, but after seeing
| how quickly it can get people that I once thought were rock
| solid financially into a very bad financial situation quicker
| than I thought possible, I have no problem with heavily
| regulating bets sizes and interaction limits, if not an
| outright ban. Before it was slightly illegal and those people I
| guess avoided "bookies" as a result of being afraid of that
| whole scene. The most I ever gamble is when the lotteries get
| to ridiculously high amounts like $500 million and get a $2
| ticket. However, people seem to get addicted to sports betting
| as fast as crack cocaine and it's much wider spread than I
| thought, and contributes almost nothing to civilization other
| than the pocket books of the middle men. Is it because sports
| betting gives you quick feedback as oppose to lotteries making
| you wait or maybe the ease it is to drop your whole bank
| account as a bet? It seems like net societal negative in almost
| all ways other than a brief chance of thrill.
| DistractionRect wrote:
| > Is it because sports betting gives you quick feedback as
| oppose to lotteries making you wait or maybe the ease it is
| to drop your whole bank account as a bet?
|
| I suspect it's because unlike the lotto and games of chance,
| people can delude themselves into thinking they "know" the
| sport. It's not a gambling if they know better. It's also
| easy to externalize the blame for your loses "they would have
| won if not for <bad call, bad play, bad management, injury,
| weather, etc... Or combination thereof>"
|
| You can dip your toe in betting on the obvious mismatched,
| where it's pretty clear who will win. This is priced into the
| bookmaking, so the payout is little, but this helps people
| convince themselves they do know the sport and chase longer
| odds with better payouts.
|
| And then you get sunk cost fallacy, as they lose, they
| convince themselves they can win it back because they learned
| from before and their system will work this time.
| zo1 wrote:
| I also don't think people realize how much money, effort,
| time, very smart (and well-funded) individuals are working
| on making those odds. They have access to decades worth of
| data, _all_ the stats, and are entirely un-emotional or
| clinical about the data they are trawling through. Even if
| they miss something or get it wrong, it 's usually minute
| and you as the gambler barely make any money out of it.
| Short of some black-swan like event or insider knowledge,
| you as a single individual would not be able to come up
| with a system that _on average_ does better than the book
| makers.
|
| At least (very loosely) with the lottery it's kinda random
| and your odds are "set" or rather your payout is not
| proportionate to your chance of winning. It's a happy
| surprise kind of thing as long as you don't overdo it.
| naming_the_user wrote:
| It's not just the bookmakers either - there are
| syndicates, much like hedge funds, whose entire 9-5 job
| is trying to make money out of this stuff too, which
| forces the bookies into line and makes the prices on
| markets like Betfair fairly efficient.
|
| Basically, as a guy on the street, you don't have a clue
| and you're up against MIT-tier brains trying to beat you.
|
| It's interesting to me that more people don't realise
| this is intuitively obvious, though. No-one would look at
| the Olympics and think, oh yeah, I can run faster than
| Usain Bolt.
| Panzer04 wrote:
| You don't need to beat the bookies, you need to beat the
| odds. The bookies win either way. All they need to do is
| make sure bets on each side net out, minus their take.
|
| If you have a reliable way to beat the odds (ie.
| Inefficient betting markets that get the odds of success
| wrong) you can theoretically make money - but its a
| similar scenario to daytrading, where you need to do
| extremely well because you have to overcome the negative
| drag from the booky take too.
| mattm wrote:
| That's a good point about being easy to externalize the
| blame. I'd also add on that likely a reason is the emotion
| of it. People are already emotional about sports and their
| team. With money on the line, that ramps up even more. The
| emotional aspect with highs and lows helps people crave
| more of that excitement.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > because clearly there is some demand that must be met
|
| There is demand it's not clear that it "must be met." The
| problem is not the betting or oddsmaking, the problem is, how
| do you handle settlements?
|
| You're presenting the false dichotomy, that we should just
| allow gambling, because it's inevitable, and we can
| occasionally use the violence of the state and it's courts to
| run the settlement racket on behalf of short changed bookies.
|
| > but we should not be enabling gambling
|
| And we have no reason to. We should harshly penalize people who
| try to collect on gambling debt and they should have no access
| to the courts or to sheriff's over problems arising from it.
|
| > cannot protect its citizens from every evil
|
| That's why this is all so insidious because it's really only
| one you need to actually protect them from. Suddenly you'll
| find the industry self regulating customers with an obvious
| illness out at the front door. They'll get amazingly good at
| this.
| electronbeam wrote:
| Removing access the the courts results in _alternative_ forms
| of justice
| harry8 wrote:
| Do that and your access to the courts is immediately
| restored as the defendant. CEO goes to jail, company's
| gambling license is revoked.
| dsclough wrote:
| Not sure about total death rates but I think gambling addiction
| has the highest suicide rate of any of the big addictions out
| there. It seems truly ruinous. I suppose if any random person
| can blow their savings on out of the money options theyre
| unable to gauge the risk of then they might as well be allowed
| to do the same with crazy parlay bets but seeing the whole
| landscape of sports betting evolve over the last handful of
| years has still been quite eerie to me.
|
| My gut these days tells me its probably better for the humans
| in society if this stuff is left only to black markets because
| it seems like it destroys lives.
| otteromkram wrote:
| What about gambling suicide rates vs drug overdose or drug-
| related, non-violent death rates?
| mrweasel wrote:
| While we don't have Ladbrokes, we do have a number of different
| companies running gambling halls, with slot machines and sports
| gambling. Those should be outlawed, there is nothing good about
| them, they provide absolutely no value to society. I'm fine
| with people being able to place a small bet on their local
| football team and I'm fine with casinos where people make it an
| occasional event, similar to going to the movies or seeing a
| concert.
|
| But these commercial gambling halls, it's not some well of
| person who decides to pop in Friday afternoon and maybe lose
| EUR20 on a crazy sports bet or the slot machines and then go
| home and have dinner with the family. It is the some of our
| weakest and loneliest people who line up, waiting for the place
| to open and then spend the next 10 hours there. There are
| places who will provide free food for their best "customers",
| to ensure that they don't leave. We're transferring money from
| social welfare to private companies, using addiction and
| loneliness.
|
| As for sports, I don't think professional soccer would like a
| ban on sports gambling. The revenue and salaries it have
| generated are to high for them to walk away now. It is hurting
| the sport though, in the sense that the community and local
| fans have been pushed out long ago. A local football club had
| to leave the premier league a few years ago, as a result they
| could no longer charge insane prices for tickets at the
| stadium. The result: They had more fans come to every single
| game, they sold more season passes, because the fans still
| wanted to see the games, and now they could afford it. Sure,
| they made less money, but the connection to the fans and the
| city grow.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is a very thoughtful post. I have witnessed similar
| gambling establishments in Japan/JRA and Hong Kong/HJC. Both
| are equally unappealing to me for various reasons that you
| mentioned.
|
| Your post made me think more about sports betting vs a lottery.
| To me, they really are different. With a lottery, you need to
| wait days to get the result (mostly). The chance for multiple
| quick dopamine hits is exceedingly low. (Scratch tickets and
| high speed lottos are another matter.). Now think about sports
| betting: So many simultaneous events or races, so the customer
| (user?) has many more chances for multiple quick dopamine hits.
| Maybe a potential framework to talk about gambling harm is
| opportunities for for multiple quick dopamine hits. If very
| low, then many tolerate it in their community, especially if a
| significant portion goes to social causes.
|
| One thing I am absolutely sure about: Advertising for sports
| betting should be banned. I put it in the same class as
| cigarette ads as a child. Damn they looked so cool and fun.
| What a terrible message to spread!
| United857 wrote:
| Sports gambling should be regulated like we do day trading
| (basically another form of gambling) -- require a some minimum
| threshold of money in the account to deter those without
| disposable income from gambling away their savings (for day
| trading it's $25k).
| nba456_ wrote:
| Legalizing things only for rich people is truly awful
| government.
| randomdata wrote:
| Is it? The role of government is to clean up individuals who
| cause trouble for the population at large.
|
| Poor people who trade their grocery budget for gambling
| undeniably cause trouble for a population. Do rich people who
| trade their luxury handbag budget for gambling equally cause
| trouble for a population?
| hugh-avherald wrote:
| What about legalizing losing money?
| bormaj wrote:
| I think it's reasonable to carryover retail investor
| protections to the gambling world. One market has much more
| history in taking advantage of the average Joe and as a result
| there are many sensible protections in place. If you can't
| withstand losing your entire investment, you probably shouldn't
| be able to place that bet in the first place.
|
| Unfortunately, since gambling is only recently more
| accessible/prevalent, I think it's going to take a few mishaps
| to produce similar regulations.
| stouset wrote:
| Are you somewhere not-America? Day trading has zero
| requirements here.
| renata wrote:
| America's requirements
| (https://www.finra.org/investors/investing/investment-
| product...):
|
| > pattern day traders must maintain minimum equity of $25,000
| in their margin account on any day that the customer day
| trades
|
| > pattern day traders cannot trade in excess of their "day-
| trading buying power"
|
| > If a pattern day trader exceeds the day-trading buying
| power limitation, a firm will issue a day-trading margin
| call, after which the pattern day trader will then have, at
| most, five business days to deposit funds to meet the call.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That link supports your parent, not you.
|
| > Day trading, as defined by FINRA's margin rule, refers to
| a trading strategy where an individual buys and sells (or
| sells and buys) the same security _in a margin account_ on
| the same day in an attempt to profit from small movements
| in the price of the security.
|
| (emphasis original)
|
| There are no restrictions on trading with your own money,
| whether you can afford it or not.
| renata wrote:
| I think a lot of the recent trading apps marketed to
| consumers give you a margin account by default though, I
| know Robinhood does. If you request a cash account you
| lose instant deposits and trading and have to wait for
| everything to clear normally.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| The way trade settling works means that if you buy/sell
| the same security in the same day it will, by definition,
| be on margin. Even if you have cash balances backing that
| trade.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I don't think so, investors have the capital in order to afford
| to deal with regulations. Over regulating and making it
| expensive/hard to gamble legally, would just send people over
| to organised crime. I'd be happy if we forced gambling
| companies to hire addiction-psychologists in each of their
| shops for people to talk to, for one we could shrink the amout
| of gambling shops, as they wouldn't open one every 10 meters,
| and we would bring help directly to those who need it on the
| spot
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I'm of the opinion that gambling as a whole should not be
| regulated.The only restriction should be on using other people's
| money instead of your own.
|
| It makes no sense, it is the person's money and life, and it is
| theirs to ruin as they wish. We are not properties of the state.
| If a person cannot be allowed to do what they wish with their own
| money, because they might harm themselves or others as a result,
| then how can you trust them with driving a vehicle, flying a
| plane, operating weapons in the military, or even owning a
| personal weapon?
|
| Every gun sold to a person is a gamble on whether they use it to
| cause harm on others (same with the things i listed above).
|
| This same logic applies to regulation of drugs in general as well
| in my opinion. Regulating other peoples lives is not the purpose
| of the government, especially when they're not harming others or
| being a nuisance to the public.
| csomar wrote:
| > how can you trust them with driving a vehicle, flying a
| plane, operating weapons in the military, or even owning a
| personal weapon?
|
| Comparing Oranges to Potatoes. People involved in gambling are
| not stupid. They are either 1. Not quite smart or
| mathematically smart, so they don't understand the odds or 2.
| Addicted to gambling in the same way someone is addicted to
| Tobacco. Of course, there is 3. Having a little fun with a
| little money; but this is not the audience that's making money
| for gaming.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| > People involved in gambling are not stupid.
|
| I agree.
|
| > Addicted to gambling in the same way someone is addicted to
| Tobacco
|
| Addicted people are still responsible for their actions. case
| in point: drunken driving. I agree with punishing gamblers
| that cause harm. but gambling itself should not be regulated.
| Tobacco, alcohol, hard drugs,etc.. they should all be
| allowed. But to balance that, punishment for crime needs to
| be severe when you're an addict.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > I agree with punishing gamblers that cause harm.
|
| The first people gamblers harm is their own family - long
| before any formal crime has been committed.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| That's not right, many gamblers don't even have a family.
| Are you saying people's lives should be regulated so that
| they don't spend their money in ways that their family
| wouldn't want it spent? I mean, last I checked, divorce,
| emancipation is still allowed.
|
| How can we regulate what a person does with their hard
| earned wages from their labor and precious time and then
| still claim that person has liberties of any kind? If you
| think about it, this is the one and only fundamental
| liberty that is foundational to all other liberties.
|
| Even slaves get food and shelter as well as some freedom
| of movement and expression. What they don't get is to be
| able to buy what they want and own it.
| vizzier wrote:
| > vehicle, flying a plane, operating weapons in the military,
| or even owning a personal weapon?
|
| 3 of these require significant training or at least licensing
| and the last one is banned in the majority of western nations.
|
| I'm with you that personal responsibility and freedom should be
| the norm, but active predators (Drug dealers, bookies, social
| media companies) should probably have limits put on what
| they're allowed to do.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I'm not against requiring training on math and statistics for
| gamblers.
|
| For your last statement, I agree, "active predators" should
| be restricted or punished because their intent is to cause
| harm at the cost of others for profit. but if they're just
| selling the "drug", why should that be restricted? You can
| force them to inform their customers of the harm,but that's
| about it.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > "active predators" should be restricted or punished
| because their intent is to cause harm at the cost of others
| for profit.
|
| This is the entire gambling industry! Do you think they
| _don 't know_ that their best customers are addicts who are
| blowing their kids' college fund?
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| You're probably right, so regulate and restrict the
| gambling industry, not individuals.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| > how can you trust them with driving a vehicle, flying a
| plane, operating weapons in the military, or even owning a
| personal weapon?
|
| These are all fairly strongly regulated. Did you choose bad
| examples on purpose?
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| No, but gamblers are allowed to do all those things. and I am
| not against requiring a license for gambling either, so long
| as the barrier for entry is reasonable.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Oh ok, I thought you were saying it shouldn't be regulated
| at all.
|
| So like,what about making gambling work like credit cards:
| you get a license that allocates a monthly cap based on a
| combination of credit score and income. It starts very low
| and scales up to, I don't know, 10% of income?
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I wouldn't like that either. Instead, maybe issue
| licenses to gamblers and like with a credit score, the
| fact that you have a gamblers license can affect things
| like getting loans, renting things, what you can
| buy,etc.. Let others who suffer an increased risk based
| on interacting with you refuse to do so, or incur
| additional penalties. Your monthly cap idea still nannies
| citizens.
|
| We should be free to ruin ourselves if we so wish, but if
| we are set on a track like that, others should be made
| aware so they can react as they wish.
|
| Same with drugs, if you get a drug use license, then
| employers can deny you jobs, you may not be allowed to
| drive, be trusted with loans,etc..
|
| You get rights, but they come with responsibilities and
| restrictions.
| phaedryx wrote:
| The thing is when people around me are "ruining their lives" it
| does affect me.
|
| Crime goes up, bankruptcy goes up, corruption in sports goes
| up, etc.
|
| I agree that people should be given freedoms, but we live in
| societies and people aren't independent, disconnected,
| autonomous units.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| Too bad, that still doesn't give you authority over other
| people, before they do something harmful to you. You can
| policy sports corruption and crime, regulate bankruptcy
| more,etc.. but you don't have the right to police people as a
| whole "just in case". I did not suggest allowing gambling to
| be used as an excuse to cause harm. You prevent crime by
| punishing it. You reduce bankruptcy by adding costs to it.
| (no comment on sports, since I don't think it is a net
| positive in society to begin with).
| risho wrote:
| drug addicts and people who lose all their money gambling are a
| nuisance to the public.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| punish the nuisance then, so long as actual harm is involved
| instead of simple visual displeasure. not the perceived
| cause. Stay out of people's lives. Society is also a nuisance
| to drug users and gamblers. The foundation of liberty is the
| protection of rights for even the most disagreeable
| individuals.
|
| You don't deserve any rights or liberties if you can't accept
| the rights of the drug addicts,gamblers, homeless people and
| many more types of people out there.
|
| It is a fundamental aspect of the human experience to self-
| determine one's fate.
| risho wrote:
| libertarians are so incredibly cringe its unbelievable.
| rights don't exist. they are not a law of nature. rights
| are a human invented concept. rights are both created by
| and enforced by government. generally speaking we do try to
| opt for giving people as much freedom as possible, that
| said if certain things have a high probability of negative
| externalties the government both can and does make those
| things illegal.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| This isn't about libertarianism at all. it's about
| justice.
|
| It is unfair and unjust to punish someone based on
| probabilities. A innocent person should not be treated
| like a criminal. A free person shouldn't be treated like
| a prisoner or a slave.
|
| The government has no authority to punish citizens
| because they might commit a crime. Citizens are subject
| to the rule of law. But in exchange for compliance to the
| laws, we expect a fair and just treatment under that law.
| That is the contract.
| risho wrote:
| >The government has no authority to punish citizens
| because they might commit a crime
|
| you are either being hyperbolic, you are irrationally
| ideological, or you haven't thought about this enough.
|
| surely you don't think that people should be allowed to
| have nuclear explosives in their house because until they
| have actually used them they haven't actually committed a
| crime yet. different people can have different ideas on
| where that line is but you must acknowledge that it
| exists.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| A nuke or a weapon of any kind except knives have one
| use, which is to harm people, they're built explicitly
| for that purpose, which is to harm others, so regulating
| their ownership and use is not a good analogy.
|
| Maybe cars are sane analogy. You need to pass all kinds
| of testing and regulation to be allowed to drive a car or
| build and operate your own car, but only on public roads.
| You can in fact buy any kind of car you want or build one
| and operate it as you wish on your own property without
| any license. Even though cars can be used as dangerous
| and deadly weapons (terrorists use them on crowds all the
| time).
|
| Yes, a line exists, that line is when you are engaging in
| privileged activity like driving, flying on a commercial
| plane or train, entering school property and such.
|
| Maybe it might be productive if you used specific
| scenarios where you think allowing gambling would cause
| harm to others in and of itself, not as a side-effect
| (your nuke example is a direct effect).
| xnorswap wrote:
| Legalising is fine, failing to regulate is not.
|
| I strongly believe it is better to have something legal and well
| regulated than illegal and left to illegal operators.
|
| This is true for a number of vices.
|
| With legalisation should come strong regulation, including
| advertising bans.
|
| The UK made this mistake when they strongly de-regulated gambling
| in the early 2000s, it seems the US did not learn from that when
| legalising.
| andrewla wrote:
| I think this is a misapprehension -- there is a ton of
| regulation around sports gambling. They may not have put the
| specific regulation that you think is necessary (in this case,
| banning advertising) but there are pretty huge barriers to
| entry to get into the sports bookmaking business, including a
| number of background checks and interviews in an attempt to
| prevent organized crime from getting a foothold. This is why
| every time you see an add for gambling there's a note on the ad
| saying "if you have a problem with gambling call this help
| line".
| fwip wrote:
| Article is correct. We should probably also ban government-run
| gambling (lotteries).
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Yes. Lotteries always seemed like the thin side of a wedge that
| made other gambling seem less bad. It's also kind of evil for a
| government to prey on its own citizens' innumeracy.
| fsckboy wrote:
| if you accept that people are going to gamble no matter what
| the government does, a state run lottery may not be
| considered predatory if it siphons money off of organized
| crime numbers games.
|
| the predatory part is the siphoning money off from the
| lottery to pay for "shools,etc." but if there is inelastic
| demand for lottery gambling, that also makes rational sense.
| ssharp wrote:
| There were tons of red flags that were completely set aside.
|
| The largest are probably mobile betting and allowing for instant
| credit card deposits.
|
| There is also the fantasy of being able to win money but the
| reality that if you actually win money in a consistent fashion,
| you will be either kicked-off or your action will be severely
| crippled.
|
| I'd like to think the emerging prediction markets, like
| Polymarket, are much fairer systems, especially for winning
| players, and would be much better than sports books like
| DraftKings, FanDuel, etc.
| greyface- wrote:
| Polymarket works on mobile and allows instant USDC deposits.
| Are these somehow red flags elsewhere, but not here?
|
| Not to mention the Pandora's box that prediction markets open,
| when the order book can begin to influence real life events -
| from match fixing, to assassination markets.
| parodysbird wrote:
| Polymarket isn't legal in the US
| greyface- wrote:
| Polymarket is based in New York, and all but tells
| prospective US users to use a VPN.
| chillydawg wrote:
| And yet the biggest markets on there are consistently us
| centric.
| the8472 wrote:
| It's not like that box has been firmly closed until now.
| Every time someone stands to profit from one outcome over
| another they already have an incentive to influence the
| outcome, prediction market existing or not. And stock markets
| already act as a sort of prediction basket about future
| events that will influence the trajectory of a company (e.g.
| the outcome of trade negotiations, wars, court decisions,
| elections, the health of their CEO etc. etc.)
|
| The upside of prediction markets is that it incentives people
| with information to make their honest estimates legible to
| society. E.g. an opinion piece in a newspaper has little skin
| in the game, other than the author's reputation.
| erfgh wrote:
| > There is also the fantasy of being able to win money but the
| reality that if you actually win money in a consistent fashion,
| you will be either kicked-off or your action will be severely
| crippled.
|
| This does not apply to all bookmakers. Also, betting exchanges
| exist where the players bet against each other therefore there
| is no incentive for the operator to ban winning players.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Here is a wild idea:
|
| Reshape the entire industry to be a decentralized/house-edge-free
| form, where any one player has a net 0% gain/loss outcome over
| time. Regulate what bets can be placed and their payouts so that
| winners win less amounts and losers lose less amounts (i.e. you
| don't get wiped out).
|
| It will feel like gambling, but overtime is no different than
| coin flipping for lunch money with a coworker every day.
| Essentially math away the "house always wins" part.
| r00fus wrote:
| Hot take: The entire goal of the gambling industry is to act as
| a one-way function for money (ie, laundering).
|
| Thus, your proposal might actually work, except what's in it
| for the rubes?
| WorldMaker wrote:
| One way to look at this is it is already sort of the dividing
| line between traditional "Fantasy Sports" and modern "Sports
| Betting". Fantasy Sports involves finding a like-minded group
| and winnings are often as much "bragging rights" and
| camaraderie as it might be any actual pool of money. Sports
| Betting is certainly not that.
|
| A problem is infection. As Sports Betting is more legal and
| profitable, Fantasy Sports gain more Sports Bets and
| pseudoanonymity and lose some of their community spirit for
| "micro-transactions" and other "extreme gamification" and the
| line between each blurs. (Including to the point where groups
| looking for one might be easily confused into doing the other.)
|
| I idly wonder if there is a way to shore up Fantasy Sports
| against the tide of Sports Betting profit.
| njtransit wrote:
| There are such attempts, e.g. Smarkets. The general approach is
| called a "betting exchange" where you buy and sell bets with
| other people to set the market price for the various games /
| events going on. It's too complicated, though. Most people just
| want to bet on the Pats winning. They're not rational financial
| actors.
| user90131313 wrote:
| great but who is funding that at %0? is it non profit? like
| website, company and math people there will have wages. so even
| 1% is impossible without incredibly big volume and liqudity.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| If Americans are spending 1B per month and you capture 10M
| per month (1%) of the market, charging 1% gives you 100k /
| month for the business.
|
| I think you could raise money and then sustain a lean
| business.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| and the gods of the copybook headings limped up to explain it
| once more...
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| I don't understand why there couldn't have been a middle ground
| where we legalized it but restricted the advertising so that it
| wouldn't be shoved down our throats so aggressively at all times
| whiched has ruined sports altogether.
| vitalurk wrote:
| Who is fighting against this veritable scourge? I'd love to join
| in!
| sfg wrote:
| I don't want to stop those who enjoy it from enjoying it for the
| sake of those whose decision making doesn't interact well with
| its legalisation. I think others care more about preventing
| people from acting in ways that have negative consequences than I
| do, so I don't expect many to agree with me.
| left-struck wrote:
| I think the majority of people who are against these changes,
| like you, don't want to ban people from gambling. The situation
| before was that bets between individuals on sports events was
| totally legal, but no businesses were allowed to profit from
| it.
|
| It's not that casual bets between friends should be banned, but
| this insidious industry that spends 100s of millions on
| marketing, and uses every tactic available to lure people and
| then get them addicted. That is such a far cry from not wanting
| people to gamble at all. Those who want to be a nanny and say
| boo hoo gambling bad are in a totally different category to the
| people who reasonably think that there's a serious issue with
| this industry.
| sfg wrote:
| I think you are right that most people who want to ban such
| activities want to go back to the former situation where
| people could only bet on sports with friends. Their position
| is different to mine.
| stillold wrote:
| I don't understand why the free speech rules everyone wants
| aren't also trying to be applied to these platforms.
| neonate wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240926163805/https://www.theat...
|
| https://archive.ph/CmsIZ
| avazhi wrote:
| This article can be summed up as: there's a reason certain people
| are lower class, and they belong there.
|
| I abhor gambling (mostly because it's a loser's game), and
| betting in general tends to corrupt the integrity of most of the
| sectors it touches as a regulated industry, but the gambling
| industry isn't 'ruining lives'. People ruin lives, namely their
| own.
|
| Sports gambling in particular is a cancer vis a vis the sports
| being bet on (because the sports become subsumed by the industry
| and cease to be independent), but one can say this independently
| of some weird cry for society-wide paternalistic protections.
|
| You can't fix stupid, and people will bet on all sorts of shit,
| whether it's in the open or not. All sports betting did was
| introduce risk pricing to a wider market.
|
| If a person is stupid enough to flippantly gamble on sports or
| anything else with unknowable/incalculable risks and outcomes
| that by design have no knowable ex ante statistical distribution
| (in contrast to, say, a dice roll), then he deserves to lose his
| money. What that means for him is his problem and his problem
| alone.
|
| "That dollar that could have gone to buying a home, getting a
| degree, or escaping debt instead goes to another wager"
|
| This author, naive and idealistic to the point of hilarity, is
| too obtuse to understand that the canonical man being referred to
| in these studies is precisely the very last person who would be
| able to do any of those things, with or without legalised sports
| betting being the convenient boogeyman.
| jknoepfler wrote:
| By exposing complete and utter ignorance about the
| neurobiological mechanisms behind motivation and addiction,
| you've evinced a "stupid" opinion.
|
| When, in your own time, your ignorance leads you to make
| "stupid" decisions, I hope there's a safety net in place to
| protect you and people who depend on you. I also hope there's a
| support network to help people you mislead with your idiotic
| parenting, should you breed, which at the moment I hope you
| choose to defer.
|
| In the meantime enjoy congratulating yourself for
| accomplishments you almost certainly didn't earn purely in
| virtue of your perceived "intellectual superiority" while
| denigrating others for mistakes we could have helped them
| avoid.
|
| Your lack of compassion does not withstand rational scrutiny. I
| sincerely hope that as you gain experience in the world you
| continue to reflect on your relationship with other human
| beings, and that in your own way you develop a deeper and less
| idiotic understanding of others.
| avazhi wrote:
| I have a law degree from a top 30 law school (globally) and a
| BSc from a top 10 school (globally) in my specialisation
| (Physiology). I also did a minor in Psychology as a lol
| (again highly rated but who gives a fuck about an actual
| joke/sham subject).
|
| While I'm happy to read more of your brilliant insights into
| the type of person I must be (try to miss the mark slightly
| less next time, little bro), I have no interest in hearing
| you cry about addiction and other made up 'illnesses' [in the
| medical sense] that in fact just reflect a defective or
| damaged frontal cortex and subsequent executive dysfunction.
| Ultimately some people are stupid and that's due to the
| physical arrangement of their brain circuitry and other
| issues with neuronal arrangement and efficiency (again very
| physical problems). Saying they have fucked up neuronal
| connections isn't tantamout to saying they're sick, any more
| than saying that somebody who has his spinal cord severed is
| 'sick'. Again, we can't currently fix stupid. If and when we
| can repair damaged neural circuitry (by removing
| neurofibrillary tangles, for example) or give patients highly
| targeted pharmacotherapies that can fix neurotransmitter
| dysfunction in a controlled and directed as opposed to a
| crude 'whole brain' way, we'll let people like you know (see
| Parkinson's progression and L Dopa's efficacy with time to
| see what happens when you crudely direct a neurotransmitter
| into a general area - even something as localised as the
| substantia nigra - for long periods of time, as opposed to
| directing it very specifically at its intended receptor
| cells, and ONLY those cells). Until then, people with those
| issues are fucked, and there's nothing you or any other
| paternalistic genius can do about them.
|
| The bottom line is that no respectable person goes to a
| casino except as a gag to throw away expendable income. Some
| labourer spending 80% of his wages at Ladbroke's is a symptom
| of his stupidity, not the cause of it. If he wasn't blowing
| his money or beating up his gf (who is as stupid as he is)
| over his gambling losses he'd be losing the money or beating
| her up anyway for some other putative reason.
|
| Thanks for the laugh. And hey - smile bro, you learned
| something today.
| jknoepfler wrote:
| "You can't fix stupid" doesn't entail that you shouldn't
| regulate activities with potentially catastrophic
| consequences for families. It entails the opposite.
|
| We can, and should mitigate the harm to individuals and
| families that stems from said "stupidity" through...
| precisely... regulation.
|
| Go to a GA meeting some time. People who develop crippling
| gambling addictions are exposed to gambling precisely
| through going to a casino "as a gag to throw away
| expendable income," the same way most alcoholics are
| exposed to alcohol through casual, healthy drinking. No one
| walks into a casino thinking "let's throw my life and the
| financial security of my family away," and the proclivity
| for such is not readily predictable with any meaningful
| precision at present.
|
| The inference to draw from this is that we should reduce
| harm through regulation, not double down on the damage
| we're causing and writing off the resulting, predictable
| damage as immaterial because the "people were stupid."
|
| Like... what is your actual goal? Increasing human misery?
| Creating a society in which people predictably suffer from
| the predictable, catastrophic consequences of unregulated
| enterprise?
|
| (This isn't even touching the blanket categorization of
| everyone who develops a crippling addiction as "stupid,"
| which doesn't withstand even superficial scrutiny. What's
| the point of that blanket demonization?)
|
| The medicalization of the underlying problem _should_ push
| you towards an epidemiological perspective on the problem,
| not a thin, incoherent moralizing knee-jerk.
|
| Like... "you can't fix stupid" - sure, my grandmother was
| scammed while declining into (heretofore undiagnosed)
| dementia. Is the inference to draw "she's stupid, let's
| permit unfettered exploitation of people?" No, it's let's
| keep financial fraud illegal, prosecute the scammers, take
| some steps to help grandma prevent a repeat, and behave
| like sane, compassionate individuals.
| vitorbaptistaa wrote:
| Unfortunately Brazil also legalized it in 2018, after Dilma was
| impeached using very sketchy arguments (many call it a legal
| coup).
|
| It is spreading as a cancer. This month the central bank
| published a report saying that in August 20% of the Bolsa
| Familia, the largest money transfer program for very poor
| Brazilians, was spent on these bets.
|
| Out of the 20 million people that receive it, 5 million made bets
| during that month. This is 2 billion reais (about $450M) spent in
| a single month by the poorest Brazilians.
|
| It's a cancer. Everywhere you go there are ads. The influencers,
| the biggest athletes and musicians are marketing it.
|
| Although I tend to be liberal, this needs to be heavily
| regulated.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| We've spent years conditioning an entire generation of kids on
| quick hits of dopamine from mobile phone apps. I personally
| believe that it's a "glitch in the matrix" for a large enough
| segment of the population to cause societal chaos.
|
| As a libertarian however, I break with the opinion of making
| consensual activities illegal even if they are self-harming. So
| I guess my stance is probably the same as addictive drugs. They
| could be legal, but come with the same labeling, warnings, ID
| requirements and age restrictions that come with a pack of
| cigarettes. We should probably be educating kids about the
| dangers of addictive apps like we once did with DARE on the
| dangers of drugs.
| caseyohara wrote:
| It's funny you mention DARE because studies have shown the
| program was a complete failure, along with the War on
| Drugs(tm) and "Just Say No". The only reason it continued as
| long as it did was not because it was effective, but because
| it was popular with politicians and the general public
| because they thought - intuitively - that the program
| _should_ work. It did not reduce student drug use. In face,
| it backfired and taught kids about interesting drugs that
| they probably wouldn 't have found learned about otherwise.
| This ineffective program cost U.S. taxpayers $750M per year
| for 26 years. Let's not do that again.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Now there's New DARE (15+ years old at this point). Not
| sure if this has been scrutinized as much, but supposedly
| it is effective since it's eligible for funding that
| requires demonstrated effectiveness.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| How could you possibly study such a thing? Even if you
| compare DARE students against non-comparable DARE students,
| how could you reliably capture measure how many did drugs?
| People can lie on surveys, particularly with respect to
| illegal actions. You could measure arrests but that's not
| going to capture how many used drugs without ever getting
| arrested, nor the social context in which they were used.
| It's a double-edged sword too because the control data
| would have similar issues with obtainment.
|
| I've seen a lot of these talking points before by the pro-
| drug crowd. "It taught kids about interesting drugs that
| they probably wouldn't have learned about otherwise" is
| laughable when subjected to scrutiny. You'd have to live
| under a rock to otherwise not learn about the drugs the
| DARE program teaches (and they don't get particularly
| exotic either). The idea is asinine to begin with - you'd
| want kids to know about exotic drugs and their side effects
| to know to avoid them in the first place.
|
| The worst part is that the pro-drug crowd, like yourself,
| touts these talking points in an attempt to end the program
| - to what end? If I accept your talking points blindly that
| the program has failed, does that mean we simply stop
| trying? It seems less that you disagreed with the
| implementation of the program and more that you don't
| believe kids, or anyone, should be dissuaded from drugs.
| stephenbez wrote:
| Surprisingly you can test this with a randomized field
| test:
|
| > The Illinois D.A.R.E. Evaluation was conducted as a
| randomized field experiment with one pretest and multiple
| planned post-tests. The researchers identified 18 pairs
| of elementary schools, representative of urban, suburban,
| and rural areas throughout northern and central Illinois.
| Schools were matched in each pair by type, ethnic
| composition, number of students with limited English
| proficiency, and the percent of students from low income
| families. None of these schools had previously received
| D.A.R.E.. For the 12 pairs of schools located in urban
| and suburban areas, one school in each pair was randomly
| assigned to receive D.A.R.E. in the spring of 1990
|
| https://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/uic.htm
|
| Yes, surveys do have flaws but they are a better approach
| than just giving up and saying any research is
| impossible.
|
| I'd recommend we don't simply stop trying, instead we
| test different programs, and only once we have shown
| their effectiveness do we role them out further.
| vintermann wrote:
| I'm a member of the "anti drug crowd" (lifelong organized
| teetotaller), and I rely on the research of Thomas Babor
| among others, for WHO among others. We know how to study
| social interventions. There's a lot of evidence this type
| of intervention doesn't work.
| caseyohara wrote:
| It is well studied. I am pro-science more than I am pro-
| drug.
|
| > D.A.R.E.'s original curriculum was not shaped by
| prevention specialists but by police officers and
| teachers in Los Angeles. They started D.A.R.E. in 1983 to
| curb the use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco among teens
| and to improve community-police relations. Fueled by word
| of mouth, the program quickly spread to 75 percent of
| U.S. schools.
|
| > But for over a decade research cast doubt on the
| program's benefits. The Department of Justice funded the
| first national study of D.A.R.E. and the results, made
| public in 1994, showed only small short-term reductions
| in participants' use of tobacco--but not alcohol or
| marijuana. A 2009 report by Justice referred to 30
| subsequent evaluations that also found no significant
| long-term improvement in teen substance abuse.
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-d-a-r-
| e-p...
|
| > Launched in 1983, D.A.R.E. was taught by police
| officers in classrooms nationwide. Their presentations
| warned students about the dangers of substance use and
| told kids to say no to drugs. It was a message that was
| repeated in PSAs and cheesy songs. Former First Lady
| Nancy Reagan even made it one of her major causes.
|
| > Teaching drug abstinence remains popular among some
| groups, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's
| messaging to teenagers still focuses on the goal that
| they should be "drug-free." But numerous studies
| published in the 1990s and early 2000s concluded programs
| like D.A.R.E. had no significant impact on drug use. And
| one study actually found a slight uptick in drug use
| among suburban students after participation in D.A.R.E.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211217460/fentanyl-drug-
| educ...
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| What did work for smoking? From my understanding, that
| dropped significantly. Could we do what worked for smoking?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I suspect what worked - at least in Canada - is making it
| very very inconvenient. The number of places you can
| smoke outside of your own house is very limited now. And
| "going outside for a smoke" at -20C is miserable.
| rcxdude wrote:
| It was already dropping a lot by the time most places
| implemented smoking bans, though I think it certainly
| helped push rates even further down.
| kombookcha wrote:
| A large part of it was public awareness of the health
| risks and relatead damage to the image of smoking as cool
| and classy.
|
| Now, the proportion of people who still take up smoking
| today do so in spite of all this, which is probably down
| to them having various specific user profiles that are
| unaffected by this (IE they live in communities/work jobs
| where its ubiquitous or are huge James Dean fans).
|
| For gambling, you could possibly go a long way with
| awareness and labelling, but I think an issue is that
| gambling is a lot less visible than smoking. Nobody can
| smell that you popped outside to blow your paycheck on
| tonight's game. Making gambling deeply uncool might make
| some people not take it up, but most of the existing
| addicts would likely carry on in secret. They're already
| commonly hiding their losses from spouses and friends, so
| what's one more layer of secrecy?
|
| At any rate, what worked for smoking wasn't making
| smokers quit, but making fewer and fewer kids start doing
| it, so making it a pain in the ass to place your first
| bet might help.
| xen0 wrote:
| Smoking, in many countries, is no longer aggressively
| advertised (if it's advertised at all).
|
| Gambling in some of those same countries is now very
| aggressively advertised.
| mcmoor wrote:
| Other replies have mentioned the positive reasons why
| smoking declined, and I'd like to believe that because I
| want to imitate it in my country. But in my most
| skeptical heart I suspect it's because of marijuana and
| vape instead. I haven't researched further to support
| this hypothesis but the first Google hit I get looks
| confirming.
| astura wrote:
| The decline of smoking started long before vaping existed
| and weed was popular. Smoking peaked in the US in 1965.
| vintermann wrote:
| > because it was popular with politicians and the general
| public because they thought - intuitively - that the
| program should work
|
| Are you sure they did? Maybe they were just OK with
| programs that didn't actually work.
|
| What does work is restricted access through age limits,
| closing times, and higher prices (through taxes is what's
| been studied, but it's safe to say making something illegal
| also increases prices). These are unpopular policies, and
| those who profit from alcohol/gambling/etc. have an easy
| time mobilizing opposition to it.
|
| What has been studied little, but was a big part of
| historical anti-alcohol movements until total prohibition
| won out, was profit bans. Government/municipal monopolies
| were justified in that it took away regular people's
| incentive to tempt their fellow citizens into ruin, and the
| idea was that while government may be corrupted by the
| profit incentive, at least they carried the costs of
| alcohol/gambling abuse as well. (Some teetotallers didn't
| think that was enough, and came up with rules that e.g
| restricting municipal monopolies from spending the profit
| as they pleased)
| lightyrs wrote:
| > It did not reduce student drug use. In face, it backfired
| and taught kids about interesting drugs that they probably
| wouldn't have found learned about otherwise.
|
| I will never forget the day in fifth grade when a DARE
| representative came to our class with a briefcase full of
| samples of esoteric (to me at least) drugs. The way they
| were presented made them extremely appealing to me, similar
| to perusing the choices at a high-end candy store. I don't
| know for sure if this had any effect on me but I strongly
| suspect that it did.
| imjonse wrote:
| Warnings do not really work in practice. What if these
| activities are not simply self-harming but destroy the
| families of the addict and large parts of the fabric of
| society? Even you mention societal chaos. How does the
| libertarian world-view accommodate that?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I tend to believe that warnings are somewhat effective
| otherwise cigarette manufacturers wouldn't be so opposed to
| them.
| dao- wrote:
| Yes, they would still be opposed to them.
|
| A measure could well be somewhat effective on its own,
| but then it would require the industry to get creative
| and work extra hard to still get people hooked, which
| they will do, but they'd rather not have to do it in the
| first place.
|
| What's more, opposition to any type of well intended
| regulation is typical for harmful industries, even if the
| regulation might be ineffective. They do that on
| principle, as they don't want the precedent of getting
| regulated. The mere idea of having regulations for the
| benefit of society threatens their business models.
| vkou wrote:
| They oppose them, because they oppose _any_ first steps
| on the slope to curtailing them.
|
| Warnings serve to ruin their image in the public eye,
| which makes opposing further control harder.
|
| As for gambling, there's a simple solution. _Ban all
| advertising of it_. If people really need to gamble, they
| 'll find it on their own.
|
| This will dramatically shrink the problem overnight.
| raverbashing wrote:
| The (naive) libertarian world view wants people overdosing
| to have different providers bidding for Narcan just-in-time
|
| I do favour a libertarian world view but a lot of people
| using that moniker believe in discussing a mother-child
| bond through a libertarian point of view
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| In most respects I would consider myself a libertarian, but
| when it comes to hard drugs or betting, I tend to be a lot
| more conservative. Pot is fine, actually better for you than
| alcohol, but drugs like cocaine are far too addictive. That
| addiction actively strips away one's freedom due to their
| use, and thus I find it counterproductive to a libertarian
| society. I would argue most forms of betting fall within this
| category, and much like drug use disproportionately affects
| poorer areas.
| Geee wrote:
| As a libertarian myself, I've come to the conclusion that
| anything addictive is not really consensual, because
| addiction can't be controlled. Thus, _selling or providing_
| addictive stuff violates consent of the buyer, and should
| either be illegal, or have high taxes. Maybe there should be
| different laws to those who are already addicted and those
| who are not. Drugs which are not addictive, should be legal,
| but have all the information about their negative effects on
| the label.
|
| Imo this should apply to addictive apps as well. The damage
| here is mostly the time that is wasted.
| electronbeam wrote:
| Ban the advertising of betting, like cigarettes in many
| countries
| stahorn wrote:
| I think it's similar with all things that hook into our
| dopamine centers, like alcohol, food, sugar foods, tobacco,
| gambling, drugs, games, ... It has to be regulated to the
| correct amount to benefit society. Outlawing them, like with
| prohibition in United States, just moves it all to black
| markets. Having them completely free, as has been the case with
| all of them at some point, also brings harm to society.
| Somewhere in between those two points is where it's correctly
| regulated.
|
| For example, maybe gamling can continue being legal but
| advertising for it be outlawed or severely restricted? Can
| gambling have the same sort of warnings as on cigarettes, maybe
| with children going hungry because the parent gambled away all
| the money for the month? Another way is that some part of the
| revenue from gambling could go to programs such as Bolsa
| Familia that you bring up? Or to fight gambling addiction in
| some way?
|
| That's my pragmatic view of these types of thing: try to find
| what actually works and hurts society the least. You'll never
| find any perfect system with no harm anyway.
| viccis wrote:
| >Outlawing them, like with prohibition in United States, just
| moves it all to black markets.
|
| Ok, good, fine. You _should_ have to seek out a black market
| connect to gamble on sports.
| tyree731 wrote:
| Maybe a fine approach for the individual, but then the
| black market, and its general disregard for the law or the
| well being of others, comes along with them.
| bbor wrote:
| I'm pretty happy with our "no murdering" setup, even though
| it makes some people happy (in the moment).
|
| IMO there's plenty of room for hardline stances. Who cares if
| gambling goes to the black market? There's a black market for
| every serious crime - doesn't mean we should just okay it.
| And I'm not sure the USA's halfhearted only-for-the-poor
| prohibition is proof that the concept of banning things is
| broken; if it proves anything unrelated to capitalism, it
| proves that you need societal buy-in and continued,
| consistent government pressure.
| vladms wrote:
| I think the problem is more the banning does not address
| the root cause and will not increase societal buy-in, hence
| will waste a lot of energy without a result.
|
| Alcohol consumption is currently dropping in many (not all
| places) in Europe (some ref:
| https://www.euronews.com/health/2024/08/21/dry-january-
| where...), without any bans, so compared to the prohibition
| episode I would claim that it would be better to insist on
| finding and implementing "efficient stances".
| CodeGroyper wrote:
| So what? It's pretty hard to tackle the root causes of
| anything and we are plenty happy with solutions that stop
| bad habits in other ways. Should we have the FDA just ban
| harmful substances or do we need to educate everyone
| about everything eatable? Surely education would be
| better, but it's just not feasible and creating a world
| in which you have to dodge yet another scam seems bad to
| me.
| pants2 wrote:
| I had the pleasure of visiting a town on the Amazon river a few
| times over the course of a decade. I watched as western culture
| and civilization creeped in and ruined their society.
|
| The first time I went, people were living off the land,
| fishing, gardening, children playing ball games, etc.
|
| Here's what I saw last time I went: Gambling, alcoholism,
| plastic waste, sugary drinks, public advertising, and kids
| glued to their smartphones. Forests being cleared to raise
| cattle because now everyone wants to eat burgers.
|
| They've managed to bring in the worst parts of modern society
| without the good parts (medicine, infrastructure, education,
| etc.)
|
| I do believe that without a modern education, these people are
| not equipped to deal with modern vices. They've never taken a
| math class let alone learned enough probability to know that
| gambling is a losing bet. They've never had a nutrition class
| to learn that Coca Cola is disastrous to your health.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I do believe that without a modern education, these people
| are not equipped to deal with modern vices.
|
| This isn't limited to the third world. The reason sports
| betting becomes such a problem is that people don't have a
| solid foundation in basic statistics.
|
| People go bankrupt by thinking they can get out of a small
| debt by placing even larger bets at a negative expected
| value.
| exogenousdata wrote:
| Martingale, baby!!!
| leoedin wrote:
| The education point is interesting. If you grow up as a
| hunter gatherer, there are powerful forces you don't
| understand trying to take resources away from you. If you
| grow up in a capitalist society, there are powerful forces
| you don't understand trying to force all sorts of "resources"
| on you.
|
| Success in a modern capitalist society is driven in part by
| your ability to say no to things.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Two things: OP said they were farmers, or peasants if you
| will. Now you are talking hunter gathers. To me, they are
| totally different levels of human development.
|
| And, specifically about the few remaining hunter gather
| tribes in the Amazon, Brazil has a dedicated govt dept to
| keep these people safe from outside influence. As I
| understand, they have made great strides in the last 30
| years to keep these tribes safe.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > They've never taken a math class let alone learned enough
| probability to know that gambling is a losing bet.
|
| Even with a modern education this is a losing proposition for
| many people...
| hansoolo wrote:
| This is so sad to hear...
| mrtksn wrote:
| >They've managed to bring in the worst parts of modern
| society without the good parts
|
| IMHO That's the spontaneous action and unless curated
| carefully it happens everywhere. It's the spontaneous way
| because all the bad things about the Western culture are
| about getting rich or happy quick. I'm sure the outer
| civilizations also desire to get rich or happy quick and
| that's why they end up trying when exposed to the Western
| ways but unlike those cultures the west is very good at
| oiling the machine to run very productively. Maybe its
| something about being an industrialized high throughput
| individualistic culture, I don't know.
| programjames wrote:
| Isn't it also possible that the best in their society just
| left to find other opportunities? The people who couldn't
| leave would be more prone to gambling, alcoholism, etc.
| erfgh wrote:
| The figures you state are misleading. Money bet is not money
| lost. For example, roulette payout is 97.3% and sports betting
| payout can be as high as 99% or even 100% (done to attract
| players so that they open an account).
| nullc wrote:
| Pop quiz: What's better for your wallet? a game with a 66%
| expected payout that you will play twice before you lose
| interest, or a game with a 97.3% payout that you'll play 31
| times on average?
|
| The comparison needs to be in terms of typical use, otherwise
| engineering for addictiveness gets a free pass because it
| often hinges on frequent small rewards and can have a near
| unity return on a single shot basis yet be a big money maker
| for the house.
|
| Of course there are probably 'safer' forms of gambling that
| some addicts are presumably able to use to maintain their
| addiction at a level which isn't disruptive to their life.
| ... but single shot EV isn't the right metric. Some weekly
| state lottery usually has pretty poor EV, yet is seldom
| ruining anyone.
| jjice wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd call them misleading because they didn't say
| the money was gone, just that it was spent (not implying it
| didn't come back). The fact that that much money was bet at
| all for an aid program is astonishing and unfortunate. Sure,
| not all of that money was lost, but I'd call any of those
| returned "winnings" an investment by the sports betting
| companies to secure clients for life.
| titanomachy wrote:
| I'm curious which statistic they actually used (spent vs
| lost). If you're playing a quick game with 99% payout, you
| could earn $1k of income in a month and "spend" $10k on
| gambling. It seems like money lost would be an easier
| figure to compare.
| definitelyauser wrote:
| > The influencers, the biggest athletes and musicians are
| marketing it
|
| The government is marketing it.
|
| Public concerts hosted by the municipality will have gambling
| ads posted all over, sponsored by the latest scam.
|
| Sample size: Alagoas/Pernambuco. Cannot say anything about the
| gambling ads in the other states.
| yas_hmaheshwari wrote:
| Same thing is happening in India. For a poor country like
| India, Sports betting app that shows advertisements that you
| can make this much money should be banned.
|
| It is literally taking money from the poorest and most gullible
| Indians to the owners.
| hei-lima wrote:
| There is simply no reason why this should not be better
| regulated here in Brazil. It ruins families and the sport. They
| can advertise themselves freely.
| afh1 wrote:
| The impeachment has zero relation with this topic, you are
| using this space to drop in a political and highly
| controversial statement in order to try and gain visibility to
| your highly contentious POV. How is this not removed yet?
| Flagged.
| nektro wrote:
| _surprised pikachu face_
| ezekiel68 wrote:
| For me, this topic is prototypical of a larger conversation which
| goes something like, "Should individuals be permitted to slip
| between the cracks of society?" For the first three centuries of
| the Industrial Revolution, the answer in the West was, "Yes, of
| course." c.f. indentured servitude, honor duels, and debtor
| prisons. By the way, this way of life was, for certain, a shining
| improvemnt for the average person who would have previously been
| trapped in serfdom under Feudalism.
|
| The Progressive ideal, which started as only a faint glimmer in
| the US at the turn on the 20th Century, has grown to dominate our
| social mores over the past 50 years. For most people reading HN,
| it's all they have ever known. But there is a serious cost. We
| infatilize our adults and produce generations of new citizens
| paralyzed by anxiety and (to a large extent) incapable of
| tolerating the faintest hint of discouragement.
|
| But at least fewer of them slip through the cracks.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| I don't think those two things are connected. The US coddles
| children more than any other country, yet more people slip
| through the cracks in the US than in any other rich country,
| and witnessing the streets of SF and other major cities, that
| problem is getting worse, not better.
| cwillu wrote:
| Many are coddled, and I'd argue many are literally caged, and
| come into adulthood with all the behavioural issues you'd
| expect of a dog that spent its formative years in a kennel.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| This seems like a false dilemma. Are you suggesting we need to
| bring back indentured servitude? Or should we keep trying to
| find a middle ground?
| jknoepfler wrote:
| you make absolutely no argument for why strengthening
| protection of individual rights requires living in a shithole
| where people are free to exploit well-known vulnerabilities in
| the human motivation system.
|
| "prosperity required permitting unregulated sale of
| fentanyl!"... sounds nonsensical, because it is.
|
| > We infatilize our adults and produce generations of new
| citizens paralyzed by anxiety and (to a large extent) incapable
| of tolerating the faintest hint of discouragement.
|
| I played poker professionally for seven years. I've seen the
| full gamut of responses to gambling on the human brain.
| Gambling absolutely hijacks the neurocomputational circuitry of
| some people in a way that it doesn't others. Infantilized? I
| managed my risk of ruin carefully and rationally, others
| didn't. They invariably got ruined. Period. Those people should
| not be gambling. There was no safety net, which you falsely
| imagine exists. I wish there had been. The consequences to
| their lives outweighed, by far, the prosperity gained by
| permitting large-scale high-stakes gambling (which is at best a
| zero-sum game if the house is included). I do not think my
| former profession should be openly legal to everyone.
| Participating in it was an act of willful evil on my part. I am
| glad to have it regulated, for the sake of the families of the
| people whose lives I helped destroy.
|
| There was absolutely nothing and nobody "infantilizing" me to
| induce "anxiety". There was a largely unregulated free-for-all
| into a brutal, unforgiving world, in which you can lose a
| fortune in the blink of an eye if you elect to wager it and
| lose. Sure, I thrived in that environment, but it was at the
| expense of vulnerable individuals.
|
| Seriously, what the actual fuck are you talking about. If you'd
| ever taken actual, life-altering financial risks in a society
| without a real financial safety net (the United States), you'd
| know that there is absolutely nothing between a foolish series
| of decisions while drunk (or much worse, in the thrall of a
| persistent gambling addiction) and complete financial ruin.
|
| We can do better as a society, and we should.
|
| While we're at it, gosh, you know what would have improved the
| poker economy? Unregulated firearms at poker tables. Hell,
| let's just make homicide legal if the other person bets their
| life. Or maybe even if they don't! That would have really let
| us demonstrate our fully-enfranchised individual wills to
| power. No one would be confused as an anxious man baby! We
| could have thrived like real manly men! Letting people blow
| each other's heads off at a whim during a gambling free-for-all
| ("between consenting adults!") would surely improve prosperity.
| Great idea! Agreeing as a democratic society to regulate that
| behavior would only produce a society of emasculated
| degenerates incapable of expressing the full range of the human
| spirit! Think of the sacrificed business opportunities! /s.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| You don't have a good handle on the problem.
|
| It's not "individuals slipping through the cracks of society",
| it's society and the people who run it _consuming_ people (or
| animals) as fuel. Progressive politics might only be as old as
| the Roosevelts but they have surprisingly deep historical
| roots[0].
|
| The improvement in material conditions from, say, the 1500s to
| 2024 is a function of changes in the law that made it
| worthwhile to produce those improvements. Or, in other words,
| nobody is going to innovate in phone apps when they have to
| give 30% to Apple and Google. Back then, the "30%" would have
| been indentured servitude, debtors prisons, and so on.
| Innovation _increased_ when serfdom ended and more people were
| able to innovate.
|
| Innovation in an economy is a function of how many people have
| access to appropriate levels of capital. Which is itself a
| function of the distribution of wealth. An economy in which
| five people own everything is one where nobody can innovate
| outside of that system. An economy with redistributive effects
| - whether that be through government action or otherwise - is
| more productive _at the expense of the growth prospects of the
| ultra-wealthy_. Economies built to make one participant fatter
| are eating their seed corn.
|
| I have no clue what you're going on about with infantilization.
| That seems like something downstream of _several_ social
| trends.
|
| [0] e.g. western feminism is older than the Declaration of
| Independence; abolitionism is at least as old as
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lay
| miffy900 wrote:
| What on earth does any of this have to do with sports gambling?
| Log_out_ wrote:
| betting is entrepreneurship for suckers. it can only exist in
| places with zero upwards mobility as a sort of firefly at the end
| of the tunnel for the eternal serfs. Any libertarian society
| tolerating it,proofs its no longer a libertarian society with
| chances for all just feudalism were the aristocrats play
| meritocrars to calm their consciousness.
| fsckboy wrote:
| you think a libertarian society solves the problems of unequal
| distribution of wealth? Or do you simply want libertarian
| gambling casinos to collect all the money from suckers, and the
| government should stay out of it?
| mlsu wrote:
| Sports gambling, like all gambling, ruins lives. It's certainly
| worth having the discussion about whether people should be able
| to run a train through their life and the lives of their families
| via app.
|
| But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it
| ruins the sports. Players throw. They get good at subtly
| cheating. The gambling apparatus latches itself to the sport, to
| the teams and players, the umpires and judges, the sporting
| organizations. With this much money on the line, it's not a
| matter of if but when games are thrown, cheated -- the bigger the
| game, the bigger the incentive. It's even easier now because of
| the amount of side/parlay betting that is available. It exhausts
| the spirit of competition.
|
| Sports gambling is diametrically opposed to sport itself.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Best make it legal then, so bookies have the threat of losing
| their license if they get caught rigging a match. Black market
| bookies couldn't care less.
| noqc wrote:
| It's much easier to collect evidence for gambling itself than
| to collect evidence that a match was thrown.
| bbor wrote:
| Much, much fewer people would gamble if you had to do it by
| finding some weird person and handing them cash and trusting
| them to run a fair book, than just clicking some buttons on
| an app. After all, that's why they're apps that are
| constantly advertised; gambling services don't have customers
| they attract with offers on the free market, they have
| victims who's better sense they overcome through convenience
| and manipulation.
|
| Black market bookies also would see consequences from getting
| caught rigging a sports match, anyway. For one, they would be
| punished by the law for being black market bookies.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Would gambling do so well without the constant brainwashing
| (advertising). Almost every advert I get on TV/web is
| designed to convince me how much fun gambling is. That seems
| to include every minute of sport, either player clothing,
| hoardings, or on-screen.
|
| It's soul-destroying.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it
| ruins the sports._
|
| Is there really that much betting going on in the "little
| leagues"?
|
| Professional sports are already and have always been ruined as
| they, by their very nature of existence, have to appeal to what
| entertains the crowd, not for what is ideal for the sake of
| sporting. Betting doesn't really change the calculus there; at
| most changing what makes for the entertainment, but then you're
| just going into a silly _" my entertainment is better than your
| entertainment"_.
| bbor wrote:
| I don't really understand the accusation here. Do you really
| think they rig (say) football games for ratings...? I'm a
| cynical guy, but that's too much even for me. And how do you
| explain boring dynasties like the Warriors or the SF giants
| had in their sports for 4-8 years?
|
| Either way, I know little about sports so maybe you're right
| regarding American sports. But no _way_ is footie rigged. I
| just don't accept it; too many people care too much.
| randomdata wrote:
| Rigged? No, probably not - at least not where driven by
| gambling, but professional sports leagues aren't shy about
| adjusting rules to make the game more enjoyable to watch,
| even if not what is best for the sport for the sake of
| sport. Such actions undeniably ruin the sport if you, like
| the previous comment, want to hold sport as having some
| kind of pure sporting existence (a nonsensical take, in my
| opinion, but whatever).
|
| And the natural extension of realizing that professional
| sport is about delivering entertainment value is: Why not
| rig the sport if it improves the entertainment value? If
| people are most entertained by gambling and rigging a sport
| comes as part of that, nothing is ruined other than maybe
| your arbitrary personal feelings. But _" my entertainment
| is better than your entertainment"_ is not a logical
| position.
| bbor wrote:
| Huh. What do you mean by "sake of sport"...? Like, to see
| who's the strongest?
|
| Regardless, I think you just misunderstood a bit: the
| concern here is deceptive practices, which when money is
| involved becomes fraud. No one cares that WWE is rigged;
| the difference is that the audience knows it's rigged,
| and they don't have money riding on the outcome with the
| understanding that it's a fair match.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Huh. What do you mean by "sake of sport"...? Like, to
| see who's the strongest?_
|
| Okay, sure, let's say there is a "who's the strongest
| competition". Let's be more specific and say it is a
| professional arm wrestling competition. One where we find
| that the competitors are able to hold position for hours
| on end, which makes for really boring viewership. To
| combat that, the league starts allowing tickling in an
| effort to get a participant to fold sooner, and perhaps
| adding an additional comedic element that makes it more
| entertaining in general.
|
| If you hold sport as some kind of purity that needs to be
| upheld (again, I maintain that is a nonsensical take, but
| bear with me) then the addition of tickling ruins it.
| Indeed, tickling is contrived, but professional sports
| are filled with all kinds of similar adjustments to make
| watching the sport more entertaining. The sports, from
| this "purity" point of view, were ruined from the get go
| as a necessity to get people interested in watching them
| - and thus a willingness to pay.
|
| _> No one cares that WWE is rigged_
|
| Exactly. I mean, a lot of people were upset when it came
| out that the, then WWF, was choreographed, and I'm sure
| that they lost of a lot of viewers over it, but the
| league has still managed to entertain a wide audience.
| Like you suggest, it doesn't really matter if a sport
| isn't held to some kind of purity of sport standard.
|
| And it is pretty clear that sports gambling has brought
| out a new audience of people who are entertained by the
| gambling aspect. _" My entertainment is better than your
| entertainment"_ is not a logical position. Something not
| to your personal preference is not a ruining.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| There's a real difference between modifying the rules of
| a sport and rigging/throwing. When you change the rules,
| you change the competitions. When you rig a sport, you
| get rid of competition.
|
| Competition is essential to competitive sports (the only
| ones we could be talking about), so removing competition
| ruins the sport, independent of the idea of entertainment
| randomdata wrote:
| _> so removing competition ruins the sport_
|
| But now you're back to the original, curiously
| unanswered, question: Is there really that much gambling
| going on in the "little leagues"?
|
| If not, for what reason do you think they are going to
| start rigging it? Hell, not even the WWE's explicit
| rigging has motivated high school wrestling to move in
| the same direction. This idea you have that sports are
| going to lose their competition seems to be completely
| unfounded.
|
| Professional leagues may choose to rig or otherwise
| modify their events as they prioritize entertainment over
| sport, but they've always done that. In that sense, their
| play has always been "ruined". But that entertainment is
| not the sport.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Extending the logic, should we ban the derivatives market?
| Cryptocurrencies/tokens that only seek to be a speculative
| asset (and not an actual currency). Venture Capital that seeks
| to use businesses as speculative assets (trying to artificially
| inflate the short-term share price of the business rather than
| its long-term health)?
|
| I'm not putting up a straw man - I'm actually in favour of it.
| I agree that all forms of gambling ruins lives. We would
| improve society if we agreed that _all_ gambling is bad.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> We would improve society if we agreed that all gambling is
| bad._
|
| As a professional gambler (aka farmer) I understand I am
| biased, but I have a hard time squaring that society would
| improve if we all agreed my gambling habit is bad. Especially
| if that means going as far as a ban. What would people eat?
| If you think Mother Nature is going to give up her bookie
| position, you're wrong.
| gomerspiles wrote:
| What is bad for society is zero sum games. They are
| profitable for individuals but take the same or more from
| elsewhere so they raise nothing. There are a few zero sum
| games where we think the side effects are good (i.e. in the
| pricing of stocks,) but in general they consume societies
| best minds in return for no progress.
| chgs wrote:
| Advertising - one of the largest industries on the
| planet. It's not even zero sum, it's a net loss. The
| views loses $50 and 100 hours, the winners gain $50
| echoangle wrote:
| Advertising improves information for consumers though, as
| long as you get advertised stuff you actually want but
| didn't even know existed. I'm not saying it's a net
| positive as it's currently done, but advertising as a
| concept doesn't have to be net negative.
| chgs wrote:
| If advertising was for my benefit it would be optional.
| It's not.
| echoangle wrote:
| As I said, I'm not claiming that it currently is a net
| positive for consumers. But even then, I don't agree with
| your assertion. There are things that benefit the average
| person that aren't optional, and not being optional
| doesn't indicate it isn't for your benefit. It could
| hypothetically be possible that people benefit from
| advertisement overall but would irrationally choose to
| opt out if they could. Just as some people would opt out
| of social security if they could but would probably
| regret it once they need it. Just to clarify, I'm not
| saying this is happening here, but the argument ,,I can't
| opt out so it can't be for my benefit" is flawed.
| nuancedquestion wrote:
| Not ads in general.
|
| Modern social media that makes and sells ads and
| panopticon datasets.
| chii wrote:
| > society is zero sum games
|
| so do you believe the olympics are good or bad? because
| they're zero sum.
| HKH2 wrote:
| Not OP, but they're clearly a net loss. I would vote
| against them being hosted in my country.
| komali2 wrote:
| The current hyper capitalized form of the Olympics may
| have been demonstrated to be economically harmful to the
| city that hosts it, but the Olympics have had huge
| societal value and impact especially in sociological
| aspects. I mean it's hard to put a price tag on Jesse
| Owens spitting directly into the eye of white supremacy
| but it certainly has value.
| gomerspiles wrote:
| Every zero sum game has some side effects people try to
| focus on.. When I look at the number of children who have
| been abused for the Olympics, I think there are better
| ways to have an international convention and to push a
| healthier level of fitness.
| smabie wrote:
| People like to play these games and thus probably good
| for societies
|
| World would be pretty full without competitive games /
| sports
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| To be clear, interest rate derivatives (futures, swaps,
| [edit] options, etc.) are very important for banks and
| corps to manage their interest rate risk. By definition,
| these are zero sum products.
|
| Also, economists would not term the stock market as zero
| sum game. All boats can and do rise together. Look at the
| S&P 500 index since the 2008 GFC. Spectacular success
| that reflects the wider US economy.
| gomerspiles wrote:
| Sure, the stock market is clearly grounded in a positive
| sum game of enabling more investment options. Things like
| whether to penalize day trading for its zero sum aspects
| or appreciate it for side effects are an argument in
| legislation/regulation debates.
| safety1st wrote:
| One of the things that's getting confused in this thread is
| the distinction between games of skill and games of chance.
| Most outcomes in life are the result of a combination of
| skill and chance - so there's admittedly a gradient and a
| big gray area between the two.
|
| But to use farming as an example, you undoubtedly apply
| skill in your trade to get a better outcome. Sure, your
| results depend heavily on things like the weather, but
| someone with zero experience and skill as a farmer will
| have less success at it than you do. This is a skill
| intensive game.
|
| On the far other end of the spectrum is the slot machine -
| you pull a lever and wait. Labor is nonexistent, knowledge
| or skill is irrelevant. This is entirely a game of chance.
|
| So one place where we run into problems and governments
| need to apply some regulation is when a game of chance gets
| misrepresented as a game of skill, or its odds are hidden
| or misrepresented. When any of those things happen it means
| we are actually looking at a form of fraud. The operator of
| the game is claiming you can do really great at his game
| but the matter is actually out of your hands, he's lying
| about the probable outcome of your participation. That is
| fraudulent and most members of our society agree that
| committing fraud should be discouraged and even punished
| when it occurs.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> On the far other end of the spectrum is the slot
| machine - you pull a lever and wait._
|
| In the narrowest view, sure. But, for example, not all
| casinos, hell not even all machines in the same casino,
| offer the same odds. What about the work you put into
| determining which machine offers the best outcome? Is
| that not a skill? Obviously you can just sit down at any
| old random machine and see what happens, but that's the
| same as your "zero skill" farmer throwing some
| uncertified seeds on the ground and hoping for the best.
| In both cases there is an opportunity to improve your
| chances of success if you so choose.
|
| Some aspects of farming lean on skill, but other aspects
| are pure chance. "Pull the lever and wait" is often all
| you can do. I'm not sure you are being fair in
| diminishing slot machine playing down to just one event,
| while happily considering farming as the sum of all its
| events.
| komali2 wrote:
| Slot machines are guaranteed to provide a significant ROI
| to casinos. They're purely extractive. Comparing them to
| farming is really silly in my opinion.
| randomdata wrote:
| Does anyone have a differing opinion? I expect there is
| good reason they have never been compared. Your opinion
| is noted, I guess, but what lead you to think it was
| worth sharing?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Some aspects of farming lean on skill, but other
| aspects are pure chance.
|
| I frequently use this phrase when talking with people
| about their career path. Replace farming with (office
| work) career. Mike Bloomberg famously wrote: "Work hard
| and you might get lucky." I like that phrase because it
| appreciates the nuance of success.
| kortilla wrote:
| No skill at all. The farmer is referring to futures
| contract to derisk the things outside of the skill.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| And crop insurance which is usually heavily subsidised.
| To be clear, the range of agricultural commodities is
| surprisingly small. Example: There is no coverage for any
| fruits (except orange juice), not most vegetables.
| randomdata wrote:
| Crop insurance, even of the subsidized variety, could
| refer to all kinds of different systems. But, I'll assume
| that which is under the USDA RMA. You don't consider any
| of the following to be fruit?
|
| Apples, Apricots (Fresh, Processing), Avocados, Bananas,
| Blueberries, Caneberries, Cherries, Citrus (Grapefruit,
| Limes, Oranges), Cranberries, Figs, Grapes, Kiwifruit,
| Lemons, Mandarins/Tangerines, Nectarines (Fresh), Olives,
| Papaya, Peaches (Cling Processing, Freestone Fresh,
| Freestone Processing), Pears, Plums, Pomegranates,
| Prunes, Raisins, Strawberries, Tangelos, Tangors,
| Tomatoes (Fresh, Processing).
|
| Maybe you meant Agricorp? None of the following are
| fruits?
|
| Apples, Grapes, Peaches and nectarines, Pears, Plums,
| Sour cherries, Sweet cherries.
| erfgh wrote:
| I don't believe games of chance are misrepresented as
| games of skill. But anyway, this article is about sports
| gambling which most certainly is a game of skill.
| baq wrote:
| It isn't gambling if there's no house. You're playing the
| odds, but so am I when crossing the street.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| This is disingenuously stretching the definition.
|
| Gambling, in a colloquial and legal sense, generally refers
| to putting in money for a game of mostly luck or beyond
| your control in hopes of getting a payout. The less
| influence you have over it, the faster the payout (or
| loss), and the higher the chance is of you coming out at a
| loss, the more strongly it fits into the understood
| definition of gambling.
|
| Doing anything that takes a risk isn't gambling. Bending
| over to tie your shoes is a risk. There's a chance you'll
| strain your back and be immobile for a week. But if you
| don't take that chance, you won't be able to work. But if
| you don't do it stupidly, barring the heavens simply being
| against you that day, you'll be fine.
|
| Farming is the same. If you're not being careless and the
| heavens don't decide to destroy your crops, and
| particularly if you're at a point where you can call it a
| job, you'll be fine. Once a risk is on a long scale, like
| farming, it's called an investment.
| randomdata wrote:
| Are you trying to tell us that you think cryptocurrencies
| and venture capital fit the legal gambling definition, or
| are you trying to tell us that you didn't bother to
| understand the context under which the comment was
| posted?
|
| Either way, you are out to lunch. Your definition is on
| point, but has nothing do with the discussion taking
| place.
| mythrwy wrote:
| In gambling a risk is created simply for fun and profit.
|
| This is different from speculation (or bending over to
| tie shoes) in that a risk is being assumed with an
| outcome in mind.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The stringent definition of gambling is that it is low
| effort to make the bet.
| randomdata wrote:
| I'm not sure sitting in a comfortable air conditioned cab
| is all that much effort. It is fun! But as we're on the
| precipice of it going the way of full automation removing
| even that minimal effort, just how low effort is your
| bar?
| nuancedquestion wrote:
| > As a professional gambler (aka farmer)
|
| You guys invented the option so ... yes.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| As a farmer, can you tell us about the direct and indirect
| support you received from your govt to wear the risk of
| farming? In all highly industrialised countries, there are
| a huge amount of govt support for farmers.
| randomdata wrote:
| Crop insurance is partially subsidized, but I am
| personally not a buyer. What fun is gambling if you're
| going to insure the gamble? But I could theoretically
| benefit from that, to be sure. The farm property tax rate
| is lower than the commercial rate, so I guess you could
| say we're subsidized like residential property owners
| are. I can't think of anything else that is applicable to
| my farming operation. My country only really likes dairy
| and poultry producers, of which I am neither.
|
| Hard to say what indirect support is out there. What is
| and isn't an indirect subsidy is always debatable. The
| government brings in temporary workers from foreign
| countries to work at the coffee shop in town, which
| perhaps, if you believe such action reduces the price of
| labour, makes life around agricultural areas more
| affordable. Would you consider that an indirect subsidy
| to farmers?
|
| The roads are maintained which helps get our product out.
| Is that a subsidy to farmers? Or is that a subsidy to
| those on the receiving end? Or is it really a subsidy to
| the "city folk" driving on those roads to get to their
| cottage?
|
| The government recently paid a privately-owned ISP to put
| in a second fibre line in the rural area alongside where
| the cooperatively-owned ISP already placed one a decade
| earlier. That is a clear subsidy, but do you consider
| that a subsidy to the farmer (We theoretically gained
| some redundancy, although I doubt anyone is making use of
| it. Internet service to the farm isn't usually _that_
| critical, especially when you also have wireless - both
| mobile and fixed - service available as a backup.
| Frankly, it was a complete waste of money), or to the
| ISP?
| bionsystem wrote:
| The derivatives market is useful for hedging and for market
| efficiency. A lot of the nay-sayers I see tend to talk about
| how the nominal exposure is bigger than the market itself as
| if it were a compelling argument against it but it's not (the
| reason is that there is a counter-party for every "bet").
|
| As for speculation around the "real" economy, in most cases
| it is widely talked about as the mother of all evil where in
| fact, the best way to increase the market value of a company
| is to turn it into a better company. And on the other end,
| companies go to 0 because they go bankrupt, not the other way
| around.
|
| My point is that we are denying the entire market structure
| to punish the < 1% of bad actors, while it is quite useful
| for the rest.
|
| Crypto is a different beast entirely. I have never believed
| in it and I still fail to see the value.
| Aerroon wrote:
| I think your comment illustrates that our current society is
| _built_ on gambling. Most businesses dark. We want people to
| _take the bet_ and invest into companies, because that 's
| what gives us all these goods and services we use. This
| system allows people to voluntarily combine their skill and
| luck to try for a better future. Society benefits as a side-
| effect.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Oh no. Swype changed the most important word in my post. I
| meant "Most businesses fail."
| alm1 wrote:
| same argument can be made about excessive athlete salaries and
| really any sports related business ventures. Athletes go after
| specific stats to hit contract goals, get their bonuses and
| live good lives. Gambling industry is just one of the hundred
| detractors to the sport itself.
| dexwiz wrote:
| But all of those stats will help a team win in theory. But
| you can bet against yourself, perform poorly, and then get a
| payout. That is the antithesis of good sportsmanship.
| educasean wrote:
| The problem is that sports gambling introduces conflicting
| interests. It's one thing to coast and collect paychecks,
| it's a whole another thing for a player to actively sabotage
| their own team.
| vintermann wrote:
| US sports is surprisingly "socialist", with systems like
| drafting ensuring that a team can't just buy up all the best
| players, so the league stays interesting. It seems obvious
| that player wages are kept lower in a system like this ...
| But I think they do pretty OK anyway.
|
| Amateur sports (college and high school sports) is also much,
| much bigger in the US than most other places.
|
| Both these trends I would guess have to do with the US's
| traditional ban on sports gambling.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is only the annual drafts. Baseball TV revs are not
| shared between teams, like American football. So baseball
| teams in large, urban centers have a huge advantage to buy
| better players from free agency.
| notorandit wrote:
| Very few political decisions can be said to be carved in stone.
|
| The point is that reversing a popularly acclaimed law, while
| yes showing to be a mistake, leads to huge losses in political
| consensus at elections and an easy win to the other parties.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >popularly acclaimed law I have the feeling that gambling is
| popularly acclaimed in the same way that cigarette smoking
| is.
|
| People may like it but other than a few even the ones who
| like it wish it didn't exist.
|
| At any rate every article I see about gambling is about how
| much it sucks. Probably the gambling industry doesn't have
| the top level public relations that smoking had once upon a
| time, otherwise I'd be seeing more ads about how gambling
| makes you a tough guy. Which, come to think of it, I do see a
| bit of that in Denmark, but Danes don't do advertising that
| isn't meant to be funny (laugh with) very well so these ads
| look ridiculous (laugh at)
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Other things that ruin lives: eating, shopping, TV, the
| Internet, videogames, alcohol, accumulating things in your
| house, etc.
| bozhark wrote:
| Being alive ruins lives, guaranteed
| mihaic wrote:
| I think you mean:
|
| "Whatabout other predatory industries where people fall in a
| slippery slope to destroy their lives? As long as a solution
| only addresses some of these industries, should we even
| consider it?"
| si1entstill wrote:
| One could give themselves hyponatremia by overdrinking water,
| so might as well not have laws preventing children from
| buying alcohol.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| In Australia gambling and poker machines have so deeply
| parasitised themselves into local sports clubs, that they can
| now _no longer operate without the poker machines_. They've co-
| opted sport so thoroughly, that gambling is now basically an
| ingrained part of organised sports from local level up.
|
| It's heinous.
| chii wrote:
| The local sports clubs need the revenue from the machines,
| otherwise they'd not make any money at all, and might even
| cease to exist.
|
| How do you propose to solve this problem? Higher fees from
| club members? or somehow get more gov't funding via taxing?
|
| I don't see the issue with gambling revenue funding a club.
| lodovic wrote:
| because the gambling machines mainly fund the people who
| own these machines, not the club. the club could hold a
| single bingo evening and raise more money than a month of
| gambling machines would bring.
| lathiat wrote:
| There are no pokies outside the Casino in Western Australia
| (Perth). And thus no pokies at sports clubs or bars etc.
| It's glorious.
|
| I admit to not being entirely sure what "Sports Clubs" are
| over east though or why they need propping up by gambling.
| In any case, it works fine here.
|
| You CAN get a permit for a few bits of "gambling" that is
| mostly only for "sports clubs" but it's very VERY
| restricted, and mostly like actual games with people like
| Poker, Two Up, etc. It's not really a problem in nearly the
| same way, and no machines:
| https://sportscommunity.com.au/club-member/wa-gambling/
| alvah wrote:
| $15 pints are less glorious though!
|
| A few years ago I had a chat with a mate over in QLD, and
| mentioned our ludicrous prices in WA. The standard line
| at the time here was "Beer has to be expensive in WA,
| because we're not allowed to subsidise the cost with
| pokies". His reply was there are bars in QLD with pokies,
| and bars without, and none of them charged anything like
| what we were paying for a pint in WA (nor did the bars
| with pokies charge significantly less than those
| without).
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Real question: Is the price of a pint high because of
| operating costs or taxes? Also, can each state set their
| own alcohol tax rules, and does WA have very strict
| rules?
| tgv wrote:
| A (local) sports club doesn't need to "make ... money". It
| can get contribution from its members, and subsidy from the
| local government. Otherwise, your argument would sanction
| every behavior, even turning schools into strip clubs.
| mu53 wrote:
| fantasy land vs the real world.
|
| I am sure most business owners don't want to be casinos,
| but would rather be clubs. When the bills are due, they
| have to find a way to pay up.
| Blahah wrote:
| That absolutely cannot be true. If a business does not
| want to be a casino, it doesn't have to be.
|
| I run a pub. We'd never have any gambling (machines or
| otherwise) in it, and we charge less than most pubs for
| locally sourced beer/cider.
|
| If you're running your business to extract value from
| people rather than to create community with them, you're
| a bad person.
| komali2 wrote:
| > If you're running your business to extract value from
| people rather than to create community with them, you're
| a bad person.
|
| I run a restaurant with the same idea - we pay our staff
| way more than anyone else is outside the Michelin places
| for example.
|
| Still, you might be a bad person if you're running an
| exploitative business, but very likely the system will
| reward that kind of person more than you or I. In fact I
| find it difficult to compete with those sorts of people
| because they get away with it and make more money so can
| do more marketing, expand more aggressively etc. The
| classic annoyance I face is other restaurants in the area
| giving away free french fries for a 5 star review on
| Google maps.
|
| Now there are customers who spot the fraudulent review
| restaurants and come to ours instead, and the discerning
| customer is our market segment anyway (we do many other
| things that normies would miss but discerning customers
| notice and reward with their loyalty) but a restaurant
| lives and dies on the whims of hordes of normie customers
| that are delighted to get free fries and don't mind
| creating a Google account for the first time in their
| lives to get'm.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| >we do many other things that normies would miss but
| discerning customers notice and reward with their loyalty
|
| this sounds interesting, can you share any other
| examples?
| tgv wrote:
| I think you confuse the real world for Ayn-Randistan.
| Local sports clubs don't need to make someone $5M/yr.
| They just need to provide sporting facilities, such as
| fields and tracks, to local sporters. They can be run by
| volunteers.
|
| Likewise, running a business for a profit doesn't mean
| exploiting people to their ruin. If you can't make money
| ethically, you should do something else.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Um, what good are schools if you can't make a profit from
| them? /s
|
| That's why UK Conservatives turned most of English
| education into for-profit businesses.
|
| People here are always harping on about how the only
| reason for coordinating people (companies) is to make
| profit for the owners/bosses.
|
| What pains me is that people are saying "the local club
| couldn't survive without {an external party taking a
| proportion of the gross income}". The maths means that
| without that external entity there would be _more_ money.
|
| Of course without addiction ruining lives people wouldn't
| give so much of their money away to these particular
| sports clubs. But, that just means the sports club is
| running off the destruction of people's lives in the
| local community. I mean, that's perfect capitalism, but
| absolutely inhumane.
| mrmincent wrote:
| The sports clubs that depend on pokies also cease to exist
| - they become pokies venues that also have a sporting arm.
| They begin to drain the community instead of contributing
| back to them.
|
| They're able to use pokies profits to subsidise cheaper
| food and alcohol to bring in customers, and in turn get
| them to pump a money into the pokies, while starving other
| venues of those customers who can't compete on price.
| dian2023 wrote:
| Should we take from the most vulnerable in society in order
| to prop up these clubs? Its not rich people dumping all
| their money into the pokies, its retirees and people who
| are broke from gambling addictions getting into debt
| baq wrote:
| Drug dealers need revenue to be drug dealers, otherwise
| they might cease to exist.
|
| Sounds ridiculous, but client's neurotransmitters are the
| same.
| chii wrote:
| and i agree - why shouldn't these drugs be legalized?
| Regulate their sale, just like alcohol. Stop the drug
| cartels from making profit, and they will disappear.
|
| After all, client's neurotransmitters are the same.
| baq wrote:
| recommend googling 'opioid epidemic' in which people got
| addicted to perfectly legal painkillers they were
| prescribed. yeah cartels didn't profit (at first,
| anyway). neither did society.
| t-3 wrote:
| The pharmaceutical cartels profited - and hospitals,
| doctors, and insurance companies as well, if not quite as
| dramatically.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Honestly it should really be equalized the other way
| around: alcohol really shouldn't be as easily available
| as it is today, perhaps even illegal.
|
| Of course that won't happen, it's too ingrained in
| society. But it really is a scourge.
|
| And I say this as someone who enjoys my beverages
| responsibly.
|
| Legalizing heroin or the like will destroy parts of our
| society of nothing else changes.
| pfarrell wrote:
| It was already tried in the US. The agreed upon results
| were that humans want alcohol and the downstream effects
| made society worse e.g. increase in alcohol consumption,
| empowering organized crime and corrupting the police.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I know. That's why I'm not arguing that we actually try
| again. Plus I do enjoy drinking beer and other alcohol.
| But not all drugs are equal.
|
| Many people can responsibly enjoy alcohol. Some can't.
| But there are some drugs that are so effective it would
| be difficult for any human to responsibly use for any
| extended period of time. It becomes less about philosophy
| and more about physiology.
| baq wrote:
| Yeah opium was also easily available in China once and it
| played a large part in their lost century.
| exitb wrote:
| What value does a "local sport club" provide exactly, to
| warrant a revenue?
| andrepd wrote:
| It might surprise you that groups of people can and do
| organise things even without the promise of minmaxing
| monetary value.
| qwertox wrote:
| > Higher fees from club members?
|
| Sounds good to me.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| > Higher fees from club members?
|
| Yep. Solved. Next question please.
|
| There exists a deeper question here regarding "why do these
| clubs require so much money that they need to bleed it out
| of the community in the form of poker machines?" I'd posit
| a good number of them probably don't need that much cash,
| and most of it is just profit.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >I don't see the issue with gambling revenue funding a
| club.
|
| Gambling revenue hurts society more than it profits the
| club. The answer is that if we absolutely need these clubs,
| we should more explicitly subsidize them with govt money.
| It'd be stupid, but less stupid than what we're already
| doing right now.
| smabie wrote:
| Could they ever operate without the gambling?
| Retric wrote:
| Yes, but as long as there's money to be made people will
| try and maximize it.
| strken wrote:
| What? No they aren't. It's a cancer affecting the balance
| books of some specific clubs, but of the local aussie rules
| footy clubs my friends have played at, none have owned venues
| with pokie machines. There was _one_ club in my brother 's
| under 17s league that was attached to a pokies pub and
| everyone used to complain about them because their ones got
| paid too well.
|
| If we ripped out pokies machines then some clubs would be
| screwed, but I would be seriously surprised if it was more
| than a handful per league. It would arguably be beneficial
| for the average team.
| bigtones wrote:
| This is not true in Western Australia, where Poker machines
| are illegal everywhere other than the one casino.
| LilBytes wrote:
| That's fair, West Australia represents 3 million of
| Australias 26 million people.
|
| The comment above tragically is true for most of the
| country.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> _no longer operate without the poker machines
|
| Horse racing. All over the world there are tracks where
| horses run, and people bet on the horses, but that isn't why
| they exist. The track's gambling license, something first
| granted back when the track was built, is now used to
| facilitate an attached "casino". The horses are cover for the
| casino and the casino is just cover for the real money makers
| of the enterprise: an arcade of slot machines. Corruption for
| sure, but the "sport" of horse racing probably wouldn't have
| survived absent that corruption.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| That and an excuse for people to get drunk. /s
|
| I don't know how HN views horse riding, but "no more horse
| racing" probably would have resulted in a lot less dead and
| injured horses, so maybe horse-racing should have died out.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Fewer dead horses on the track, but if the sport went
| away then there would be horses all over the country out
| of work, which generally doesn't end well for horses, and
| likely an overall reduction in the number of horses kept
| as pets.
| Hizonner wrote:
| A reduction in the total number of horses bred or kept is
| not a problem. It's probably a good thing.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Betting on a game makes watching the game 10x more fun though.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it
| ruins the sports. Players throw. They get good at subtly
| cheating. The gambling apparatus latches itself to the sport,
| to the teams and players, the umpires and judges, the sporting
| organizations. With this much money on the line, it 's not a
| matter of if but when games are thrown, cheated -- the bigger
| the game, the bigger the incentive. It's even easier now
| because of the amount of side/parlay betting that is available.
| It exhausts the spirit of competition._
|
| I don't see how this latest gambling fad ends except for
| another Black Sox scandal:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal
|
| It's been a hundred years so I guess it's time we learned our
| lesson the hard way, _again._
| achenet wrote:
| I vote we ban alcohol next :DDDDD
| tgv wrote:
| > it ruins the sports
|
| If that were true, people would stop paying attention of it.
| What other criterion would you have for the quality of sports?
|
| But the worst is how easily you brush aside that it "ruins
| lives". Not that that's your fault. It seems that almost nobody
| cares about it. It has been known for a long time that gambling
| is detrimental, to individuals and to society, yet a bunch of
| Wolf-of-Wall-Street-style financiers use it to get richer
| without the need for as much as a good idea. There's less
| ingenuity and skill involved in betting than in drugs. It's
| bottom of the barrel amorality, bribing and corrupting its way
| into politics.
|
| And nobody cares.
| mlsu wrote:
| No, I didn't brush it aside.
|
| There is a healthy argument going on with compelling points
| on both sides about the tradeoff between freedom (spending
| your own money how you please) and social harm reduction
| (preventing people from ruining their lives). You can look at
| another of my comments in the thread above this, I take a
| pretty clear position on the matter.
|
| My statement wasn't that none of that stuff is important, my
| statement is that gambling is unequivocally bad for the
| sports themselves and goes against the spirit of sporting
| regardless of its broader harm to society. I'm saying, there
| is no strong argument that gambling is good for the spirit of
| competition in sporting; there is no such debate. Unlike the
| broader topic.
| Hasu wrote:
| Gambling is generally against the law in South Korea, but any
| esports players or personnel who get caught fixing matches
| (this doesn't necessarily mean throwing a game, bets get placed
| on all kinds of things that aren't just the outcome of the
| game), they get a lifetime ban from the government from
| participating in esports in any way.
|
| I think we need something like that for all sports here in the
| US. If you get caught fixing games or coordinating to fix bets
| in any way, you should be liable, fined, and banned from sports
| and anything sports related for life. If the entire team was in
| on it, the entire team gets banned for life. No second chances,
| no exceptions.
|
| Or we could just make sports betting illegal again.
| boogieknite wrote:
| Pretty much what's happening in the NBA with Jontay Porter
| mlsu wrote:
| And you start to wonder, he's just one who got caught. How
| many more. It sure didn't take long!
| mlsu wrote:
| Of course all of the major leagues would say that they are
| not at all biased. Most probably have extreme suspension
| rules for being involved in gambling. But, we shall see.
| Human beings are fallible creatures; people forget, people
| slip. And it's hard to prove this. Especially nowadays, when
| you can do it over your phone in private.
|
| _Still, it really doesn 't matter,
|
| After all, who wins the flag.
|
| Good clean sport is what we're after,
|
| And we aim to make our brag
|
| To each near or distant nation
|
| Whereon shines the sporting sun
|
| That of all our games gymnastic
|
| Base ball is the cleanest one!_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal
| Aerroon wrote:
| I wish people would just realize that sports betting is
| stupid. If matches can be thrown then they will be thrown no
| matter the consequences. People shouldn't engage in sports
| gambling _because_ it can be rigged.
|
| If you want to do it for fun then use fantasy points for it.
| alephnan wrote:
| There was speculation whether a baseball player was
| actually behind his interpreters' gambling scandal.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > Gambling is generally against the law in South Korea, but
| any esports players or personnel who get caught fixing
| matches
|
| "Don't get high on your own supply" is a law that covers much
| of Asia's stance on gambling. Macau has stricter gambling
| laws for citizens than tourists, for example.
| serial_dev wrote:
| While everything you wrote I agree with, I'm not sure I arrived
| to the same conclusion. Alcohol, cigarettes, workaholics,
| social media apps all ruin the lives of the weak and those
| around them. Should we make them all illegal?
| vincnetas wrote:
| This boils down to a two question "should we as society allow
| a person to destroy his life." And because there is also a
| big external pressure from financially interested parties to
| convince a person to do things that are not beneficial to
| him, second question is "should we as society let smarter
| people fool less educated people out of their money/health/
| happiness" (second one is more tricky) but low hanging fruits
| are advertisement for alcohol, gambling, smoking and other
| obviously non beneficial activities.
| achenet wrote:
| that's a good point.
|
| Ban advertising for gambling, tax the hell out of gambling
| companies... possibly create some sort of regulation for
| actual gamblers, i.e. check their ID against a national
| database everytime they bet to ensure they're not over-
| doing it... seems more likely to fix the issue than
| outright prohibition, which, at least for other things like
| drugs and prostitution, doesn't really seem to solve much.
| andrepd wrote:
| Well, you cannot advertise cigarretes, so yes, why can you
| plaster the Internet, primetime TV, and player's jerseys with
| gambling ads?
| nuancedquestion wrote:
| It is nuanced.
|
| Take alcohol. It is a drug, a poison, addictive, acute severe
| health problems are rare - although it can kill via the
| stupor it imposes but long term health and affects on
| productivity etc. Really bad.
|
| So society may be better off without it. But then mind
| altering substances may be good even if they are bad for
| social cohesion and self medication. It is hard to be sober
| you have to take life as it actually is.
|
| Make it illegal? Well that is almost orthogonal... why? What
| does it achieve to make it a moral outrage ... and who is the
| criminal? The brewer, the distributer or the drinker?
|
| Then even if you decide that incarceration is a good think to
| do to people who do one of the 3 things - the prohibition
| shows that people will do it anyway. As a drug alcohol in
| particular is probably the easier to synthesize. You just
| need readily available pantry items and a jar. Other drugs
| need chenistry labs, precursor chemicals or plants. So that
| effects the affect of criminializing alcohol.
|
| Then mix in its deep root in culture!
|
| Now alcohols is discussed, what next... too much work...
|
| That will have a different set of problems, solutions,
| unintended consequences of fixing the issue and so on.
|
| So just treat gambling like its own thing. Even then casino
| poker vs. Slots vs. Lottery vs. Physical Bookie vs. Online
| booke vs. Crypto vs. Backstreet all have different subissues
| and may need to be legislated individually.
| eek04_ wrote:
| If we can, and it works out to less harm vs benefit than
| otherwise: Yes. But it turns out we can't for alcohol and
| cigarettes (except regulation). We fairly much can for
| workaholics - Norway has laws that stop working overtime
| except in certain situations, and they actually work fairly
| well. I don't know if we can for social media, though I see
| California is trying to stop some of the addictive forms of
| social media.
| mlsu wrote:
| Of course. Freedom and all.
|
| My uncle gambled away a successful business, a beautiful
| house, his family, his friends. In my early memory he was a
| giant who carried me in the ocean, flying just above the
| breaking waves. Later on, when I was in elementary school, he
| lived with us for a bit. Some time later he lived in his
| Buick. He died alone and with nothing.
|
| In my mind, we all should not allow a man to do that.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| That still leaves you with a question if harm reduction is
| better approach than criminalization. At least you don't
| attract the mob into the business with the former.
|
| Banning addictive things isn't as straightforward as people
| love to believe. Even during the worst theocratic times,
| you could get alcohol in Saudi Arabia by asking the right
| people; and Saudi Arabia had way harsher means at its
| disposal than democratic countries do.
|
| (For the complete picture, my grandpa drank himself to
| death at 57 and even though he used to have a good income,
| on the order of 3x as much as an average Czechoslovak
| worker of that time, he left almost nothing behind. All
| "liquefied". Other people were able to build family houses
| for their kids with less money.)
| wallawe wrote:
| Many such similar stories, except where the crutch is
| alcohol. Back to the original question, would you propose
| banning alcohol as well?
| joshlemer wrote:
| Perhaps ban is too strong. I think Canada has had a
| really positive result in how it has dealt with tobacco.
| Cigarettes are by no means illegal, you can get them at
| any gas station, grocery store, 7-11 or pharmacy. But
| they are heavily taxed, the packages have to be covered
| in graphic warnings, the branding has to be plain and
| just use a generic font of the brand name. Commercials
| aren't allowed. Advertising isn't allowed. As a result, a
| lot less people just take up smoking, and it's almost
| completely fallen off culturally.
|
| That might be the best solution to gambling. At least in
| Canada, casinos are very well advertised and glamorized.
| They're often run by the government, but they still
| market themselves to attract customers in a way you
| wouldn't expect of say, a safe opioid consumption site.
| Their slot machines are just as addictive. Sure, there's
| lip service paid to preventing gambling addiction, eg a
| piece of paper on the wall instructing patrons to play
| responsibly. But if we took the same attitude towards it
| as we do to tobacco, it might just fade away without all
| the downsides of prohibition.
| komali2 wrote:
| I hold the strong belief that gambling companies are evil and
| make the world worse and I wouldn't find the burning of them
| down by the loved ones of people's lives they ruined to be
| unethical.
|
| However people should know what regulating ethics to this
| degree looks like: the modern PRC. In the PRC you get a
| government mandated timer on your MMOs to ensure you don't
| spend too much time playing videogames. In the internet cafes
| there's 24/7 a CPC bureaucrat prowling around keeping an eye
| on your chats - plus automated mandated filters which
| depending on the implementation can auto kick you from a
| multiplayer match, hence the entirely viable strategy when
| playing against PRC players to spam "FREE HONG KONG
| REVOLUTION OF OUR TIMES CCP COMMITS GENOCIDE AGAINST UIGHUR
| MUSLIMS XINJIANG" into chat to get them kicked from the
| match.
|
| There's industry level morality controls as well such as not
| being allowed to make a tv show featuring "feminine men" and
| the implicit ban on showing LGBT couples.
|
| Personally I don't trust a State to choose the correct
| morals, be it aesthetically communist or aesthetically
| capitalist. We can look at America's history of moral laws to
| see another example, such as prohibition.
| umanwizard wrote:
| There's a readily available example proving your slippery
| slope isn't guaranteed to happen: gambling was illegal in
| most of the US very recently and it wasn't anything like
| China.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The gambling bans in the US weren't that effective.
| People who wanted to gamble went to crypto casinos or
| other online gambling games.
| umanwizard wrote:
| They still stopped the vast majority of casual people.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| So instead, you trust for-profit companies to direct the
| morals of society?
|
| Surely the reason prohibition failed so badly was that it
| wasn't democratic. You can't mandate against vice unless
| you have the support of the majority.
| komali2 wrote:
| > So instead, you trust for-profit companies to direct
| the morals of society?
|
| Absolutely not. I don't really have a solution, but in
| general it seems distributing power to more local level
| forms of governance works well for many things, so
| perhaps something along those lines?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Local control has limits too. In the US one can now
| export pollution to ones neighboring states. Las Vegas
| exports it's externalities by marketing to out of state
| populations. (Or at least they did when gambling was more
| heavily regulated elsewhere)
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| >it seems distributing power to more local level forms of
| governance works well for many things
|
| >CCP COMMITS GENOCIDE AGAINST UIGHUR MUSLIMS XINJIANG
|
| wow, you seem to really know what you're talking about!
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_regions_of_Chi
| na
| NobleLie wrote:
| Some people believe that their beliefs and way of life should
| be enforced. Here, which human habits or activities are
| allowed or "OK" even if partially or very deletorious.
|
| The desired force vector varies in magntitude and
| orientation, but can, in the extreme include removal of
| independence / imprisonment or less extreme banning and
| fining etc
|
| Because a single or group of people believe it, it must be
| for everyone, equally.
| CodeGroyper wrote:
| So? Literally the entire political apparatus depends on a
| few people enforcing their ideas of how the rules should
| be, and everyone else has to play by them.
| interludead wrote:
| The question of legality isn't just about the potential for
| harm; it's about balancing individual freedom with societal
| responsibility
| esalman wrote:
| Exactly. Sports gambling takes the fun out of sports for those
| who are not interested in gambling.
| fsckboy wrote:
| that's like saying alcoholics take the fun out of wine
| drinking for people who don't have a drinking problem.
| nuancedquestion wrote:
| Alcohol takes the fun out of socializing when stripped of
| it you are left with tables, chairs and a room. And company
| that spits and slurs!
|
| Without alchohol social scenes may be more creative.
| Karoke. Board games. Social games. Deep conversatiobs.
| Challenges. Parties like you had as a kid.
| definitelyauser wrote:
| I absolutely cannot imagine singing karaoke without
| alcohol.
|
| Alcohol certainly does not preclude it.
| nuancedquestion wrote:
| Karoke is an alcohol+non alcohol friendlier gig than
| sitting at a table for 6 hours not even eating :)
| umanwizard wrote:
| Everything you mentioned is more fun with alcohol.
| Alcohol makes humans less shy and more sociable which is
| one of the main reasons people enjoy it.
| watwut wrote:
| Karaoke without alcohol sounds like a torture.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I sing a lot and my choir friends can do karaoke sober,
| but they are the only people I know who can sing in
| public with no social lubricant. Citing karaoke as a
| sober activity was very odd to me.
| matwood wrote:
| Your off hand comment about spits and slurs makes me
| realize people all consume alcohol very differently. I
| feel like anytime there is a conversation around alcohol,
| dose needs to be stated. Obviously it's going to be hard
| to have deep conversations with someone who has had 12
| beers, but someone who has had a drink or two, lowering
| their inhibitions, will likely open up more.
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| Not really? It's more like saying alcoholics take the fun
| out of going to a restaurant that happens to have a bar.
| albedoa wrote:
| Your analogy is an improvement, but both of you are
| weirdly mapping "alcoholics" to "people who are
| interested in gambling". A valid analogy would speak of
| people who are interested in alcohol.
|
| (Incidentally, the restaurant in your analogy would
| probably not be viable without that bar!)
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _A valid analogy would speak of people who are
| interested in alcohol._
|
| I did speak of people who enjoy wine (that contains
| alcohol) and don't have an alcohol problem. Their
| enjoyment of wine is not ruined by winos on the curb
| drinking out of paper bags.
| botanical76 wrote:
| This would be true if wine was deliberately made worse
| quality in order to maximize some incentive behind
| manipulating alcoholics. I don't have a horse in this race,
| but this comparison misses the entire point of this
| particular counter to sports gambling. The sports in
| question are, purportedly, made worse - the outcome changed
| in arbitrary ways disconnected from the spirit of nature of
| the sport - in order to maximize the profits of the
| incredibly wealthy. There is no way to escape this when
| enjoying the sport; if deliberately throwing is rampant,
| you would always have to ask if a player's mistake was
| genuine, and your emotional investment in a game is
| poisoned as a result. Likewise, the comparison would be
| that no wine is immune from this kind of quality reduction.
| Eventually, a wine drinker will drink wine which has been
| reduced in quality on purpose.
| esalman wrote:
| So you're saying I should engage in alcoholism and gambling
| if I want to maximize fun?
| freetanga wrote:
| Agree. I would add that it is a bit of a perfect storm:
|
| - lower income families struggle for upwards mobility
|
| - we are moving ever more towards a full material world, where
| you need to have a lot of disposable income just to keep up
| (remember the first over 1000 usd iPhone and people saying it
| was too much?)
|
| - social media keeps reminding us that there are "successful"
| people who have all the stuff you dream, and can burn money
| (all a lie, but if desperate and poorly educated you buy it)
|
| - vanishing of social construct: less weight of family in
| peoples life, less local communities (replaced by only pseudo-
| communities as twitter or insta) which translates into less
| emotional support, pushing you to consumerism for solace.
|
| It's no surprise that the hope of a quick buck (be it sports
| betting or also damaging scratch cards / lotteries) thrive in
| the context, and in particular with people desperate or with
| poor understanding of odds and biases....
|
| Edit: I don't think is necessary a poor-people-only problem, I
| think this is a symptom that a new definition of poverty is
| brewing - one beyond financial indicators... (stale life, no
| prospects of moving up, disenfranchising of society, resentment
| for feeling rug pulled from underneath, prone to absorb/consume
| anything that makes you feel "in the loop" or relevant like
| fake news or crazy theories, etc). I believe we are seeing this
| all across the Western world, yet us and our leaders fail to
| address it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I'd add another point to your list: decades of wage
| depression by rabid unchecked globalization, in urban areas
| combined with ever more power going to landlords.
|
| The amount of money especially young people have to fork off
| of their paychecks just to have a place to live is outright
| insane.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You just described South Korea to a T. What's the situation
| with gambling/sports gambling in South Korea, Japan,
| Singapore?
|
| A lot of these nations serve as counter examples to
| traditional "reddit" or even "HN" orthodoxy on policy. For
| example, despite SK, JP, and Singapore having the best
| transit in the world by far, their people HATE using it and
| are desperate to buy expensive, crap cars to avoid using it.
|
| I go there and listen to folks tell me that my freedom to buy
| a V8 sports car for 40K USD or less is worth every bit of the
| additional crime or whatever other risks of America there
| are.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > For example, despite SK, JP, and Singapore having the
| best transit in the world by far, their people HATE using
| it and are desperate to buy expensive, crap cars to avoid
| using it.
|
| This is pretty bold statement. I certainly would not say
| that most Japanese in big cities follow this trend. To be
| fair, in any wealthy, dense city, a small fraction will
| always buy a car. A well-to-do senior manager at an urban
| Japanese firm is much more likely to upgrade to "Green Car"
| (slightly nicer train car), rather than drive a car to
| work.
|
| Last thought: Are there any highly developed, very dense
| cities in East Asia/Sino-sphere that do not have amazing
| mass transit? I struggle to think of any.
| lupusreal wrote:
| > _[South Korea, Japan, Singapore] A lot of these nations
| serve as counter examples to traditional "reddit" or even
| "HN" orthodoxy on policy_
|
| Don't you know those countries don't exist? Whenever a
| redditor starts talking public policy the discussion is
| always America vs "the rest of the world", where the rest
| of the world means Europe. Sometimes they throw in the word
| "civilized", which is fun. For instance:
|
| _" The rest of the world abolished the death penalty."_
|
| _" The rest of the world tries to rehabilitate criminals
| instead of punishing them."_
|
| _" The rest of the world doesn't try to ruin people's
| lives for using/selling drugs."_
|
| So you see, South Korea, Japan and Singapore don't exist!
| tirant wrote:
| Gambling, in the same way as consumption of drugs can be indeed
| harmful for individuals and the people surrounding them.
|
| But the solution is not forbidding them, but educating people
| and families on how to deal with them.
|
| Alcohol consumption is even more dangerous than sport betting,
| however several cultures after generations have been able to
| develop a healthy relationship towards its consumption. You can
| clearly see that by comparing deaths in Mediterranean countries
| against other northern countries or other parts of the world.
|
| I can feel that difference also directly in the way my
| Mediterranean cultural background has driven my relationship
| with alcohol. Me and my family love to drink wine or beer, but
| we despise getting drunk. The moment our heads get light headed
| we stop drinking. We enjoy the social aspect of it and its
| flavor, but we do not enjoy being incapacitated because of it.
| However the moment I started traveling north I noticed the
| difference in how people relate to alcohol:in a lot of cultures
| people just drink alcohol to get drunk or to disconnect from
| their every day lives. They have not learnt to stop on time and
| they develop a very unhealthy relationship to drinking.
|
| Same could be said about sports betting. If it's part of our
| culture or our individual interests we need as a society to be
| able to develop a healthy relationship towards it and not
| forbid it (with the exception of minors).
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Which culture are you implying has a healthy relationship
| with alcohol?
| achenet wrote:
| Mediterranean (or at least the GP's family, which they say
| is Mediterranean).
| llmthrow102 wrote:
| I've made solid side income gambling over a number of different
| games and sports, and I say it should definitely be banned.
|
| It ruins lives, funnels money to terrible people, makes sports
| worse for everyone, and has no positive impact on society. The
| benefits of the "freedom" to let manipulation of your lizard
| brain drain you of your past and future earnings is not worth
| it.
| dailykoder wrote:
| Over the years I did get to know a couple of people that were
| winning players in poker and sports betting. I was never
| patient enough for poker, so I just played it for fun every
| now and then (probably break-even, maybe a bit minus) and
| just watched the discussions about it interested. As poker
| got harder, a lot of them switched over to sports betting,
| which I was never interested in, but I found it amazing how
| they analyzed the games.
|
| But if you really think about it, yes there might be a tiny
| portion that wins overall, but they only win because there
| are a lot of people emotionally invested that ruin their
| lives. So yes, please ban.
|
| Edit: While yes, it can be fun and I personally can have a
| lot of fun when I put 50 bucks into a slot machine once or
| twice a year, no matter the outcome, it doesn't really
| justify to keep that business alive
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > yes there might be a tiny portion that wins overall
|
| Probably explained by chance.
|
| Gambling "systems" don't work unless there's a flaw in the
| game.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| There are inefficiencies that make certain bets positive
| EV if you are smart enough. It's usually a combination of
| playing in a weird way and having some insight that the
| maker of the game (the oddsmaker) didn't see. Gambling
| establishments don't mind because there are few enough of
| these and they will ban you if you take too much money
| from them.
|
| Winning sports betting players often go on to set odds.
| dailykoder wrote:
| >It's usually a combination of playing in a weird way and
| having some insight that the maker of the game (the
| oddsmaker) didn't see
|
| Apparently exactly this. The people that I knew where
| always discussing the fitness of certain players and how
| that'd impact the game and stuff like that. Though it
| could've also been that they were on a long long lucky
| streak, because they minimized the risk with such
| considerations. At least t hey were not ruining their own
| lives
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I have a friend who professionally plays video poker, and
| has been doing that for a very long time. He runs Monte
| Carlo simulations to find his strategies around various
| kinds of promotions and specials that casinos offer. He
| has about a 2-5% edge whenever he plays, and maximizes
| his bet size and machine time to take advantage of this.
| Casinos don't care about this sort of thing because the
| strategy he plays is usually batshit insane compared to
| how you would think video poker ought to be played (eg
| "throw away cards from a flush to mine for a straight
| flush" is a frequent rule he uses), and is very
| complicated. They lose ~$10k a week to the three people
| like him who can do this, but more than make up for it in
| the rubes that come in the door from those promotions.
|
| These sorts of inefficiencies, and often even true
| arbitrage bets, show up in sports betting because the
| bets you need to make are so complicated. There is a team
| at Susquehanna that does sports gambling as their form of
| trading, and they will sometimes play these sorts of
| arbitrages against bookies. I remember hearing about a
| perfectly-hedged arbitrage of 8 different bets from one
| member of that team in a specific gambling forum, but the
| bets were all so arcane that very few other players were
| playing each one.
| placidpanda wrote:
| Sportsbooks make money by taking bets on both sides of a
| game and offering odds that work in their favor. For
| example, even on an "even money" bet, you might have to
| bet $105 to win $100. The more one-sided a game seems,
| the bigger the gap between the odds on either side
| because the sportsbook is trying to manage its risk. As
| people place bets, they adjust the odds to balance the
| action. The sportsbook isn't banking on you being wrong--
| they want enough bets on both sides so they win no matter
| what. The difference between the odds is basically their
| "fee."
|
| As a professional bettor, you're not really outsmarting
| the sportsbook--you're trying to outsmart the public. The
| key is finding moments where the crowd is wrong enough
| that betting the other side makes sense, even with the
| sportsbook's fees. That means you'll often skip betting
| when the odds are pretty accurate.
|
| Most sportsbooks will limit how much you can bet if
| you're too successful, but they usually won't ban you
| outright.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Many sportsbooks actually do not run that way. The name
| "sportsbook" implies that they do, but that is an older
| style of betting that has fallen out of favor. Modern
| sports books usually use fixed odds set by an oddsmaker
| (in modern times, algorithms set by the oddsmaker), but
| those odds are allowed to float with the probability of
| the outcome changing. I believe they take supply and
| demand into account, but you actually are betting against
| the house. That prevents the kind of trading against the
| crowd that would be normally viable.
|
| The Hong Kong horse race track was a famous example of
| market-priced bets where the book was run the way you
| said and the crowd was exploitable in the way you are
| suggesting. It was one of the last books to work that
| way.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Where is the movement to ban those ticket machines from
| places like Dave and Busters/Chuck-e-Cheese where you
| exchange coins for tickets which are only redeemable for
| cancer inducing sugary foods or (at exchange rates which
| would please your local African warlord) occasionally game
| consoles?
|
| Because that shit is legal in all 50 states and is worse for
| society in my opinion. No hysteria against this.
| Andrex wrote:
| This hot take is just a bad take.
|
| People don't lose their life savings redeeming D&B tickets.
| You have an uphill battle convincing me the Chuck E Cheese
| model is worth banning when it's mostly seen as harmless
| kids' fun.
|
| If this is seriously bothering you, you probably spend way
| too much time at Dave & Buster's. And I would guess you do
| not have children.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| If sports betting bothers you, you spend too much time
| playing or watching sports ;)
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Chuck E Cheese taught me a lot about the value of company
| scrip and cutting out middlemen.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Unless you live by yourself in the middle of the woods you
| never ruin just your life.
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| I'd push back on the idea that gambling is inherently harmful.
| Gambling can be done at a scale where it is essentially play.
| It is particularly gambling against corporations or other non-
| individual actors, in games that they rig to be perpetually
| -EV, and market like crazy, that is inherently harmful.
| rincebrain wrote:
| Unfortunately, banning it outright will probably only
| exacerbate problems.
|
| If you, hypothetically, banned it outright in the US, then you
| go from having few levers on what you can mitigate in the
| industry to none, because if it's all banned and has more than
| a slap on the wrist punishment, there's no reason not to charge
| 200% interest on gambling debts, or other absurd things.
|
| I'm firmly of the belief that the only thing you can really do
| is tightly regulate it to the point that there's still enough
| gambling, with controls minimizing as much unexpected harm as
| you can, to avoid most people feeling tempted to seek out the
| unregulated illegal avenues with more exploitative
| arrangements.
|
| I think history has shown that you can't effectively ban a lot
| of vices, you just wind up with them underground and even more
| destructive to people involved. The best you can do is try to
| minimize how easily one can destroy themself - look at Japan's
| reactive regulation around the most predatory gacha mechanics.
| Whether you think they strike the right balance or not, that's
| rather an example of what I mean - you can't really stop
| someone from deciding to deliberately spend their life's
| savings on things, you can just do as much as you can to avoid
| it being an impulsive choice.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Sports gambling has been legal in the UK since 1960. Gambling
| wasn't seriously problematic in this country until 2005, when
| regulations were substantially liberalised. Pre-2005, sports
| betting was something that old men did in dingy backstreet
| shops; post-2005, it became a widespread social phenomenon,
| turbocharged by advertising and the growing influence and
| accessibility of the internet.
|
| There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-
| faire, which the US seems particularly prone to. You've seen
| similar issues with the decriminalisation of cannabis, where
| many states seem to have switched abruptly from criminalisation
| to a fully-fledged commercial market. There is a broad spectrum
| of other options in between those points that tend to be under-
| discussed.
|
| You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019. You can
| set limits on maximum stakes or impose regulations to make
| gambling products less attractive to new customers and less
| risky for problem gamblers. You can have a single state-
| controlled parimutuel operator. Gambling does cause harm -
| whether it's legal or not - but it is within the purview of
| legislators to create a gambling market in which harm reduction
| is the main priority.
| divan wrote:
| White paper on recent UK reform of the Gambling Act for the
| digital age.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-stakes-
| gambl...
| MavisBacon wrote:
| I understand your position in theory but feel the comparison
| to cannabis is a bit unfair. Most physicians will agree that
| cannabis is fairly harmless in adults.
|
| Gambling, however has previously in the U.S. shown to be the
| leading cause of suicide attempts (20% in total) among all
| forms of addiction [1]. A body of evidence has also
| demonstrated it leads to divorce, bankruptcy, poor health and
| sometimes incarceration. Worth noting many of these studies
| centered around machine gambling and all forms of gambling
| are unique in terms of tendency for compulsion. Considering
| the landscape it is quite difficult for me to see a way of
| regulating out of this, not in the U.S. at least.
|
| [1] Zangeneh and Hason 2006, 191-93
| nemetroid wrote:
| It's just an example.
| MavisBacon wrote:
| That's fair, and I really don't fundamentally disagree
| with what they said I just wanted to add some cultural
| context here. Will plead ignorance that my experience
| working on issues of "addiction" or compulsions outside
| of the U.S. is incredibly thin but, knowing how
| compulsion tends to play out stateside- these are my
| observations. I'm genuinely concerned considering how
| poorly we've done treating those with substance use
| disorder, which I think is arguably simpler than gambling
| addiction in some respects
| nemetroid wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree, but the original comment
| didn't suggest that gambling and cannabis are equally
| harmful, or even that cannabis _is_ harmful. The point
| was that policymaking seems to tend toward all-or-nothing
| (either fully prohibited, or anything goes), and the
| legalization of cannabis is a recent example of that. The
| goods or harms of cannabis are beside the point.
| vasco wrote:
| > Most physicians will agree that cannabis is fairly
| harmless.
|
| If you read some papers on the subject it should be plenty
| apparent that it has adverse effects on the development of
| young adults, as well as long term use by anyone,
| particularly of recent high-potency strains.
|
| It's not as bad as other drugs (heroine), and it's worse
| than others (coffee), but it's not harmless. I'm far from
| being a prohibitionist, and live somewhere that has (I
| think) sensible policies (The Netherlands), but to simply
| put that it's "fairly harmless" as something most
| physicians agree with is not true. I'd say it's similar to
| alcohol in terms of its moderate use being possible in a
| working society - albeit with some negative outcomes for
| people that overdo it, or do it too early in life.
|
| Edit: there's lots of discussion below about if the studies
| that exist are trustworthy or not, but since anyone can
| google for studies, I'll leave a different recommendation
| to check out the r/Leaves subreddit, and read some first
| hand accounts of long term and heavy users. It's at least a
| different type of source and you can make up your own mind
| about what real users say about it, in case you never
| encountered it before.
| MavisBacon wrote:
| edited to specify that I was addressing adult use. Agreed
| use in adolescence or even younger can be problematic. I
| also think that there isn't enough discussion around the
| impact of cannabis on cognition. Here in the U.S.,
| though, as far as medical consensus there truly is not
| very much concern around cannabis use. A report found
| that there is limited evidence of the harms of cannabis,
| and ample evidence of medical use-cases- published by the
| National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
| (NASEM) in 2017
|
| Worth noting our current overdose crisis and general lack
| of health care in many parts of the country, now the
| under-prescription of controlled medications- which all
| helps shift a lot of these dynamics in a direction that
| might not be seen in other parts of the world.
| svardilfari wrote:
| I'd challenge you to read those results again. They admit
| to the evidence for health effects being elusive (due to
| limited or no robust studies), yet there is still enough
| evidence to summarize the following:
|
| "
|
| There is substantial evidence of a statistical
| association between cannabis use and:
|
| The development of schizophrenia or other psychoses, with
| the highest risk among the most frequent users (12-1)
| There is moderate evidence of a statistical association
| between cannabis use and:
|
| Better cognitive performance among individuals with
| psychotic disorders and a history of cannabis use (12-2a)
| Increased symptoms of mania and hypomania in individuals
| diagnosed with bipolar disorders (regular cannabis use)
| (12-4) A small increased risk for the development of
| depressive disorders (12-5) Increased incidence of
| suicidal ideation and suicide attempts with a higher
| incidence among heavier users (12-7a) Increased incidence
| of suicide completion (12-7b) Increased incidence of
| social anxiety disorder (regular cannabis use) (12-8b)"
|
| National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
| Medicine. 2017. The Health Effects of Cannabis and
| Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and
| Recommendations for Research. Washington, DC: The
| National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24625.
|
| I would warrant that these summaries should be a concern
| for anyone using cannabis and that blanket statements
| regarding the overall tone and summation of the report
| negating health effects of cannabis is somewhat
| misguided.
| achileas wrote:
| None of which are causal associations. Given the
| millennia-long history of cannabis use to self-medicate,
| and lack of evidence (not without trying!) for a
| biological mechanism of any of this, it's probably safe
| to assume this is largely people with an issue (or a
| proto-issue) self-medicating.
| kaonwarb wrote:
| Your argument appears to be jumping from (lack of causal
| associations) to (assumption that causality is in the
| opposite direction).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This has also been studied more since 2017 now that there
| are a lot more people taking cannabis, and many of these
| links have been confirmed, although some have not.
|
| It has also been confirmed that heavy use of marijuana
| has negative effects on cognitive performance and short-
| term memory even in adults, although these symptoms go
| away after you stop using.
| Me000 wrote:
| I think the evidence is closer to "completely harmless"
| than "mostly harmless" there's literally never been a
| reproducible study that shows cannabis is in any way "bad
| for you."
| herval wrote:
| The negative effect on brain development of young people
| has been extensively studied and proven, by many
| different studies across many different countries.
| tokai wrote:
| And the GP was clearly stating that it was about adults.
| You're either arguing in bad faith or not paying
| attention.
| herval wrote:
| what's an adult for you? Studies show effects on people
| of up to 25 years of age.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| My wife is a psychiatrist. It's not unheard of for her to
| have to deal with cannabis induced psychosis.
|
| One of the more challenging things with cannabis is it
| can trigger people who are more predisposed to issues.
| Some of these things can stick around for a while, after
| an initial incident. Compared to something, like alcohol,
| cannabis based issues don't only affect heavy or long
| term users. You might just be the unlucky person that
| cannabis doesn't jive with.
|
| That being said, I think she largely thinks legal
| cannabis is good. She's seen recovered alcoholics who've
| turned to cannabis as their outlet without killing their
| liver and destroying their body.
|
| However, acting like there are no risks to cannabis is
| not helping anyone.
| andai wrote:
| For a while it was unclear if the link between cannabis
| and psychosis was correlation or causation, but causation
| was ultimately established. It seems to be a relatively
| small percentage of the population that experience such
| things, but that's largely the same part of the
| population prone to heavy, chronic cannabis consumption
| in the first place.
|
| So I just wanted to add that for a subset of the
| population, the risks are several orders of magnitude
| more serious than "lost a few IQ points", as many people
| are not able to resume normal life (nor indeed, a normal
| experience of reality) after a psychotic experience.
|
| That being said, I do support legalization, since the
| alternatives are worse. I just also support people being
| well informed, and aware that while they're probably not
| in that 2%, there's only one way to find out, and you
| really, really don't want to find out.
| achileas wrote:
| I have a graduate degree in neuroscience, worked with
| colleagues who focused on psychopharmacology for their
| research, and many of my friends and neighbors are
| biologists of various stripes, including still-active
| neuroscientists, as well as epidemiologists, and
| clinicians. They all agree cannabis is fairly harmless,
| and would outright laugh you out of the room if you
| compared its negative effects (either in the individual
| or to society) to alcohol.
|
| Clinicians aren't the ones to go to for harms anyways,
| they're largely not doing the research at any level.
| varjag wrote:
| Alcoholism is certainly destructive, but if you have
| predisposition to schizophrenia you really better off
| with drinking than smoking pot.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Unfortunately, people with predispositions like that are
| even more drawn to marijuana (and other drugs). It's a
| form of self-medication-- that sometimes goes wrong.
| NemoNobody wrote:
| That's hilarious
| Saline9515 wrote:
| What is the harmless dose? One join per year? Per month?
| Per week? Per day? Several per day, as I often saw in my
| youth? My father was addicted to cannabis, I can tell you
| that it reduces a lot ones' life outcomes and has
| consequences on your family.
| watwut wrote:
| If you are alcoholic enough, alcohol withdrawal can
| literally kill you. Likewise, consequences on family and
| your own outcomes are massive even before that stage.
| vasco wrote:
| What a neighborhood where you have deep discussions about
| psychopharmacology research with your neighbors,
| incredible.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Most physicians will agree that cannabis is fairly
| harmless in adults.
|
| It's a recreational drug. Unless a patient needs it to
| counter some other malady such as for pain relief, most
| doctors will say that less is better and none is best.
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| there's nothing inherently wrong with recreational drug
| use
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| huge lol at this post being downvoted and flagged on the
| libertarian tech bro site
| the_af wrote:
| Well, most physicians will tell you the same about
| smoking and drinking (i.e. "less is better and none is
| best"), but some/many then go in their private lives and
| smoke and drink.
|
| This is a thing physicians say but often don't heed
| themselves, and I don't think it singles out cannabis in
| particular.
|
| The thing that horrifies me the most is physicians who
| smoke. _There 's_ an activity of which there is no safe
| level of doing other than "none", plus they've definitely
| seen what a smoker's lung looks like, and yet I've seen
| plenty of doctors who smoke regularly.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| > most physicians will agree that cannabis is fairly
| harmless in adults.
|
| This isn't a good argument. Cannabis is harmless in adults
| that it's harmless in. However, there's a percentage of the
| population that has strong, adverse reactions to cannabis.
| Some of these can be life altering, requiring treatment to
| correct or mitigate.
|
| The problem with cannabis is you can't predict if any
| single person will be susceptible to negative outcomes
| until they have that negative outcome.
| MavisBacon wrote:
| I didn't refer to it as harmless. I referred to it as
| "fairly harmless". An acknowledgment of what you are
| referring to. I don't see this as terribly different than
| referring to cough syrup containing DXM as fairly
| harmless. If you are on MAOIs or have liver issues it can
| be quite dangerous- but for the vast majority of the
| population it is perfectly safe
| riffraff wrote:
| I agree with you 100% but just one thing of note
|
| > You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019
|
| this has been widely sidestepped, betting companies now
| advertise something like "sport-results.com" and then that
| one has a prominent link to the betting site.
| sva_ wrote:
| Isn't sport-results.com then advertising for gambling,
| which should be illegal?!
| mattdeboard wrote:
| This is the whole problem with half-measures
| LadyCailin wrote:
| If someone posts a link to a gambling site on Facebook,
| should Facebook be banned?
| gverrilla wrote:
| Facebook has to abide to the local laws.
| TimPC wrote:
| You probably don't ban Facebook as a whole but if they
| fail to crack down on gambling links that violate
| advertising laws or allow gambling companies to advertise
| in spite of those laws they probably face heavy fines
| from regulators.
| mminer237 wrote:
| I think the issue he's raising is how you define
| advertising though. Is texting your friend a link
| advertising? What about posting a link on a forum? On
| Wikipedia? On your portfolio? On your footer? On your nav
| bar?
|
| I think everyone agrees the name should not be _damnatio
| memoriae_ nor should you be able to link to a click-
| wrapper, but people will always push the gray area in
| between as far as they can for that kind of money.
| tcfunk wrote:
| I think it's pretty easy to define, actually. Were they
| paid in some way to do those things? If yes, then it was
| advertising.
| mminer237 wrote:
| It sounds like the most common way to do these things is
| to have one company operate one gambling and one non-
| gambling site and just tell people they operate the other
| site on each. No money's changing hands, so that's not
| advertising. Then you can advertise to go to your non-
| gambling site, and they can organically navigate to the
| gambling site which was disclosed, not advertised. You
| would almost have to ban companies which have any
| interest in a gambling product from advertising anything
| at all.
| inerte wrote:
| If we're gonna play Reductio ad absurdum my question is,
| if someone whispers "online gambling" to a friend, should
| they be put to death?
| TimPC wrote:
| This is the same issue where poker companies used to
| advertise their play money sites and use the play money
| sites to link to separate real money sites. The loophole
| exists although it is certainly closeable.
| boesboes wrote:
| I'd say it still reduces exposure and makes a statement.
| It also denormalises gambling a bit
| boesboes wrote:
| That's an enforcement problem, not a problem with banning
| advertising.
|
| Here in the Netherlands we had TV advertising for gambling,
| using semi-celebrities, those were outlawed again within a
| few months and have not come back. 20-30 years ago, there
| were a lot of 'call in to win' shows on TV that were of
| course basically a scam. They too were made illegal and
| have not returned.
| skrebbel wrote:
| FWIW the Netherlands used to ban gambling advertising, and
| then legalized it (purely due to corruption if you ask me,
| but that's besides the point). The change was night and
| day. Overnight, half the banner ads around town were
| promoting poker sites and sports betting etc. There really
| weren't lots of similar ads for "sports results" sites
| before then.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > There is a broad spectrum of other options in between those
| points that tend to be under-discussed.
|
| Where we fall on that spectrum is generally a matter of
| culture, rather than regulation. American culture is one of
| maximalism, especially when it comes to commercialization.
| eesmith wrote:
| Regulation is the enforcement and control of culture. They
| cannot really be disentangled.
|
| American culture is not one of maximalism. Going overseas I
| was surprised to see tobacco products and beer legal at 16
| or 18, people drinking alcohol in the open at parks, soft-
| porn on late-night broadcast TV, and newsstands with
| uncovered porn magazines.
|
| All of which are commercialization.
|
| Further, a maximalism interpretation can't be used to
| understand American culture pre-1974, when the Equal Credit
| Opportunity Act prohibited banks from preventing women from
| getting a bank account, nor pre-1964, when the Civil Rights
| Act prohibited most businesses from preventing blacks from
| exercising the same commercial maximalism as whites.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I am pointing out that, the moment betting and marijuana
| got the "you can profit from this" nod, money poured in
| and profit seeking explodes. Build! Advertise! Build!
| Advertise! This is the American way. Capital circles
| potential profits like vultures waiting for regulation to
| die.
|
| I don't think many other countries' private markets act
| as extreme in this regard.
|
| >All of which are commercialization
|
| I feel like those are just cultural norms as opposed to
| commercialization pressure.
|
| > Further, a maximalism interpretation can't be used to
| understand American culture pre-1974, when the Equal
| Credit Opportunity Act prohibited banks from preventing
| women from getting a bank account, nor pre-1964, when the
| Civil Rights Act prohibited most businesses from
| preventing blacks from exercising the same commercial
| maximalism as whites.
|
| I am failing to draw a line from your point to your
| argument here. I was referring to commercial maximalism,
| not sexual and racial equality maximalism.
| eesmith wrote:
| > I don't think many other countries' private markets act
| as extreme in this regard.
|
| How well do you know about what happens in other
| countries? To me it sounds like everywhere, once
| limitations to the flow of global capital are dropped.
|
| > I feel like those are just cultural norms
|
| My observation is that commercialization pressure is
| subordinate to cultural norms. The capital vultures did
| not swoop in to provide full services to women and blacks
| until the laws changed, even though providing those
| services was legal.
|
| Commercialization can shape those norms, certainly, but
| that is not specifically American either.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > How well do you know about what happens in other
| countries?
|
| Pretty well.
|
| > To me it sounds like everywhere, once limitations to
| the flow of global capital are dropped.
|
| Its a matter of degree, hence "maximalism". Just look at
| investment capital stats. There is a pretty objective way
| to confirm that money moves faster and in greater volume
| into new private industries in the U.S. The only foreign
| investment arms that come close are multinational
| conglomerates or authoritarian governments.
|
| > The capital vultures did not swoop in to provide full
| services to women and blacks until the laws changed, even
| though providing those services was legal.
|
| ...how much profit do you think there was to be made off
| of people who were previously blocked from capital
| accumulation?
| eesmith wrote:
| > Just look at investment capital stats
|
| Is it fair to say that's part of American culture then?
| Very few people are involved in making new private
| industries, and the regulatory systems don't seem well
| aligned with the general culture.
|
| > how much profit
|
| How much profit would have been lost if a company was
| public about supporting blacks and upsetting the white
| supremacist culture of the time?
|
| That's why I say you can't really disentangle culture and
| regulation.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > Is it fair to say that's part of American culture then?
|
| I think so.
|
| > How much profit would have been lost if a company was
| public about supporting blacks and upsetting the white
| supremacist culture of the time?
|
| In the 1970s? No idea. I didn't have a well formed brain
| until the 2000s.
|
| > That's why I say you can't really disentangle culture
| and regulation.
|
| Definitely. One depends on the other, and our commercial
| maximalist culture is reflected in our laws.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| "American culture": How about the Amish?
| fredgrott wrote:
| cannabis not a good example as it is still criminalize at Fed
| level including earning money in that industry and putting it
| in a federal licensed bank...
| DrBazza wrote:
| I absolutely hate that gambling adverts on TV are legal in
| the UK. I've seen at least one friend's life ruined because
| of it.
|
| 9pm, and it's wall-to-wall.
|
| Ironically, this is around the same time as bans on smoking
| in pubs, and tobacco advertising became draconian.
|
| But gambling doesn't do any first-order physical harm, so
| it's all good, right?
|
| Seeing betting firms on the front of football teams' shirts
| offends me.
|
| > When Tony Blair's Labour government introduced the Gambling
| Act in 2005, it allowed gambling firms to advertise sports
| betting, poker and online casinos on TV and radio for the
| first time.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64510095
| Pufferbo wrote:
| Whenever I'm introduce a friend to the JLeague, 90% of the
| time the first they compliment is the lack of gambling
| adds. It really is a breath of fresh air. And I believe
| that if the JLegaue used this point in its international
| marketing, it would work to get a lot of people tired of
| gambling ads to want to follow the league.
| 34679 wrote:
| Bans cost money to enforce, while diminishing personal
| choice and responsibility. Why not spend that money on
| education instead? I've not had an ad in my home or on my
| mobile devices for well over a decade, and I've spent
| exactly zero on additional hardware to make that happen. It
| takes less than 10 minutes to configure a new device to be
| completely ad-free. I won't purchase anything that can't be
| configured to be free of ads, including smart TVs and
| iPhones. I still watch whatever content I want on my TV via
| HDMI from a PC. If our governments are going to be
| involved, their focus should be on teaching people how to
| do what people like me do. It's not difficult.
| nixass wrote:
| How do you prevent yourself or others from seeing
| banner/commercials around the city? Some cities are full
| of it. Just because you removed it from your phone or PC,
| it doesn't mean that there are no people who are affected
| by it by watching TV or while walking/driving around the
| city.
| zxcvbnm69 wrote:
| I'm fairly pro-market, certainly more than most people.
| And I'll agree that bans cost money, but it's unclear how
| much for this specific instance. We may also "save" money
| for taxpayers who avoided sports betting losses because
| it was never shoved in their face (because the ads are
| banned).
|
| I would also guess that banning an ad is cheaper than
| banning something like "dancing in public." One is easy
| and affects few people or entities directly (basically
| the companies that want to advertise their sports betting
| business and those that can host it), while the other is
| impossible to truly ban because you'd need an army of
| police or a high tech surveillance state (which probably
| still cannot institute a full ban).
| bumby wrote:
| I think there's an argument that behavioral change is
| much more difficult that just ingesting the information.
| (And I'm talking about people who want to change, not
| some nefarious change instituted by someone else or an
| institution). Think of how many people want to lose
| weight but struggle. It's not usually from the lack of
| education; there are psychological, social, and
| environmental impediments to change.
|
| I think the "all it takes is the right information" model
| lacks a nuanced understanding of human behavior.
| 34679 wrote:
| I also mentioned personal choice and responsibility. If
| someone doesn't want to change, why should we attempt to
| force them? It's not likely to have the effect you
| desire.
|
| I think the "all it takes is a government ban" model
| lacks a nuanced understanding of human behavior. Cannabis
| is a prime example.
|
| To be clear, I'm not advocating a solution for all of
| society's ills. I'm advocating a path toward the goals we
| all share. That path may be longer and more difficult to
| traverse, but it's my belief that it'll lead us closer to
| where we want to go.
| bumby wrote:
| > _belief that it 'll lead us closer to where we want to
| go._
|
| That just sounds like a hypothesis (ie unfounded
| conjecture). Meanwhile, the counterclaim at least has a
| basis in empirical results. We should craft policy based
| on how people actually behave, not in how we wish they
| did.
|
| I get that HN skews towards libertarian. My issue is that
| that the libertarian idea of how people operate is an
| idealist's fantasy and not rooted in the real world.
| cbsks wrote:
| It's hard to ad block live sports.
| lumb63 wrote:
| I was a big proponent of legalizing sports gambling before it
| happened here in the US. After that, one of my best friends
| lost 5 figures on sports gambling that he really couldn't
| afford to lose. I've also watched sports talk shows degrade
| to simple betting tips, and TV is now borderline unwatchable
| due to the pharmaceutical and gambling ads. To me, a few
| regulations/restrictions seem useful. I think broad
| legalization went too far.
|
| One regulation would be banning gambling advertising, for the
| same reason why smoking ads are (I think?) banned. It is
| especially nefarious how companies lure in new customers with
| free bets, often with unscrupulous cash-out conditions, in
| order to get people hooked. It's the equivalent of ads
| providing someone a coupon code to get several boxes of free
| cigarettes, at which point they get hooked.
|
| Another change I'd like to see is the end of mobile gambling.
| I've never done it, but from watching friends do it, it was
| far too easy to deposit money, or borrow money on credit, and
| bet it frivolously. At least if such behavior is confined to
| a casino, there is some larger barrier to entry for people.
|
| I do not know if this is true in other states, but certain
| states have the ability for an individual to self-institute a
| gambling ban at all facilities in the state. I'm not sure if
| this applies to gambling online. If not, then it should. And
| if other states don't have it, then they would greatly
| benefit from it.
|
| It also seems somewhat fair to me to tax the casinos and
| other companies profiting from gambling and using that money
| to fund services for people who become addicted. If you're
| going to help create a problem, you should have to help clean
| it up.
| bombcar wrote:
| Requiring gambling to be done at established facilities or
| even the sports facility itself and limiting the bets to
| five dollars or some nominal amount would solve 99% of the
| problems.
| verdverm wrote:
| Limiting it to a licensed location, instead of app or
| website, and requiring cash instead of credit would
| likely be sufficient.
| acdha wrote:
| The other thing I'd add is a mandatory system where
| people can tell the company not to allow them to bet with
| a lengthy time delay (say 90 days) to remove themselves
| from the list. Most people with problems know they have
| them at least some of the time and it's important to give
| them tools to prevent moments of weakness.
| seaal wrote:
| Self exclusion is something that is handled by each
| states gaming enforcement department. All 34 states that
| have a self-exclusion program also have wildly different
| policies.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Censorship is not letting an adult eat a steak because a
| baby can't chew it.
|
| We don't cap the ABV% of a bottle of Wine to an
| arbitrarily low number because of the prevalence of
| alcoholics.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The state I grew up in prohibited distilled spirits from
| being sold at non-State run stores.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Which is a methanol related health and safety measure
| grandfathered in as a holdover from the Volstead Act. All
| first world control have significant hazard analysis and
| supply chain integrity measures for food and drink.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Tangential--methanol poisoning from an improper brewing
| or distilling process is largely, maybe completely, a
| myth. Where toxicity events have occurred they are almost
| always deliberate or accidental adulteration, e.g.
| fortifying moonshine with industrially "denatured"
| (deliberately poisoned) alcohol. There has been a lot of
| sloppy journalism in such cases that doesn't question the
| myth, as well as Prohibition-era propaganda that lives on
| to this day.
|
| Great Reddit discussion about this: https://old.reddit.co
| m/r/firewater/comments/9p1fwe/methanol_...
| piltdownman wrote:
| TIL. That said, I hadn't anticipated much rational in
| Prohibition rationale. The thread did support my
| suspicion that grappa hangovers are their own special
| category of hell though!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm not sure that's the entirely the case, given that,
| when I was a kid, you couldn't buy non-distilled
| beverages at the grocery store either.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_
| sta...
| piltdownman wrote:
| Temperance related measures post-Volstead - an insidious
| loophole to appease the Bible Belt whereby liquour is
| specifically exempted from the federal oversight of
| interstate commerce.
|
| I believe there's some relation between this and federal
| highway funding being tied to a minimum drinking age of
| 21, but I may be misremembering some half-read magazine
| article.
| mozman wrote:
| I believe it's drinking age and breath limit thresholds
| thanks to MADD.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Oregon is that way.
|
| Groceries stores can only sell beer, wine, and malts. If
| you want vodka, schnapps, and other hard liquors, you
| gotta go to a dedicated state-run liquor store.
|
| Most of them are pretty small, too, so if you want
| something uncommon, it can be hard to find. Luckily the
| OLCC runs a website where you can search for specific
| items and it will tell you which stores (if any) carry
| it.
|
| I do wish we could just get a BevMo though.
| BobAliceInATree wrote:
| Many states cap ABV of spirits.
| piltdownman wrote:
| And many European countries can't sell e.g. Everclear.
| The key bit of my statement was 'arbitrarily low'.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| We used to have to travel to the next state over to buy
| Everclear (you know, for the _good_ parties) and bring it
| back.
| bombcar wrote:
| Society always has and continues to limit access to
| certain things at certain times in certain places for
| certain groups of people for reasons that vary. We call
| it censorship/restrictions when we don't like it. We call
| it reasonable control when we do.
| Jerrrrrrry wrote:
| a true liberalist would argue that you can sell your
| kids, as long as they agreed to it
| toss1 wrote:
| Riiight.
|
| So it is censorship that we don't sell alcohol in
| schools?
|
| It is censorship that we prohibit open beverages in
| automobiles and airplane cockpits?
|
| Yikes. I expect this kind of "all regulations bad!!"
| nonsense on other social media, but sadly, starting to
| find it here too.
| specialist wrote:
| I'm often reminded of the rationalist liturgy:
|
| _A well-armed society is a polite society._
|
| IIRC from Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
| The just so story is when the govt's monopoly on violence
| is devolved to individuals, people will police
| themselves.
|
| We now know empirically that a well-armed society is
| certainly not polite.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| It's a balancing act. We limit <some thing> if the damage
| to society caused by it is greater than <some amount>.
| With the caveat that getting those limits put in place
| can be complicated, given the influence of money on
| political will.
|
| - We limit drinking by minors
|
| - We limit smoking to outdoor areas
|
| - We limit driving over certain speeds
|
| We limit many, many things that an individual can do
| based on how they impact society as a whole. We even
| limit some things an individual can do that have no
| impact on society (but I disagree with this completely).
|
| That is how societies work.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| It would also result in way less profits, so we'd need
| something truly incredible to happen to see it through.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > something truly incredible
|
| That's one interesting way to say "government
| regulation".
| andy800 wrote:
| The only actual problem casino gambling, lotteries, and
| sports betting has been intended to solve is to generate
| revenue for state and local governments. Limiting bets to
| $5 would ensure failure for that purpose. Gambling
| addiction, crime, cheating, game fixing, etc are
| unfortunate side effects, but not real problems, in the
| eyes of lawmakers.
| parineum wrote:
| > One regulation would be banning gambling advertising, for
| the same reason why smoking ads are (I think?) banned.
|
| Generally, a law that made it illegal to advertise age-
| restricted activities to audiences where a significant
| portion of the audience would be under-age should be a
| workable solution. Let the courts decide what that gray
| area of "significant portion" is on a case by case basis.
| digging wrote:
| Sure, but I think that falls a bit short of what's really
| at play here. Advertising anything which tugs at our
| animal weaknesses is unreasonably manipulative. Images of
| food (especially marketing images, which are photos of
| inedible objects masquerading as food), ads for sex,
| drugs, gambling - these are vices for a reason. Humans,
| generally, are weak to these things. Adults shouldn't
| really be exposed to these advertisements either.
| smeej wrote:
| We're also susceptible to bright colors and certain
| screen movement patterns and topic sequences, as
| practical the entire internet industry has figured out
| and has been using against us with competing degrees of
| success for about 20 years.
|
| Humans are weak and easy to manipulate, and some more so
| than others. It seems like the question is always about
| the degree to which the governments ought to intervene to
| protect us from each other...and ourselves.
| NemoNobody wrote:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US6017302A/en
| smeej wrote:
| Wow, I'm glad I clicked this. Feels kind of like you
| buried the lede not giving the title: "Subliminal
| acoustic manipulation of nervous systems"
| computerdork wrote:
| Agreed, it's about the degree of regulation.
|
| And not sure where you sit on this, but for me
| personally, gambling ads cross a line as gambling has
| major negative effects to public well-being, especially
| to those who are the most financially in need.
| smeej wrote:
| I'm one of those people who has become convinced that
| device addiction has ruined the capacity to think or pay
| attention for an entire generation from the time they
| were most vulnerable, and we haven't even begun to
| realize the negative consequences of that. But yeah,
| gambling ads are bad too.
| computerdork wrote:
| HN doesn't let me reply to your reply so will reply on
| your early comment (think too many levels of nesting?).
| But I agree about your comment on devices, smartphone
| addiction is having negative impact people's mental
| health - smartphones are a super-useful tool, but too
| much screen-time has led to detachment from the real
| world and depression.
| digging wrote:
| Sure, there are many other forms of advertising that are
| irresponsible in the public sphere.
|
| > It seems like the question is always about the degree
| to which the governments ought to intervene to protect us
| from each other...and ourselves.
|
| Of course. That's why I defined the degree I was
| advocating for
| computerdork wrote:
| Interesting, using the under-age argument to ban these
| ads generally - guessing this is how smoking ads where
| banned - seems like a good technical way to ban them
| generally to the overall population.
|
| And even if we look just at under-age audiences, a ban
| for them make sense, since that for a decent-sized
| portion of teenage boys, sports is an obsession. Having
| them pummeled by sports-betting ads at an age when they
| are often exploring new things is probably not a good
| idea, as it will make betting (and for some of these,
| betting addiction) a part of their lives while they are
| young.
| DoubleGlazing wrote:
| I live in Dublin where a lot of the tech developement centres
| for many online bookmaker and casinos are based. I have been
| approached by recruiters for some of them and even though
| they offer VERY generous packages I refuse to work for them
| on moral grounds.
|
| The thing that bothers me the most is that they know a lot of
| poitential employees have issues with the whole sector, so
| they try to give it a false veneer of acceptability. A good
| example of that was that both Paddy Power and Boyle Sports
| referred to themselves as suppliers of "risk-based
| entertainment" in their recruitment literature, something I
| found to be very sleazy.
|
| I also know people who work for some of these companies and
| they tell me that all their talk about caring for problem
| gamblers is complete nonsense and that they actively seek
| ways to lure back problem gamblers who were able to quit.
|
| It's also very weird that as governments around the world are
| cracking down on alcohol poromotion at the same time they
| seem to be encouraging the promotion of gambling. I would say
| gambling can do as much harm to a family as alcohol addiction
| can. I'm frankly shocked at the amount of gambling adverts
| there are these days. And so many of them carry the subtle
| sub-text that if you don't bet on your team then you aren't a
| true fan.
|
| The problem is that people will gamble no matter what, so
| providing a safe way to do so is better than banning it. I
| agree with you that it's all about to what degree you allow
| gambling. At the very least I would ban advertising as it's
| effectively normalising something that most definitely should
| not be normalised.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Gambling isn't the only form of entertainment meant to
| tickle the part of the brain that craves risk. Movies have
| car chases. Amusement parks have roller coasters.
|
| And many jobs involve taking risks. Investment houses.
| Sales. etc. We reward those who take risks because society
| (often) benefits.
|
| I find it much easier to argue against standard casino
| games because it's pretty easy to mathematically prove that
| the gambler will end up broke. With sports, it's a bit
| harder. As long as the vig is small enough, smart gamblers
| who know the teams can eke out a profit. If anything,
| sports gambling rewards study, thought, and focus, all
| things we should celebrate. THat doesn't mean I like. I
| would like to see it banned. But it means I have trouble
| arguing against it with any vigor.
| DoubleGlazing wrote:
| Being a savvy sports gambler will only get you banned
| though, the house always wins also applies to sports
| betting.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| But that's not true. I know several guys who make a
| living at it. The casinos don't care because they make
| their vig on the action. The only losers are the folks on
| the other side of the bets.
|
| It is true that the casinos will find a way to ban people
| who find an advantage in traditional games like blackjack
| (think card counting), but that's different. In sports
| gambling, the profit is extracted with the vig/spread.
| kqr wrote:
| Right -- this is much like alcohol, something which is
| roughly as dangerous as gambling -- but also as enjoyable to
| people who can do it responsibly.
|
| It's not a choice between prohibition and selling it in the
| grocery store. There are many nuances in between.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| States changed their laws around cannabis as a measure to
| gather votes and to increase tax revenues. Theories of
| markets and economics have little to do with it.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019
|
| The US already has plenty of legislation regulating
| advertisements of other vices, so I think a similar ban is
| totally appropriate here.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| Good luck with all your less profitable options: have a look
| at how much lobbying the sector does.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Pre 1970s it was something you did at the on-track TOTE and
| in Bingo Halls/Working Mens Clubs.
|
| Games of skill with money wagered have always been a
| significant part of Western European society, starting with
| the Equestrian Aristocratic classes and funnelling all the
| way down to the 'Football Pools' and the national pastimes of
| putting a wager down for the Grand National or Cheltenham
| festivals, legitimised by social events like Ladies Day or
| Student Race Week.
|
| There are multiple ways of 'fairer' gambling - exchange
| markets like Betfair rather than sportsbook being the current
| epitome. The main issue is lack of legislation around
| targeting vulnerable demographics and those suffering from
| addictive traits - and that's an advertising rather than a
| gambling issue.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Technology is the tool that magnifies both good and bad
| things. It's up to us to prevent bad things at the source,
| not ban the tool; it's the social media problem, really.
| BobAliceInATree wrote:
| Every state is supposed to be a "laboratory" of democracy,
| but we really screwed the pooch with cannabis legalization.
| At least one state should have gone the way with absolutely
| zero marketing allowed (like tobacco currently is), and all
| containers should be in standardized, sterile, black & white
| containers, with only the name & description of the product,
| and big warnings describing the dangers (like cigarette packs
| in Australia).
|
| 24 legalized states, and not one chose this approach which is
| a shame.
| NemoNobody wrote:
| It's like you let the kids play with fire but then you make
| sure to have the first aid kits ready.
| biorach wrote:
| > There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-
| faire, which the US seems particularly prone to.
|
| Nicely put
| SunlitCat wrote:
| > There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-
| faire, which the US seems particularly prone to.
|
| You are raising an interesting question there. I always
| wondered why in US many things have to be either Yes or Now,
| Good or Bad, Black or White, Left or Right, Up or Down and so
| on.
|
| No (or very few) things, opinions or anything in between.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > in this country until 2005, when regulations were
| substantially liberalised
|
| I've always found it very striking when the sports team
| jersey sponsers are betting companies.
| anjel wrote:
| And on a good day,wall Street is orthagonal.
| qwertox wrote:
| I find it funny how in Germany the state lottery advertises
| itself on TV but needs to add the info that "Gambling can be
| addictive."
|
| For example, this ad
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0-pKS_zx5E is made by "LOTTO
| 6aus49", which is "LOTTO.de", which is "Toto-Lotto
| Niedersachsen GmbH", which is the lottery company of the state
| Lower Saxony.
|
| To me this is as if the state would place TV ads for wine which
| a state-owned winery produces, like "Landesbetrieb Hessische
| Staatsweinguter" also known as "Hessische Staatsweinguter GmbH
| Kloster Eberbach".
|
| And the lottery numbers are then presented in the prime time
| news in the publicly funded television.
| nicbou wrote:
| Lotto Quebec runs both lottery ads and gambling-can-ruin-
| your-life ads. The German ads have nothing on those.
| lobochrome wrote:
| You do know that lotto is state run, and all profit that
| isn't redistributed to players is given to charity (mostly
| deutsche sporthilfe, who fund a lot of sports who would
| otherwise have trouble running).
|
| Lotto and sports betting in its modern incarnation are very
| different.
|
| Lotto was created so that people's desire for gambling is
| diverted towards charity.
| 4hg4ufxhy wrote:
| How does operating expenses like salaries and bonuses look
| like? 10k bonus for every life ruined? I'm always worried
| about cronyism and corruption with this kind of monopolies.
|
| When I was a cashier the state owned lottery monopoly had a
| training session for us on how to operate the lottery
| machines, and it was really dystopian how most of the time
| was spent on encouraging us to make upsells with sales
| pitches and being happy about gambling.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Sure. Is a private free for all better though?
| qwertox wrote:
| Sorry, but that is not true.
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotto#Verwendung_der_Einnahme
| n
|
| 50% for is the gamblers
|
| 23% is diverted towards the charity you mention.
|
| 16.7% is taxes
|
| 7.5% is commission
|
| 2.8% is for running the business
|
| In other words, the "Aktion Mensch" gives around 1/4 to
| those in need.
|
| * Correction, "Aktion Mensch" give close to 1/3 to those in
| need and less to gamblers (also 30%). But they keep more to
| themselves.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| What is "provision"?
| qwertox wrote:
| My apologies, I meant commission. For the places which
| offer lottery tickets, usually kiosks.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Yes. 2.8% is kept by the business. vs 40-60% by a bookie.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Governments make tons of money on gambling/lotteries. So they
| keep it running. This shows how much they don't care about
| making positive impact to people's lives.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Advertising state lottery on TV is just a way for politicians
| to funnel money to their buddies in the marketing agency and
| TV. I guess they get some positive coverage for that or w/e.
| It's one of the most obvious signs of corruption imo. It
| happens in Poland as well and it's infuriating when you are a
| tax payer in that country.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| The nice thing about sports gambling is it's a strong signal
| that your local government has been captured by outside
| interests. If anyone complains about the way things are you can
| simply point and say well, look we know the government doesn't
| represent us or work for the people, we have legalized
| gambling. Of course there's all sorts of other tells too but
| none is as clear cut without any need of conspiracy theories.
|
| unlike more complex policy areas where vested interests may be
| hidden behind layers of bureaucracy or decades of refined
| pseudo-moral talking points, gambling legalization is
| straightforward: the flow of money into lobbying, the rapid
| legislative changes, and the immediate establishment of large-
| scale betting operations make the influence unmistakable. It's
| a tangible, almost irrefutable sign that decisions are being
| made in favor of profit at the expense of public welfare.
| nebulous1 wrote:
| I'm going to suggest that you not use "run a train through" to
| mean "destroy".
| mlsu wrote:
| I didn't realize it had that meaning, good suggestion!
| interludead wrote:
| The line between legitimate competition and gambling-fueled
| manipulation is becoming increasingly blurred now!
| fidotron wrote:
| This only truly works if sports gambling is illegal globally.
| The reason this doesn't apply too much with the US is foreign
| interest in US sport is limited.
|
| For example http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/426092.stm is
| why british people of a certain age all know the phrase
| "Malaysian gambling syndicates" and associate it with random
| blackouts.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| The US has pretty strict laws against its citizens from
| gambling on the Internet. Other countries could pass similar
| laws for their own citizens. > foreign
| interest in US sport is limited.
|
| I am pretty sure that American baseball is very popular in
| the Carribbean and Japan. And American basketball is very
| popular in China due to the legacy of Yao Ming.
| astura wrote:
| Japan has their own baseball league, Nippon Professional
| Baseball, I don't think they care about the MLB very much.
| immibis wrote:
| Gambling triggers capitalism to ruin lives. If we had a well-
| designed society, you could lose a lot by gambling, but you
| could end up with $0 and still not be completely "ruined".
| inquisitor26234 wrote:
| man im torn here
|
| from sugar, cigs, to alcohol
|
| from netflix, pornhub, to onlyfans
|
| where do we draw the line
| _heimdall wrote:
| This depends very much on how you define gambling. The stock
| market very much is gambling, though most people consider it
| investing.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| Legalized sports betting and "weekly fantasy" leagues have
| severely reduced my enjoyment of NFL football.
|
| Last week in the NFL there was a player that went down at the
| one yard line and his team ran off the rest of the clock to
| win. The game was under the O/U but would have been over if the
| player had gone into the end zone. The player made the choice
| so that his team could run out the clock without giving the
| ball back to the other team, and if he had scored then they
| would have had to kick the ball back to the other team who
| could potentially (although unlikely) scored a touchdown on the
| kickoff or in the last few seconds after the kickoff which
| would have given the other team the game. It was, objectively,
| the right thing to do in the circumstance.
|
| The NFL analysts (who shill gambling apps) spent more time
| talking about if the player was responsible for everyone who
| lost on the O/U, and it just really killed it for me. Every.
| Single. Aspect is filtered through the lens of gambling. Games
| show the betting line on the screen and the analysts try to map
| out potential good parlays for the viewers. It's absolutely
| nuts and a very (in my mind) clear conflict of interest. It
| also blurs the line, in my mind, between objective reporting,
| analysis based on statistics, and paid promotion, and while I
| realize that sports reporting is probably the least important
| field in journalism, it's frustrating to see this unholy
| confluence and to see the impact it has on the ability for non-
| degenerate gamblers to enjoy the game.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Perhaps it's not ruining sports, it's just forcing us to
| confront the emptiness of sports.
| purpleblue wrote:
| I love gambling. I go to Vegas 4-6 times per year, and I play
| poker at the local casinos/card houses almost every week.
|
| I've NEVER liked sports gambling because it's so hard to
| predict and I also believe that it's rigged by Vegas and the
| Mafia. The NBA has already been outed as rigged via referees
| and the insane actions of refs in last year's Super Bowl by
| ignoring obvious penalties makes it even worse. The games are
| obviously tainted as this point. And the fact that none of the
| leagues want to implement rules that correct wrong penalties
| only solidifies the fact that they want these things to occur.
| jeffwask wrote:
| It really ruined watching games for me with the constant talk
| of odds and gambling right in the broadcast. I thank my lucky
| stars this happened after I was a teenager/twenty-year-old
| because having to find a shady bookie that would break my legs
| if I didn't pay was one of the main factors that kept me from
| being stupid like a number of my friends.
|
| I would have been in deep trouble with an appified, gamified,
| psychologically addicting betting app on my phone offering me
| free bets to log in again. I had a hard enough time breaking
| away from phone gatcha shit that I would mindlessly click while
| sitting on the couch.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > It's certainly worth having the discussion about whether
| people should be able to run a train through their life and the
| lives of their families via app.
|
| Even if you've convinced yourself that being able to ruin one's
| own life is a sign of a society with Great Freedom, you might
| be willing to oppose other people profiting from urging people
| to ruin their lives.
| 1-more wrote:
| I agree but I'd put in a carve out for the kind of gambling
| that reinforces sociality. Poker night with your neighbors or a
| fantasy football league with your pals from school (with a
| groupchat where you shit-talk one another) make some sense: you
| spend the buy-in in order to have something to talk about with
| your buddies.
|
| A shooting range I used to go to would not rent to
| unaccompanied men. They had to be members and take a class at
| least, or be in a group, or bring their own guns. This was to
| prevent impulsive suicides. Maybe if you want to keep any kind
| of gambling on sports, you should have to go to a sports book
| with your pals and watch some games together.
|
| Putting the casino in your pocket feels like a social suicide.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "But the more elegant solution is the blunter one: ban sports
| gambling once again."
|
| I don't think anyone would call blanket banning "elegant", even
| if it would be the best solution.
|
| "They estimate that legal sports betting leads to a roughly 9
| percent increase in intimate-partner violence."
|
| I'm sure the numbers are probably right, but I can't help but
| feel some of this is reaching a bit - many population _causation_
| studies seembto be more about triggers than true root causes.
| Just because betting triggered this doesn 't mean betting needs
| to be banned. What this should lead to is better support and
| treatment for people affected by this type of violence. If it's
| not betting that set it off, it would be some other stressor
| (probably also money related or feeling like a loser). Trying to
| fix the person's behavior such as impulse control and anger
| management would be much better than progressively banning
| everything as the next trigger emerges.
| lynx23 wrote:
| I am waiting for the day when one of them proposes to ban
| relationships altogether, because they have an inherent risk
| for partner violence... A certain TOS episode comes to mind,
| which depicted the aftermath of such a law.
| esaym wrote:
| I didn't even know this was legal. When did that change??
| hn72774 wrote:
| I met up with some old college friends on a trip after 20 years
| of not seeing them, and all they wanted to do on Saturday and
| Sunday was sit around, watch football on TV, and talk about their
| bets.
|
| No one was going for any team in particular. They were cheering
| for their bets to win. I lost all interest in the idea of me ever
| gambling after that.
|
| There are certains sports I love to watch because I love the
| game. Gambling would ruin that for me. No thanks.
| tomcam wrote:
| Makes me sad to read this
| zmgsabst wrote:
| "People don't like what I like so they're wrong!"
|
| Contrary to you, there's certain sports I find boring to watch
| as such (eg, American football) -- but enjoy in a condensed
| version focused on bets (eg, RedZone and dailies on American
| football). The game of predicting individual performance and
| ensemble outperformance is more interesting to me than the
| underlying sport -- and much more interesting to discuss than
| any single game.
|
| You don't have to gamble, but trying to portray it as some
| grievous fault people enjoy things differently than you is
| ridiculous.
| hn72774 wrote:
| I re-read my comment and did not pass any judgement then, nor
| now. I simply shared my experience.
|
| If you are triggered by something I wrote, that's all on you.
| I get it, no one dealing with addiction wants to be called
| out on it. That is less than helpful for either party.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > No one was going for any team in particular. They were
| cheering for their bets to win. I lost all interest in the
| idea of me ever gambling after this.
|
| You're negative here -- and I think you know it.
|
| > I get it, no one dealing with addiction wants to be
| called out on it.
|
| Wowza, calling me "triggered" and an "addict" because I
| enjoy something differently than you and thought your
| comment was negative isn't appropriate.
|
| I think your response here confirms my initial impression
| that you have issues with this topic.
| hn72774 wrote:
| "I" lost all interest. That's not a dig at them, or you.
| I've dealt with my own demons and am very comfortable
| differentiating between sharing my experience from the
| "I", and not drifting into giving unwanted advice.
|
| I know myself, and I know if I gambled on my one sport
| where I follow one team, it would ruin the game for me. I
| would no longer watch for the intricacies of the game. I
| get worked up enough without the extra dopamine hits of
| gambling added into the mix. I hate the fact that half
| the advertisements are now for a product that ruins
| lives. My kids are being target with gambling ads when
| they watch with me.
|
| These are still my old college roommates. Not good
| friends though. More like drinking buddies. And that's
| okay. I don't hop on airplanes to go see them anymore
| because I can get the same quality of interaction from
| our text message group. I'm at a place in life where I
| value deeper human connection, and its not there anymore.
|
| That's all on me. I know plenty of people content to
| watch sports all weekend, with or without gambling. Good
| for them. It's just not my thing, and both perspectives
| can coexist just fine. One doesn't invalidate the other.
|
| > You're negative here -- and I think you know it. > you
| have issues with this topic.
|
| I absolutely have issues with this topic. It's a cancer
| on society, as the article confirms.
|
| Some in people can gamble and not ruin their lives. Same
| with drinking. If you are one of those who can moderate
| in dopamine fueled areas of life, congrats. I can't, so I
| chose not to participate.
| boogieknite wrote:
| I know what you mean in that i gamble when i golf.
|
| golf is boring so i need some action to entertain myself. I
| suck at golf so i usually lose money, but as long as i go in
| knowing im risking money for entertainment then its really
| not unlike any other form of entertainment.
|
| similar to you i prefer placing many small bets in order to
| keep myself entertained.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Golf is boring to you because as you said, you suck at it.
| When you can play well enough to execute reasonably well
| the strategic aspect of the game opens up. But yes, match
| play and betting do make things fun in their own way too!
| al_borland wrote:
| I had lunch with my dad recently and he mentioned he tried out
| one of the sports betting apps, because they gave him a free
| $20 to gamble with. My heart sunk a little. I know he likes a
| deal, but I didn't think he'd take obvious bait like that. I
| brought up what they were doing incase he didn't see what was
| in front of his face, and tried to make sure it wasn't going to
| become a problem. I'd hate to see him destroy his retirement
| with gambling, he worked so hard to get there.
|
| His entire working life he was never a sports fan, but in
| retirement he seems really into it. There have been a lot of
| changes, and I really hope this doesn't become one of them. I
| could see him really getting into all the statistics.
| left-struck wrote:
| This really resonated with me because at first glance I feel
| that these gambling apps have almost no effect on me because
| I don't gamble, but the fact that they can so effectively
| lure people you love who are less cynical, that's rough.
| al_borland wrote:
| The free money up front is bad too. They are acting like
| drug dealers... the first hit is free. He never would have
| tried it without that "free" money.
| hx8 wrote:
| If the person wins their first bet they are very likely
| to let their winnings ride until it is lost.
|
| If the person loses their first bet, and it's against
| another player, then not only have they potentially
| hooked in a new player but they also rewarded an active
| user.
|
| If the person loses their first bet and it's against the
| house then they just attracted a potential new player
| while paying $0.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Wait, you're upset because they aren't in love with a
| particular team? Lol I see nothing wrong with this. Do you not
| fill out a bracket for March madness? It's the same thing.
|
| Edit: down voted, ok
| hn72774 wrote:
| I'm not upset with them, at all. I chose to get on an
| airplane to go see them. Then wasted a weekend sitting around
| next to each other staring at the tv and not really being
| present. That was on me. I wanted to be with my old friends,
| and could have left and done my own thing at any time.
|
| It was a good learning experience for myself. My state does
| not have online gambling and I hope it stays that way.
| francisofascii wrote:
| > No one was going for any team in particular.
|
| Honestly, I would expect the opposite. I wouldn't care who wins
| between the Cowboys and the Giants, but if I put a $10 bet down
| on the Giants, all of the sudden and find myself rooting for
| them. You should tell your buds to bet on a team and forget all
| the prop bets. ;)
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I like that the religion of teams is going away
|
| That part was weirder to me
| mppm wrote:
| In my view, gambling should be a service provided directly by the
| government. And I'm not talking a "public-private partnership",
| but an actual DoG that will be taking bets, running gaming rooms
| in select cities etc. -- all with the explicit mandate to make of
| gambling available but boring. No bonuses, no ads, no promotions,
| no glitzy websites.
|
| Gambling is inherently exploitative and no amount of regulation
| will align the incentives for commercial operators. You also
| don't want to ban it outright, as it may descend into the
| underground otherwise, so this looks like a reasonable area for
| the govt to take direct control.
| fakedang wrote:
| Well we do have that in some states of India, and guess what?
| It has the same effects. Moreover the government is
| incentivized to promote this as it's an alternate source of
| revenue. Roads are peppered with ads, and there's the constant
| infighting in the ruling government to see who gets the
| gambling and liquor sales portfolio (and usually it's a buddy
| or kid of the chief minister).
| Kiro wrote:
| That was how it worked in Sweden and it solved nothing.
| jamesfinlayson wrote:
| I think this used to be the case in (most of) Australia (it's
| still government run in Western Australia but that will change
| - they've already tried twice to privatise it but the first
| time was derailed by the pandemic and the second time no one
| was offering enough money).
|
| I think privatisation happened quite a while ago (mid to late
| 1990s) but my vague memory is that there was some sort of
| deregulation in the mid 2000s (or at least that's when I
| remember the ads becoming incessant) and that seems to have
| coincided with the endless offers of bonus bets, deposit
| matches, bet returns etc.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This sets up several conflicts of interest for the government.
| The money is just too good.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think the Netherlands has this and it sort of seems to work.
| In that I've never seen anyone really addicted to gambling,
| even if half the country provides the government some extra
| money in the 'national lottery' every month. We got a lot of
| random wins of boxes of ice cream and stuff growing up.
|
| Casinos exist, but are basically a regulated service (possibly
| private, but as far as I know there's only a single operator).
| mattmaroon wrote:
| In the US that's called the lottery. Go into any gas station in
| a poor neighborhood and there's a line of people buying
| tickets.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| They advertise government lotteries in the US though, which
| is fucked up.
| heisenbit wrote:
| While betting may be harmful the cash rich industry has helped
| many to escape poverty by enabling money laundering.
| ookblah wrote:
| ban the advertising around it
| beginnings wrote:
| Humans would be absolutely nowhere as a species without the
| gambling trait, we would never have left the trees, never mind
| the caves, we need a certain percentage of the population to be
| turned on by risk and uncertainty, because the majority are
| terrified of it.
|
| If we are hell-bent on forcing people to play this artificial
| money game against their will, with no opt in or out, they're
| just born and told they now have to work all their life for this
| piece of paper that some apes printed, then they should at least
| have total control over that money, anything less and the entire
| game is unjustifiably immoral.
|
| Not everyone has their cushy little tech salary like you, the
| majority of people hate their lives and gambling provides an
| escape just like drugs, and the slim hope of winning big -
| something that was taken away from real life. The masses have
| been drained of any hope of improving their situations the old-
| fashioned way.
|
| If you want to reduce self-destructive behaviour, make a fairer
| game, make it a game worth playing, offer decent rewards, make it
| a level playing field instead of the 1% owning 90% of the game.
| The average shelter in America costs $500k and the minimum wage
| is $7.25 an hour, and you wonder why people are gambling? Fuck
| me.
|
| As an aside, a lot of smart, high quality people are drawn to the
| puzzle of sports betting, and are skilled enough to get out of
| slavery with it, why should those people lose their out? Their
| intelligence and self-control to beat the game was their
| birthright, just as an expensive education was likely yours.
|
| Fundamentally, it's an issue of freedom, the right to self-
| destruct, the right to throw your life away, as an act of protest
| or otherwise. I wouldn't want to live in a world where I'm not
| allowed to put everything I have on the line against someone else
| who's willing to take it on. The government has no business
| infringing on that basic freedom of exchange between individuals.
|
| And you know gambling will only be the start, eventually they
| will come for something you like because when it comes to
| removing freedoms and rights, one thing always leads to another.
| Outlawing gambling does nothing to change the circumstances that
| are churning out self-destructive humans, it doesn't fix the root
| cause, our society is generating broken people and their needs
| for escape will always be met in any remotely free world.
| left-struck wrote:
| This isn't about outlawing gambling. In the US it was legal to
| gamble between friends on sports events but businesses weren't
| allowed to be involved. That changed in 2018 and business were
| allowed to be involved and then everything went down the drain.
| khafra wrote:
| It's a strong sign of our overall civilizational inadequacy that
| betting on events where the discovered probability would actually
| be useful--like economic policy outcomes, natural disaster
| frequency and magnitude, etc.--is still illegal, while bets with
| no positive externalities are fair game.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Polymarket
| keiferski wrote:
| This, along with innumerable other things like lifting the ban on
| usurious interest rates, is ultimately a consequence of the same
| phenomenon Nietzsche describes as "the death of God."
|
| We have forgotten the deeper reasons that certain things were
| prohibited or discouraged, assuming that these rules were only
| there because of a belief in a religion society doesn't follow
| anymore. That was a naive view and it turns out that many "old"
| rules are actually pragmatic social codes disguised as beliefs.
| This isn't limited to a particular tradition, either: pretty much
| every major religion has frowned upon things like gambling.
|
| And so in the absence of any real coherent philosophy that aims
| to deal with complex problems like gambling, addiction, or
| excessive interest rates, you're only going to get an expansion
| of what is already dominant: markets.
|
| Don't expect this to change until knowledge of ethics and
| philosophy becomes widespread enough to establish a new mental
| model for thinking about these issues.
| hgomersall wrote:
| What are usurious interest rates? Is some amount of interest
| ok?
| keiferski wrote:
| Depends on whom you ask, but this case had a major effect on
| removing restrictions:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquette_National_Bank_of_Min.
| ...
|
| Prior to that, usury laws existed in most states that
| restricted consumer loans to something like 5-13%.
|
| Personally I don't have an issue with the concept of interest
| itself, but if you look at the huge amount of Americans in
| debt paying 20-30% on credit cards, it certainly seems
| excessive and usurious to me.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| It depends (especially with inflation), and yes.
| hgomersall wrote:
| So it's ok to have high interest rates with the hope it
| will cause unemployment in the hope that reduces inflation?
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Probably yeah, that's not usurious. Usurious is where you
| are basically using the loan to give you an excuse to
| repo / sell off the assets or collateral of the debtor.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >using the loan to give you an excuse to repo / sell off
| the assets or collateral of the debtor.
|
| <cough> buy here pay here car lots <cough>.
| fdfgyu wrote:
| People cannot borrow money from the central bank.
|
| Also, the deflationary effects of high interest rates are
| not because it causes unemployment, but because it
| reduced the rate of increase of the money supply.
|
| Of course, lowered money is recessionary, which leads to
| unemployment which puts downward pressure on wages; but
| wages aren't the reason for inflation - the increase in
| monetary mass is.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Overall, I like this post. Solid reasoning.
|
| This part I have small nitpick about: >
| Also, the deflationary effects of high interest rates are
| not because it causes unemployment, but because it
| reduced the rate of increase of the money supply.
|
| I would prefer to say: reduced money supply has an
| _indirect_ effect upon unemployment. If it costs more to
| borrow money, corps will expand slower (fewer new jobs),
| or reduce costs (labour) to increase profits.
| fdfgyu wrote:
| Right.
| hgomersall wrote:
| The Bank of England quoted reason is explicitly to
| suppress demand:
| https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-do-higher-
| int...
|
| It's hard to see how that's not synonymous with increased
| unemployment, particularly given the oft quoted Phillips
| curve and the NAIRU.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| Although not directly interest, but in similar vein:
|
| There was once a so called _fair profit rate of 4%_ in the
| middle ages and early modern age, in Hungary. Greek wine
| traders operating there featured the number 4 on their seals
| and ornaments of their houses. (They were also often tried
| for violating this rule)
|
| In those ages of course there was no constant inflation in
| the current sense, gold standard was used for payments, etc.
|
| source, in Hungarian language, the site of the greek ethnic
| minority's cultural institute (the pictures feature one such
| ornament): https://gorogintezet.hu/kultura/2022/07/gorog-
| kereskedok-sze...
|
| https://gorogintezet.hu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/15264.jpg
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| The entire concept of inflation comes from the fact that
| various Med. cultures figured out you could issue coinage
| with a high percentage of gold and then slowly drop the
| percentage over time to increase the purchasing power of
| the government. It got insanely bad at some points, with
| "gold" coinage being less than 50% gold. Inflation wasn't
| just constant, it was an everyday fact of life.
| ejstronge wrote:
| > The entire concept of inflation comes from the fact
| that various Med. cultures figured out you could issue
| coinage with a high percentage of gold and then slowly
| drop the percentage over time to increase the purchasing
| power of the government. It got insanely bad at some
| points, with "gold" coinage being less than 50% gold.
| Inflation wasn't just constant, it was an everyday fact
| of life.
|
| I'm not an expert on this - how does this idea differ
| from that of 'seigniorage' where the sovereign can profit
| from the creation of money?
|
| Your example only addresses the buying power of the
| sovereign; it's not obvious that it should affect the
| prices of goods between private parties.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigniorage
| TheGeminon wrote:
| Devaluing the new currency by adding lesser metals will
| also devalue existing currency that is "pure" as you
| aren't able to trust the value of the currency anymore,
| so the value of the existing pool of money will drop.
|
| Its at a smaller scale, but it can be seen with
| counterfeit currency today. Cash-heavy businesses have to
| absorb whatever amount of counterfeits they accept, so
| they are really valuing your dollar at $0.99 if they
| might have to throw it out.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| This is a fair question. It is arbitrary, but usually over
| 20-30%.
| fdfgyu wrote:
| Depends who you ask. Historically, no amount of compound
| interest was allowed because it is immoral to receive what is
| not yours.
|
| Then, in the Middle Ages, Catholic theologians added nuance
| introducing a concept of time value of money - ie when you
| lend out $100 you also lose the ability to use that $100 for
| the time of the loan. The concept of a small interest rate
| was adopted.
|
| Which is fine, except it opened the flood gates until we
| eventually got the high interest rates we have today.
|
| What makes our rates usurious? That they are issued with the
| issuer knowing the principal will never be paid off.
| jollyllama wrote:
| As others said, it depends who you ask. The Augustinian view
| was that usury isn't defined by the rate but when, and I'm
| explaining this rather poorly, interest is charged for the
| use of money. Hence "usury." So a typical American mortgage
| would be usurious in the Augustinian definition, even if the
| interest rate were, say, 1%.
|
| The alternative non-usurious loan would require you to post
| some other kind of security to receive the money, such as
| giving the lender the use of some other productive land until
| the principal debt is paid. More like pawning something at a
| pawn shop and then buying it back when you get paid.
| gen220 wrote:
| If you're curious, Martin Luther (of Lutheranism) wrote on
| this [1], summarized here [2] although the original is quite
| legible. Mercantilism (i.e. profit-making on the exchange of
| goods) was a very popular way of making ones' livelihood in
| his time and place, so it was a frequent question religious
| leaders were asked to weigh in on. Essentially, "how much
| profit is too much profit?"
|
| [1]: (PDF) https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a
| rticle=501...
|
| [2]: (PDF)
| https://history.hanover.edu/hhr/18/HHR2018-fergus.pdf
| tgv wrote:
| Gambling was already an issue 100 years ago, when we were
| closer to God, allegedly. "God" and religion also aren't
| particularly interested in gambling, or it would have been
| forbidden in those holy books. On the other hand, you can blame
| Protestantism directly for subverting individualism to greed,
| and hence for exploiting human frailty, such as gambling
| addiction.
|
| The only working moral on this mortal coil is a dose of empathy
| for your fellow human (and if you can bring yourself to it:
| your fellow animal). It doesn't require a new mental model,
| just proper stewardship.
| keiferski wrote:
| Well Nietzsche died in 1900 and was writing about forces he
| perceived as already under way, long before he was alive. So
| I don't think using a hundred years ago as an example really
| works, and even then, gambling wasn't the massive legal
| operation it is today.
|
| And yes, most religions have weighed in on gambling as most
| societies have been shaped by religion. Secularism is a
| recent thing.
| tgv wrote:
| If you think Nietzsche's writing are representative, then
| we've never been "close to God".
|
| > Secularism is a recent thing.
|
| Sokrates and Buddha would like a word.
| keiferski wrote:
| The death of God idea by Nietzsche is not about a real
| being actually dying. It is about the concept losing
| influence on society and what that means for things like
| ethics.
|
| Socrates and Buddha were 2,500 years ago and I don't
| think I'd describe them as being secularists. Secularism
| is something that came out of the Enlightenment, in the
| West at least. It is absolutely a recent thing for the
| purposes of the discussion.
| fdfgyu wrote:
| To describe Buddha as a secularist would be projecting
| our modern values onto a man 2500 years ago.
|
| Reincarnation, the soul, karma, etc aren't exactly
| compatible with materialistic secularism.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > most religions have weighed in on gambling as most
| societies have been shaped by religion
|
| Really? Except Islam, are there rules against gambling in
| Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, or Buddhism?
| cedilla wrote:
| Yes, at least for Christians.
|
| I don't know if it comes verbatim from the Bible, but
| there are many denominations that find that gambling is
| sinful. Direct prohibitions from the scripture aren't the
| only source of religious rules - especially for secular
| questions.
|
| As another example, many denominations have strict rules
| against alcohol - despite the many positive stories about
| alcohol in the bible and the role of wine during
| communion.
| swat535 wrote:
| Right, Gambling is an extension of greed and gluttony
| according to Christianity, which are both considered
| Sins.
| arp242 wrote:
| _" Ancient Jewish authorities frowned on gambling, even
| disqualifying professional gamblers from testifying in
| court."_
|
| _" The [Hindu] text Arthashastra (c. 4th century BCE)
| recommends taxation and control of gambling."_
|
| _" The Buddha stated gambling as a source of destruction
| in Singalovada Sutra. Professions that are seen to
| violate the precept against theft include working in the
| gambling industry."_
|
| Instead of asking a lazy question as a challenge, you
| could have spent 3 seconds looking this up. It wasn't
| particularly hard:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling#Religious_views
| fdfgyu wrote:
| Baptists are strictly against gambling - GA introduced
| free college education funded by the lottery to legalize
| the state lottery (GA was losing a fortune to cross state
| gambling).
|
| The largest Christian denomination, the Roman Catholic
| Church, teaches that, while games of chance aren't
| intrinsically evil (ie running an MC simulation), and low
| stakes gambling is allowed (raffle), gambling must be
|
| - fair. That's obvious
|
| - even odds for all participants
|
| Presumably, no house advantage
|
| - not be pathological
|
| You cannot play if you're addicted to gambling, have an
| addictive personality, or often that an addiction could
| arise
|
| - not involve very high stakes as the money would have
| been better spent on the poor
|
| No $10 000/hand table.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Any claim a state in the US introduced "free college
| education funded" by a gambling measure is severely
| wrong. There is nothing "free" about collegiate
| education. US States simply reduce funding for education
| by diverting the money elsewhere then claim revenue from
| gambling is needed to fund education. In the event that
| gambling revenue is higher than expected, funds are
| furthered reduced until the status quo is maintained.
| fdfgyu wrote:
| In GA, GA residents with B-ish averages get free tuition
| to attend GA universities.
|
| Including GaTech, a top5 eng school, that requires an A
| average to get in.
|
| Source: dealing with undergrads complaining about their
| grades and their effect on their scholarship.
|
| EDIT: I agree with what you maybe claiming that
| "education" does not justify legal gambling. And you're
| certainly right that most states abuse this argument and
| the fungible nature of money to just slosh money around.
|
| EDIT: the lotto money is put in a fund that goes to pre-K
| programs and scholarships. The average required to keep
| the scholarship is set by the fund's size.
| nojs wrote:
| But the other half of "God is dead" according to Nietzsche
| is that nobody has yet realized. I don't think 100 years is
| outside the timeframe he'd predict the consequences to take
| shape.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yes and I think that society at large still "hasn't
| realized," with actions like this removal of restrictions
| against gambling as a prime example of a consequence.
| pushupentry1219 wrote:
| > "God" and religion also aren't particularly interested in
| gambling, or it would have been forbidden in those holy
| books.
|
| The Quran, which id consider among those as a "Holy book"
| condemns gambling pretty outright multiple times.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| To add a high level context, Islam forbids gambling and
| interest bearing loans (Riba) because they're considered
| taking people's money unjustly. Allah says in the Quran: "O
| you who have believed, indeed, intoxicants, gambling,
| [sacrificing on] stone alters [to other than Allah], and
| divining arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan,
| so avoid it that you may be successful." 5:90 "...But Allah
| has permitted trade [buying and selling] and has forbidden
| interest..." 2:275
| ikurei wrote:
| > Gambling was already an issue 100 years ago, when we were
| closer to God, allegedly. "God" and religion also aren't
| particularly interested in gambling
|
| No doubt it was. Workers were alienated before the industrial
| revolution too, and we were already emitting CO2 before the
| 1950s, but the scale of the problem changed in a very
| impactful way.
|
| Of course I doubt we can get reliable statistics from 1920s,
| but I don't think you should disregard their argument just
| because it was happening before. Gambling is as old as
| numbers, and it's not going to go away, but we can still look
| for the factors that drastically increased the magnitude of
| the issue.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| I have a trivial example: saying grace. As a lapsed catholic I
| found all manner of religious traditions extremely tedious as a
| child and especially as a teenager. I expunged all of them as
| soon as I turned 18. But recently we have been expressing
| gratitude before meals. This helps me slow down as I've always
| been a rapid eater and suffered indigestion; I also enjoy the
| food more as a result. The grace prayer is gratitude to God in
| whom I no longer believe. But I think acknowledging the
| enormous role played by pure chance in our lives is very
| important.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I am the opposite of you, a lapsed atheist I suppose. And I
| noticed that among the religious there is an openness to
| professing gratitude about everything. Amongst my secular
| friends, there is rarely a time anyone professes thankfulness
| (outside receiving something new).
|
| It's not as if the latter are ingrates, but the social ritual
| of showing gratitude is not there among them, and maybe in
| some small way, that does breed less thankfulness in the long
| run...
| vladms wrote:
| What is for you the purpose (or result) of (undirected)
| thankfulness?
|
| I find religious people passionate about following the
| rituals of their religion (for many more than the
| intention), in a similar way as atheists are passionate
| about other rituals (their sport, their eating routines,
| etc.).
|
| For me the absence of thankfulness equals more with
| awareness. Should I be thankful I have a house? I prefer to
| be annoyed other people don't have, or that I can't do
| better (ex: have a house that generates less carbon, etc.).
| tempodox wrote:
| I found this to be a good answer:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41667503
| anon291 wrote:
| There's a major problem with having too little of a sense
| of agency. From that we see cycles of poverty and
| violence from people who seem unable to help themselves.
| I think this problem is widely recognized.
|
| There's however also a problem with too much agency. It
| breeds anxiety, discontent, unhappiness. Not everything
| in your life is under your control, and expressing
| undirected gratitude is one way of acknowledging that.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| The purpose? To remember that what we have was given to
| us. To be grateful we were given the gift of life. To be
| grateful that it was given with intention and not
| randomly.
|
| The result? I definitely find it's helpful navigating the
| ups and downs in life. Like any other skill, if you
| practice gratitude you can be grateful even when you've
| had a significant loss, and it really helps you pull
| through that. Vice versa you can remain humble through
| significant improvements in life.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| I think acknowledging the huge role played by chance in
| your home ownership (and elsewhere in your life) is very
| important to stay humble, and to have more correct
| beliefs and fewer incorrect ones. I call it gratitude.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| The older I get the more I wonder about how strange it is to
| be anything at all. How crazy it is to take it for granted.
|
| I was dead for what we assume to be billions of years since
| this universe popped up, and soon I will be for what we
| understand to be far, far longer. These moment are precious,
| and those meals and the people we share them with are too. It
| makes so much sense to express gratitude for them.
|
| That little moment to remind yourself that it's all borrowed
| from the universe and will need to be given back is, I think,
| essential to actually living. Without that appreciation, does
| any of it really matter at all? Without it you're only
| seeking the next thing to desire. Eventually there won't be a
| next thing to desire, and you'll have never had a chance to
| savour any of it.
| rnd33 wrote:
| That's an interesting perspective, and it makes sense it
| works. Thankfulness is known to provide a lot of
| psychological benefits, such as greater appreciation of the
| thing you are thankful for.
|
| Where it goes wrong though is if we take it too far and start
| connecting this to some non-existent deity, which in turn
| makes us construct an incorrect model of the world (such as
| if we're not thankful for the food, then next year there will
| be a drought as a punishment).
|
| I suppose codifying beneficial practices into religion or
| spiritual beliefs is just part of being human.
| anon291 wrote:
| I think you're attempting to indict Christianity via a
| faulty understanding of its most basic precepts.
|
| > (such as if we're not thankful for the food, then next
| year there will be a drought as a punishment).
|
| It's funny that you mention this, because two thousand
| years ago, a new religious movement came up that believed
| exactly that (Christianity).
| nebulous1 wrote:
| Why not use a more suitable speech?
|
| Also, I think it depends on how you come to these rituals. If
| it's just something you grew up with there's a good chance
| it's just some words you stumble through before a meal.
| fdfgyu wrote:
| Try saying an Our Father before going to bed. As a
| therapeutic.
|
| It has the advantage that it is compatible with most (all?)
| preligions, certainly the Abrahamic ones.
|
| Try it as a therapeutic. To release all the angst and
| problems before going to bed.
|
| (If you recall your catechesis, that's laying your your
| problems at the feet of the cross)
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I'm not particularly religious, but I was raised catholic and
| I try to go to church with the kids every sunday. I view the
| ceremonies (especially church) as a meditative process. You
| train your psyche to associate the ceremony with entering
| into a particular mind state. Its not so much the specific
| words you are saying as much as it is the process.
| highwayman47 wrote:
| In a couple of years people will feel the same way about
| college athletes being compensated.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I don't think it's the same though. College athletes don't
| get addicted to being paid for the work they put in to
| attract paying spectators, and they don't ruin their families
| lives with that addiction
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| There was already tons of money in college sports, having the
| same overall corrupting influence. Just that the students
| themselves didn't get any of it.
|
| If we want less money around college sports there need to be
| a lot more rules all over the place to make sure there is
| less profit to be had. Or we could just let people get paid
| for labor even though they are also students, which is the
| fair things to do and it's something we do in just about
| every other context.
| fdfgyu wrote:
| It's already ruined college sports, but the old regime was
| abusive.
|
| Million dollar salaries for the coach, hundreds of millions
| poured into the administration all on the backs of kids who
| were ruining their health (bad hits, concussions) had no
| benefits, and nothing to show for it after the left [1].
|
| It was abusive
|
| [1] their college tuition was free, but they weren't given an
| education since they were expected to train 40 hr and TAs
| were expected to give free passing grades.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Can you explain more? not a huge sports guy but isn't this an
| entirely different thing? I've been looking at that situation
| (from a distance) as messy but overall good to see people
| compensated for their labor and the physical risks they take
| on
| highwayman47 wrote:
| When the top player makes over $1M and 80% make nothing -
| how does that help with the point of sports.
| asah wrote:
| Sadly, I'm not sure there's a correlation here: a lot of these
| learnings and restrictions are newer than secularism.
| anon291 wrote:
| I think this is honestly ahistorical. While many Christian
| (speaking about what I know) philosophies would certainly not
| label gambling a virtue, it's also not widely considered
| innately sinful. Yes you can do it poorly, but it was always a
| tolerated evil. I'm not aware of any place other than the
| puritanical places like America where it's even enters much
| into the legal discourse. As far as I'm aware, the 'old world'
| which you reference -- to this day -- has much laxer gambling
| laws than America. Imagine my surprise when I go to Europe and
| gambling is everywhere.
| keiferski wrote:
| Most of Europe is more secular / less religious than America,
| so I don't know why it would be surprising that they have
| more lax gambling laws. That only supports my point. It has
| nothing to do with the geographical Old World.
| anon291 wrote:
| Even in Europe's religious past, gambling was tolerated.
| The prohibitions on gambling are uniquely american. In
| general, America is very puritanical about a wealth of
| topics (and not just socially conservative ones), which is
| -- in my opinion -- a result of the descendants of the
| puritans losing their religion but not their genetic
| predisposition towards fanaticism.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| this presumes everyone is going to the same conclusions about
| these things
| carapace wrote:
| _" Of vices I am Gambling."_
|
| ~Krishna, Gita
| djmips wrote:
| You think?
| devonsolomon wrote:
| I worked briefly building sports betting software after being a
| part of an acquisition at a major brand.
|
| The biggest surprise for me was that the people running the
| company were gamblers too. If someone beat them, then they wanted
| to beat them back (which made no sense to me... given that the
| statistics are running over the group, not an individual). If
| someone beat them badly, then it was okay because it's good
| marketing (and the player would always bring that money back,
| they'd say). They would also say "all gamblers are addicts".
| Rivalry with their players high, respect low... Except perhaps
| for their "Whales" where the social contract between the two
| parties was more explicit. Also worth noting that from what is
| saw, 80% of revenue comes from <10% of players.
|
| There is no differentiation to the company between sports, slots,
| lotteries and other games.There are no noble games, just ways to
| extract money from confused or vulnerable people. Crash games
| seem to be deluding people the most currently.
|
| I don't believe it's possible for these companies to behave
| anything close to ethically. Regardless of regulation, the
| business model is corrupt.
|
| At conferences anyone I spoke to would say "you can't leave the
| gaming industry, the money is just too good". Which is why I
| promptly left.
| renewiltord wrote:
| All the arguments here apply stronger to alcohol prohibition.
| Terrible drug. Banned in Islam for a reason. Source of domestic
| violence. Source of drink driving. Valueless. I am very
| libertarian but this drug must be banned.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Thanks for letting me decide.
| injidup wrote:
| I was just talking about this issue last night with a friend.
|
| When I was six, my father burned me with a lesson. We were at a
| fairground, and I saw a pyramid of cans. The standard game: throw
| a ball and knock em down. At six years old, I was already a good
| throw. I knew I could win. My father made me an offer. He gave me
| the money for the game and told me that was my lunch money. If I
| won, I'd get both lunch and the win otherwise .....
|
| Of course, even the best six-year-old has a very low chance of
| knocking over those weighted cans. The house wins. I went hungry
| that day.
|
| Since then, I've had a terrible reaction to gambling. Casinos
| make me feel ill just walking through and seeing all the sad
| faces. I've never bought a lottery ticket in my life. I always
| feel that hungry belly when I think of gambling and it turns me
| right off.
| cheschire wrote:
| Little did you know at the time that your father was also
| gambling. His bet was against you. His reward was that you
| would align to his views.
|
| Had his gamble failed, you would've been addicted at a young
| age to that rush, and his authority on many life matters
| would've been diminished in your young eyes.
| lucianbr wrote:
| Many choices in life have some risk and some odds of failing.
| Calling them all gambling is plain wrong. Are you gambling
| that you will not be implicated in an accident every time you
| leave your home? There's definitely a risk, and a significant
| number of people lose every day.
|
| Or maybe the odds do matter, as does the existence of a house
| that manipulates them.
| nbardy wrote:
| This is baseless cynicism.
| jjulius wrote:
| Not only is this baseless cynicism as another comment said
| (and, hey, I'm one hell of a cynic), but it also makes _wild_
| assumptions, based on absolutely nothing, about how the
| father would 've handled the situation had he won.
|
| That's not really an A/B scenario, there are a variety of
| outcomes there.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I have a 7 year old, and I think the parent is right. It
| would be _very_ hard to unwind the winning experience from
| the psyche of a kid. They 'd be talking about it for months
| - maybe even years. My kid still talks about the run-of-
| the-mill soccer goal he scored three weeks ago.
|
| Parent is dramatizing it, and one event probably wouldn't
| make _that_ much of a difference in life outcome, but I
| think there's a valuable lesson here. The dad _was_
| gambling.
| lacrosse_tannin wrote:
| I'm a little more concerned about the withholding food from a
| child because they couldn't throw a ball well enough
| ocean_moist wrote:
| People highly underestimate the number of 18-21 year olds sports
| gambling. At college it seems like slightly over 50% of the guys
| I meet do. Some just using pick 'ems but it's not uncommon for
| them to use their parents identity to get on real sport books.
| The somewhat "nerdy" ones also just use crypto. Some are terribly
| in the gutter, I told my friend that India was all but guaranteed
| to win the chess olympiad and he bet on it somehow...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| One thing that's not often talked about is how heavily gendered
| gambling addiction is - with something like 2/3 of gamblers
| being male[1] and an even more skewed ratio for problem
| gambling.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4736715/#:~:te
| x....
| braza wrote:
| Two interesting things that I noticed from the betting industry:
|
| 1) In Brazil there's an entire industry of athlete's from lower
| divisions and agents that sells transient results that is taken
| in consideration in the bets.
|
| For instance, number of corner kicks, number of fouls, yellow
| cards and so on. It's hard to trace it back the intention and
| there's a player from the National Team being investigated due to
| betting patterns [1].
|
| With 80% of players earning less than USD 300 [2] when someone
| have the offer to take USD 10000 to receive 3 yellow cards in 5
| games, it's hard to say no for those guys.
|
| 2) The problem that I see with the regulation is that not only in
| the sporting and social aspects (that is bad) but the money
| laundering and the lack of tracing in the money that goes in bet
| houses.
|
| For instance, Germany has some regulation around the topic [3]
| but the reality if you go in some Tipico or some small bet house
| you can carry EUR 10000 and bet in anything, no questions asked;
| that's the reason why a lot of people around the world come to
| Germany for sports betting [4].
|
| Anecdotally speaking, an old colleague used to manage some
| players in Brazilian 3rd division and he had some connections
| with folks in places like Germany. Before the game he already
| knew the bets and then just told to the players what needs to be
| done (e.g. I want a penalty kick after 80min, or a yellow card
| before 70 minutes) and after the bet being payed the agent just
| passed the money to the players (more or less 30%).
|
| [1] - https://onefootball.com/de/news/fa-want-to-ban-lucas-
| paqueta...
|
| [2] - https://g1.globo.com/trabalho-e-
| carreira/noticia/2022/12/04/...
|
| [3] - https://cms.law/en/int/expert-guides/cms-expert-guide-to-
| onl...
|
| [4] - https://n1info.rs/biznis/fatf-nemacka-raj-za-pranje-novca-
| go...
| spurgu wrote:
| What the fuck do you have against people "ruining their lives"?
|
| I've made a ton of bad decisions in the course of my life. And
| I'm all richer for it. Don't take that away from me.
|
| I despise the nanny state policies of my homeland Finland. I've
| been a nomad for the past decade and a half due to it because I
| don't want to settle down in a place where people think they
| should be able to force other people to not make what they (or
| "the majority") think are stupid decisions.
|
| You will _always_ find justifications once you start going down
| the rabbit hole of "what's best for them".
| left-struck wrote:
| I believe that making mistakes is an integral part of learning
| and the way our society views failure is totally wrong. When
| you're failing as often as you are succeeding this means you
| are operating at or near your limit, absolutely something to be
| proud of.
|
| None of that applies to gambling though. Not only is there
| nothing to learn from failing that you couldn't have learnt
| before placing a bet, but success could mean addiction and the
| eventual ruination of your life and the lives of those you
| love.
| spurgu wrote:
| > None of that applies to gambling though.
|
| Are you sure about that?
|
| > Not only is there nothing to learn from failing that you
| couldn't have learnt before placing a bet
|
| Just look at investing with fake money portfolios vs. making
| decisions with real money. Or playing poker with play money.
| It's a whole different game mentally and some lessons you
| just don't learn unless you got a real stake in it.
|
| > but success could mean addiction and the eventual ruination
| of your life and the lives of those you love.
|
| In my case my success (in poker) led to a prosperous career
| playing professionally. No lives ruined. YMMV.
|
| Poker, or sportsbetting, is not gambling any more than
| investing in the stock market is, or choosing a spouse. Sure,
| you _can_ gamble and YOLO your life savings on either of
| them. But you can also learn to make better decisions, the
| hard way. Or try and fail and lose money in the process.
| Rather than having a small set of "safe" pre-chosen options
| laid out for everyone.
|
| Disclaimer: Games where you play against the house (that has
| an edge) like slots or roulette _is_ gambling. But again,
| just because there are people playing slots to make a profit
| doesn 't mean that we should ban being an idiot. Life is
| dangerous and you will eventually die from it. This is more
| of a personal philosophical opinion than a "what's best for
| people" one (which I think is wrong).
| left-struck wrote:
| Poker involves skill, I was not talking about poker. Unless
| you're unskilled, in which case it's gambling. Poker done
| right is a process in which safe failure can lead to skill
| growth.
|
| Yes, investing on the stock market can be gambling, unless
| you have inside information or are extremely knowledgeable,
| you're not going to beat a monkey. Investing in a diverse
| portfolio where you're basically betting on the entire
| market growing is different.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I know people who got burned with bets or risky investments
| and stopped doing that.
|
| I also know plenty of failures who are addicted to gambling
| and drugs.
|
| Gambling, like all drugs, is a mental health / attitude
| problem.
|
| Life is shit for most people and they think winning big is
| the only way they'll escape that - and if I lose some money,
| oh hey, I was poor before, I'm still poor.
|
| We need to put the blame on education and society raising
| mindless zombies good only to be employees for 40 years and
| pay off their mortgage (in the best case scenario).
| odiroot wrote:
| A secondary effect is also a new venue for money laundering. In
| some EU countries it's pretty much an open secret.
| alephnan wrote:
| There are various comments about fixing matches.
|
| There's a meme/"theory" in retail options trading about "max
| pain". Wherein, the stock price will move as to maximize the
| total amount people lose on options.
| akhileshwar09 wrote:
| yes ,, this is not a good thing to gamble
| t-3 wrote:
| So, gambling can ruin lives, sure, but the only reason lives are
| ruined is that money is so essential to everything in life. The
| problem isn't that our brains love to take risks and get immense
| pleasure from winning against the odds, it's that society is set
| up so that we can easily destroy our lives by doing otherwise
| harmless things that feel good. It very much reminds me of that
| Iain Banks quote: "Money implies poverty."
|
| The sooner we get rid of money, the sooner people will just bet
| their imaginary internet points on internet gambling instead of
| their real life right-to-live-points, and everybody will be
| better off.
| Rygian wrote:
| Money is not the issue here. If something different, call it
| 'X', had a similar impact on life, then people would gable with
| 'X'.
| t-3 wrote:
| If 'X' had a similar impact on life to money, it wouldn't be
| 'X' it would be 'money'. Not to mention, the claim that
| people will only gamble for real-life money is absurd. I've
| found gambling in various video games is just as enjoyable as
| gambling in real life, the only difference is the reward for
| winning is video-game-points and not money.
| cambaceres wrote:
| Why not get rid of unhappiness while you're at it? Just do it
| man, I'm sure you can figure out how.
| DanielHB wrote:
| It is crazy to think that many countries ban cigarette
| advertising but not sports betting. The same moral and social
| arguments can be made for both, so why different rules?
| concordDance wrote:
| The elephant in the room is that there are a small percentage of
| people (1% or so) who just can't function in the modern hyper-
| optimized, complex and competitive world. The state should take
| over the management of the finances of these people.
| dkrich wrote:
| I actually think this will be a self correcting problem.
|
| Contrary to popular belief, running a sportsbook is a terrible
| business. Look at draftkings for instance. They've gotten
| gambling legalized nearly everywhere yet are still wildly
| unprofitable.
|
| I guarantee you that they will never be profitable unless they
| are granted a monopoly which will never happen.
|
| It's fairly obvious. If you travel to Vegas and go to the Aria,
| one of the premier casinos on the strip, you will have to walk
| around to find the sportsbook. When you do you may be surprised
| to see that it's not out in the center of the floor inviting
| people in, it's in a dark remote enclosed corner that feels like
| a large coat room.
|
| Now ask yourself why that would be? And why do casinos devote so
| much floor space to slot machines and table games?
|
| Betting apps offer the terrible aspects of running a book-
| relatively unwealthy gamblers with the inability to cross
| subsidize more profitable games and alcohol along with the added
| drag of attracting disloyal users who can and will easily use
| other books to compare lines or take advantage of promos.
| CarVac wrote:
| Does the "correction" you speak of involve business failures
| and acquisitions until a monopoly does exist?
| dkrich wrote:
| its going to end with these companies going towards zero and
| then possibly being acquired by private equity
| RandallBrown wrote:
| > They've gotten gambling legalized nearly everywhere yet are
| still wildly unprofitable.
|
| They're predicted to profit more than $400 million in 2025.
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/draftkings-inc-nasdaq-dkng-br...
|
| Somewhat like Amazon in its early days, their lack of profits
| was mostly because they were investing their money into growing
| the company. DraftKings spends hundreds of dollars to acquire
| each customer.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Gambling ruins lives.
|
| We could solve that by banning/restricting gambling.
|
| But it seems that's just a patch on the bigger problem: That our
| citizens are insufficiently educated to see what is ruining their
| life and stay away from it.
|
| Sure, some people waste all their money on gambling. But others
| waste all their money on drugs. Or theme park rides. Or model
| trains.
|
| Would it not be better to have better training not to waste all
| your resources on something that doesn't benefit you?
| afh1 wrote:
| "Because some people are irresponsible, responsible people should
| be prohibited of taking risky actions responsibly."
|
| It's the same with the prohibition of alcohol.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Banning is the wrong way to go. It just moves everything to black
| market.
|
| Regulation, however, might be OK. In the UK we are now at a stage
| where bookmakers have to do Know Your Customer (KYC), checks to
| do identity validation, you can't gamble with credit cards (debit
| cards are fine), and "VIP Schemes" to incentivize those who
| gamble the most to gamble more are not allowed. All sites have
| voluntary limits for players on deposits or timeouts, and a lot
| of TV ad spots are about staying in control of your gambling.
|
| What's interesting is that most of this (except KYC and CC
| deposits), are not government-mandated - the industry has gone
| down a path of self regulation to try and keep the government out
| of it.
|
| There's expected to be some announcements in this space in coming
| months, and there is a fear of "affordability checks" being
| mandated - to bet above, say PS100/month, you'll need to show
| bank statements that indicate you can afford a higher level of
| betting. The fear is that this will just mean rich business for
| the offshore black market guys on WhatsApp and Telegram who are
| ready to move in.
|
| I think what might actually be a better solution is for us to
| talk more widely about "value", and educating bettors. There is
| little value in slots or casino games - you will rarely, if ever,
| be in a place to get +EV on those, and when those situations do
| arise it requires an incredible amount of expertise and insight
| to exploit them, far more than Hollywood or the books you may
| read suggest you need (Ed Thorpe invented the World's first
| wearable computer to get +EV on roulette).
|
| However, sports betting is different. Value is often there,
| waiting to be found. Particularly on prop bets. If you're
| prepared to do the work in figuring it out, you will either win,
| or lose more slowly.
|
| As such, I'd argue more education and more controls around bad
| habits seems a better way to go than banning it outright.
|
| But then, I'm happy to do that work, I enjoy it, it's fun. Most
| people don't, and they're losing money to me and people like me
| via a commission agent (the bookmaker).
| rty32 wrote:
| Silly take: humans are really bad at controlling themselves and
| stick to doing the correct things, that's why newer languages
| like Go and Rust force you to check errors in return values,
| among many other additional checks/guardrails that didn't exist
| or weren't common in older languages. It is just easier to have
| the compiler checks these things for you instead of manually
| making sure things are correct. Same for sports gambling. Human
| nature is really _bad_ , and it is really hard to control
| yourself. See that wsj reporting. Even someone as rich and
| educated as a psychiatrist can sink 6 digit amount of money into
| gambling. When the law allowed gambling, especially online
| gambling, it opened a can of worms.
| sneak wrote:
| If human nature is truly that inherently bad and dangerous,
| then the worst possible thing we could do is to allow adult
| human beings to rule over other adult human beings as their
| parent, using the threat of violence to prevent them from doing
| things "for their own good".
|
| Indeed, allowing this to occur has wrought orders of magnitude
| more death and destruction than sports gambling or drug use or
| prostitution.
|
| no victim == no crime
| rty32 wrote:
| If I understand your comment correctly, you are saying laws
| are bad, and decriminalization/deregulation is good
|
| I would very much like to believe that. But see what happened
| in Oregon after decriminalizing drugs.
| sneak wrote:
| Look what happened in Mexico and California and many other
| places after criminalizing them.
|
| They are not the same thing. One causes huge amounts of
| murder and violence, and the other is simply people
| destroying their own selves, as is their right.
|
| Almost _all_ of the gun crime in the US is the direct
| result of the prohibitions on the sale and manufacture of
| drugs.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I used to think this, but do you really see the
| liberalization of gambling laws as having a positive effect?
| Would you describe the previous state of it being illegal as
| some kind of dystopia? Do you care at all about the wreckage
| it creates in the lives of individuals and their families?
| sneak wrote:
| I think laws should be viewed from the lens of human rights
| and the idea of what might be an actual justifiable
| application of violence, and not a naive "positive effect".
|
| It would have a positive effect if I went around summarily
| executing everyone accused of child exploitation, for
| example, but it would be insane and unjust. There's a
| reason we don't do it that way.
|
| Threatening people with violence for what other people view
| as misapplication of their own resources is incredibly
| unjust.
|
| If you don't have the freedom to destroy yourself or your
| own resources, you don't have freedom.
|
| It isn't the legal system that causes this wreckage
| (although you might disagree, "lifting" a ban isn't an
| action - it's cessation of the threat of future enforcement
| action), and it isn't the legal system that is the
| appropriate solution to the problem. All bans are,
| practically, are the threat of someone pulling out a gun to
| force you to stop. If you personally aren't willing to go
| to that length, you shouldn't vote for or support such
| policies.
|
| Are you willing to pull a gun on an addict to stop them
| from indulging in their addiction? If not, what possible
| moral justification do you have for instructing a cop to do
| same?
| snapcaster wrote:
| If stats showed that instances of gambling related social
| ills increased massively after liberalization would that
| impact you at all? is your ideology truly consequence-
| free?
|
| edit: Also yes, I would use physical violence to stop
| someone I cared about from destroying their lives with
| gambling if it would help. I would hope for the sake of
| your loved ones you would be willing to do the same
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| I do not have to be willing to take out a gun for the
| ban, and neither does a cop. Cessation of easy online
| gambling would be enough for some high proportion of the
| problem. All that takes is the court shutting the company
| down and serving a cease and desist to their website. You
| may claim this requires a gun but as far as I know that's
| never been the case.
| bisRepetita wrote:
| This is not so much than human are "really bad" at this. Here
| they're facing other human (scientists, psychologists, artists,
| marketers), computers, algorithms, spending all their waking
| hours devising scheme to make them addicted.
|
| The C language may not help you much with clean memory
| allocation, but at least they are not using A/B testing and
| emotional appeal to coerce you into doing deadly memory
| management.
| jjice wrote:
| Sorry for the nitpick but I'm curious if I'm off here:
|
| > that's why newer languages like Go and Rust force you to
| check errors in return values
|
| Go doesn't require you check return values though, no? I can
| get a return of type (*Model, error) and just completely ignore
| the error portion of it and never check it. Rust doesn't let
| you access the value until you deal with the Result/Option
| wrapper, requiring that you at least acknowledge the potential
| for an error.
| jakevoytko wrote:
| The language doesn't force it but some common tooling does.
| They probably are using something like staticcheck in their
| setup and conflating it with the core language.
| da_chicken wrote:
| I don't necessarily think legalizing the gambling was a mistake.
| Vices are notoriously difficult to manage whether they're legal
| or illegal.
|
| But legalizing _advertising_ for sports gambling was _definitely_
| a mistake.
| tiptup300 wrote:
| I would argue that they are the same thing.
| verdverm wrote:
| It's more that gambling is now in the pocket and they have
| expanded what you can gamble on, like 12 year olds playing
| baseball
| eadmund wrote:
| Legalising it? No.
|
| Normalising it? Yes.
|
| Unfortunately, our culture seems to have two settings: legal ban;
| full celebratory embrace. We don't seem to be able to handle
| tolerating and discouraging (see smoking, which is slowly being
| banned across the once-civilised world).
|
| Should the awesome power of the State be deployed to wield
| violence against people who bet money on sports? No, that's
| insane. Should there be half a dozen betting ads every hour on
| primetime TV? No, that's crazy too.
| SammyStacks wrote:
| >> Unfortunately, our culture seems to have two settings: legal
| ban; full celebratory embrace.
|
| If something is legally banned, there's generally a black
| market for it. Once it's legalized, the bar for consumers to
| enter the market is nearly eliminated; large companies can pour
| a ton of money into gaining new users in the legal market and
| moving users from the black market to the legal market.
|
| >> Should there be half a dozen betting ads every hour on
| primetime TV? No, that's crazy too.
|
| It's even worse than that. There are betting ads during the
| actual game broadcast. Commentators read ads listing various
| odds on the current game. Betting companies sponsor a ton of
| stuff related to the teams and leagues. ESPN (Disney) both
| broadcasts games and runs its own sportsbook. You can't watch a
| sports game without hearing about betting on that game itself,
| much less sports in general.
| steviedotboston wrote:
| Prior to legalized sports betting, was "state violence" used
| against people who bet on sports as a casual hobby? It seems
| like it was basically tolerated as long as it was kept amongst
| friends/coworkers, etc.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Not the bettors as much as the organizations facilitating it.
| eadmund wrote:
| > Prior to legalized sports betting, was "state violence"
| used against people who bet on sports as a casual hobby?
|
| Yes: Sal Culosi was shot and killed by police in Virginia for
| wagering more than $2,000:
| https://reason.com/2011/01/17/justice-for-sal/
|
| I am certain that there are more -- that's just one which
| leaps to mind.
| causal wrote:
| This is specifically about something that is very addictive.
| Moderation was never a likely outcome.
| TomMasz wrote:
| They eliminated the "friction" associated with sports betting,
| threw in some easy credit and the result was exactly what you'd
| expect.
| valval wrote:
| I have nothing against gambling as a libertarian, but I don't
| want to be liable for people who made poor life choices. I don't
| want to pay for the welfare of people who ruined their financials
| or health, nor do I want to look at homeless people on my
| commute.
|
| If what we're going to have is a society where I'm paying for the
| housing and health care of other people, I'd like to be able to
| dictate with an iron fist what the other people are allowed to do
| and be.
| misja111 wrote:
| How about alcohol consumption? That surely ruins a lot of lives
| as well and causes loads of health issues.
| Meniceses wrote:
| This is a really great: You don't mind when companies optimize
| for making money even if a company makes other people addicted
| to gambling or similiar things but then you don't want to help
| these people because its the peoples fault.
|
| You know why you think like this? Because you are, by accident,
| on the side which benefits most of libertarianism.
|
| You really think a human becomes homeless because of 'poor life
| choices'? No. They become homeless because they never got a
| chance, have neurological issues, bad parents, bad upbringing,
| whatever.
|
| Its a lot easier to be a libertarian when you won the birth
| lottery... Man you are ignorant
| misja111 wrote:
| Sure sports gambling ruins some lives. So do alcohol, fast food,
| you name it. Does this mean all of those should be forbidden?
|
| In the end these things are a trade-off: a very large part of the
| population has no problems with them and enjoys being able to
| gamble/drink or eat. A small portion does have serious problems.
|
| Should these people be protected against themselves, at the price
| of forbidden most people their little pleasure? Personally, I
| think not.
| xandrius wrote:
| Alcohol is definitely regulated and fast food is too a broad
| term to mean anything.
|
| But yeah, gambling should also be heavily regulated (as
| alcohol) and it is far from a "little pleasure", it can easily
| become an addition even without throwing around ads, free first
| bets and gamification.
| misja111 wrote:
| Regulating gambling is a good idea, but most people here seem
| to be talking about forbidding. I find that odd, compare it
| with the general opinion here about soft drugs, there HN
| seems to be pro-legalization.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Brazil took long to allow it and now its spreading like wildfire!
|
| In September, the central bank released a report revealing that
| in August, 20% of Bolsa Familia -- the largest cash transfer
| program for Brazil's poorest citizens -- was spent on betting.
|
| Out of the 20 million recipients, 5 million placed bets during
| that month, amounting to 2 billion reais (approximately $450
| million) spent in just one month by the most vulnerable
| Brazilians.
|
| Every day we are reading reports of family loosing their cars and
| saving because kids were betting, which is crazy.
|
| https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/business/2024...
| imgabe wrote:
| I think the best equilibrium is probably when gambling is illegal
| but unofficially tolerated as long as it doesn't cause too many
| problems.
|
| Some people are going to gamble, but it should be dangerous. You
| should have to deal with the mob. It should reflect the risk
| inherent in gambling. It should be understood as a kind of shady
| and degenerate thing to do, not like a normal hobby.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| looking at wallstreetbets is it any different than allowing
| people to speculate in the stock market with options and
| derivatives. Its sad when it comes to sports people took notice
| that oh its ruining their sport but why dont they see how this
| same gambling is ruining their own countries and world economies.
| xrd wrote:
| I used to love watching basketball. I hate all the ads now and
| don't want to have my kids see that.
|
| But, what's the alternative?
|
| Going to a live event, for two bad teams, for four people, cost
| me over $500 a year ago. I can't afford that.
|
| Youth sports?
|
| I live in Florida, and was hoping Jai Alai
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jai_alai) would be a weird
| respite, but that was the original gamblers refuge.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Simple question: isn't risk taking a part of most people's lives?
| Speeding on the highway and jaywalking may seem harmless, but can
| have dire results at times. Other risky behaviors can spin out of
| control sometimes before you have a chance to understand how it
| all went so bad as quickly as it did!
|
| I've known several gambling addicts down through the years, the
| damage they did to their financial and family lives was tragic.
| Divorce was almost a given, homelessness occurred on several
| occasions. Being shunned by their parents and siblings sometimes
| followed after money was borrowed and never paid back.
|
| Two things I never could understand after all the above. First, I
| couldn't get any of them to attend GA meetings after I offered to
| attend with them and second, why they ever thought they had a
| chance to win consistently in any gambling endeavor when the
| gamble itself is connected to a computer. (Yes, I'm saying
| cheating _can_ be involved. Imagine!)
| tokai wrote:
| >Speeding on the highway and jaywalking may seem harmless
|
| These two are not at all the same, and one is much more
| dangerous and asocial than the other.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They're also a terrible comparison to gambling because the
| participant can massively reduce the risk compared to the
| baseline by having the "skill" to not take the risk when the
| odds are particularly bad, like not jaywalking through
| traffic that's blinded by sun whereas with pretty much every
| form of gambling you can only change the risk very slightly
| if at all.
| lucianbr wrote:
| > why they ever thought they had a chance to win consistently
|
| > isn't risk taking a part of most people's lives?
|
| Do you not see how these things are different? Leaving the
| house contains a risk of an accident, but the "you don't stand
| a chance of winning" certainly does not apply.
|
| Many comments in this thread seem blind to this nuance, yet I
| wonder how one can go through life without understanding that
| not all risks are the same. I imagine one would die pretty
| fast.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| > Speeding on the highway and jaywalking
|
| Are both illegal, because of the risk they pose.
| alphazard wrote:
| The biggest argument in favor of sports betting is that it's a
| prediction market.
|
| Prediction markets are the best way we know of to synthesize the
| opinions of many parties. They should be protected as a class of
| economic free speech, but in the US there is an effort to
| eliminate prediction markets on the most important issues (like
| the outcome of an election).
|
| Think about what it implies for the government to be against a
| kind of organized assembly that causes citizens to become more
| informed and allows individuals to de-risk the outcome of events.
| tantalor wrote:
| Predicting the outcome of a sporting event is pointless.
|
| There is zero risk associated with the result.
| snapcaster wrote:
| The older I get the more I hate gambling. When i was younger I
| tended to think "hey it's their choice" but i've realized how
| unfair our society is in terms of things like this.
|
| Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant well
| paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they make
| money. On the other side is just regular people like us stressed
| out trying to survive.
|
| This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge power
| asymmetry and I think "we the people" need protection from these
| forces
| tdb7893 wrote:
| Yeah, the issue with "it's their choice" is that through
| addictive behaviors they are trying to take away that sort of
| agency from people. I don't have an issue with gambling in
| general but I have a huge issue with people trying to trigger
| and profit from addicting behaviors. It's a phenomenally cruel
| thing to do to people.
| tootie wrote:
| It's very analogous to drug use. The libertarian point of
| view that people should be free to do what they want with
| their own bodies makes sense at first blush. But addiction is
| such an absolute blight on society that ending it will only
| improve the world.
| dcow wrote:
| Yeah. I think there must be a balance between let the cyber
| hippies watch trees grow and needle service for addicts. I
| don't even think legalizing weed is aging well.
| card_zero wrote:
| Wait, which of those is libertarians?
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Drug abuse is lower where people have a strong sense of
| community. Drug overuse is a symptom of a larger issue of
| disconnection and disillusionment. Legislating drug use is
| like saying "the beatings will continue until morale
| improves."
| snapcaster wrote:
| No it isn't, it's very straightforward in every single
| civilization that has experienced it. humans + opiates =
| misery. it's not like we're some kind of paragons of
| logic and rationality we're animals and these are
| exploits
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| I wouldn't use opiates as an example of causing misery.
| The opium poppy, for thousands of years, was a miracle
| plant to every society that knew of it. It allows anybody
| to have access to pain relief. Yes it can be misused.
| However, ALL opiates are still derived from the opium
| poppy. The ability for personal or commercial production
| of opium was removed from everybody by the US influenced
| UN policy. The UN now declares that three countries in
| the world are allowed to grow opium poppies to produce
| opium. That legal opium supposedly is used to create all
| of the worlds needed supply of pharmaceutical opiates.
| Every other country that grows Papaver Somniferum and
| processes it to opium is a target for military action to
| reduce the supply of illegal opiates. You see, the recent
| history of opium is a bit like an opium dream itself. A
| small number of people decided opium is evil and who gets
| to produce opiates and if you aren't on the list you are
| their enemy. This policy has done nothing to stop
| "illegal" production and use of opiates and has made a
| small number of people unimaginably wealthy while also
| creating the environment for "illegal" cartels, AKA
| competition, to flourish. Bayer first sold heroin as a
| less addictive morphine after all. In the name of
| enforcing the "allowed producers" list an innumerable
| amount of people trying to make a living by producing
| opium were killed. If it looks like a cartel and behaves
| like a cartel it might be a cartel.
|
| I don't even want to go into the proven CIA and FBI
| complicity in drug trafficking in the name of stopping
| "illegal" opiates or all the people in jail for using
| "illegal" opiates.
|
| Sure, opiates cause suffering. Its just mostly at the
| hands of a supranational cartel that we are part of. We
| aren't even allowed to grow the same plant in the US for
| seeds that many nations eat as a staple food. However,
| the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to grow or buy
| opium from India, Turkey, and Australia and sell millions
| of derivative opiate pills around the world. But, me
| being able to grow a handful of plants to produce my own
| pain medicine or domestic commercial production is the
| height of evil.
|
| If we were all allowed to produce opium personally or
| commercially we would effectively end the reasons for
| illegal opiate importers to exist, create jobs for our
| own people, and remove an immense amount of power from
| the UN and pharmaceutical companies. We would also remove
| the need for military adventurism in places like
| Afghanistan and Myanmar. As an aside, opium production in
| Afghanistan increased from 82,000ha to 233,000ha during
| US occupation, which I choose to believe was, mostly
| because we didn't care and the Taliban had been
| destroying opium crops.
|
| https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-
| analysis/bulletin/bu...
| achenatx wrote:
| when you punish drug use with prison, it is better for it
| to be legal.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| everything worth doing in life is addicting. you cant just
| ban/regulate dopamine producing activities
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Of course, but I think it's worth seriously evaluating the
| subset of those activities that have an especially large
| propensity for harm.
| midiguy wrote:
| Most dopamine producing activities are in some way
| beneficial in moderation to outweigh the negatives (sex,
| eating, exercise, even many recreational drugs). I don't
| know whether pointlessly bleeding money away to some greasy
| corporation counts there. That said I don't like telling
| people how they should waste their money but it seems there
| needs to be some form of a plan for problem gambling.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Agreed it feels like nothing more than taking advantaged of
| underprivileged people. There are likely people who have better
| means doing sports betting too but the way the ads are
| everywhere, I get mail from DraftKings even though I've never
| used it. Predatory is a good word for it. I feel similarly
| about state lotteries. The ads always manipulate people by
| making it seem like high-octane fun where people are just
| winning massive sums of money when the reality is you click a
| couple buttons and then allow random chance to decide whether
| or not your money disappears.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| I thought online sports gambling was predatory and then I
| heard about this little fact:
|
| If you win a lot, they'll effectively kick you off the
| platform, or make it non-economical to "play" by reducing
| your max bet sizes down to $1.
|
| Even more diabolical, and clear evidence this shit should be
| outlawed completely: _if you lose a lot_ , they will
| _increase your maximum bet size_
| currymj wrote:
| this pattern is a pretty defensible way to run a sports
| book. obviously you don't want to accept large bets from
| someone who is doing arbitrage or consistently has inside
| information.
|
| any business with variable prices works this way, if some
| mysterious person shows up to your car dealership and seems
| really excited to unload a bunch of used cars on you, you
| should feel nervous that you're overpaying or something is
| wrong with the cars.
|
| in my view the diabolical part is the predatory marketing
| tactics, and making gambling platforms ubiquitous.
|
| i say this as someone who, like you, thinks legalizing
| sports betting is an ongoing disaster, but wants the
| strongest arguments against it.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| People conceive of gambling as a game where the house
| typically has a slight edge through fees, information, or
| structural advantage in the game itself. I don't think
| this "ban if winning" behavior fits with people's model
| of "fairness" even in the intrinsically unfair world of
| gambling.
|
| I think a very good first step legislation would be to
| require disclosure of this behavior. Public appetite
| would probably be very strong and it wouldn't run afoul
| of any of the other "people should be free to play games"
| arguments. You _can_ play the game, but the owner of the
| game is required to disclose the rules of it.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Everyone knows you'll get banned for counting cards at
| Blackjack, but they don't have to catch you red handed.
| They just have to catch you winning too much. Fixing
| sporting events is very lucrative and there are criminals
| doing it. Probably not in the NFL, but it definitely
| happens still in individual sports like boxing. A blanket
| policy of banning people who win a statistically
| impossible amount seems reasonable.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| It's not "a statistically impossible amount." That sounds
| like another great regulation to put in place though. If
| they can prove cheating or statistical unlikeliness then
| go ahead.
|
| Regarding "everyone knows" - right! Does "everyone know"
| this about sports betting apps? If no, then they should.
| If yes, then no problem requiring unambiguous
| disclosures.
| currymj wrote:
| i think the number of random gamblers who get so
| consistently lucky that their bet size gets reduced, is
| probably quite small. this is because you usually lose
| money betting on sports, because sports betting is bad.
| it's mainly going to be people doing obvious arbitrage,
| and secondarily people who truly are professional
| gamblers.
|
| this can also be spun in a positive way: if that does
| ever happen, the bookies are literally forcing someone to
| quit when they are ahead! isn't that considerate of them.
|
| unfortunately, i think sports betting platforms just have
| many strong arguments that controlling bet sizes in this
| way is fine.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Then no harm done in requiring that disclosure before
| people make an account!
|
| Of course the entire business is built on creating the
| belief that a user can make a ton of money. Due to this
| mechanic, this is _an actual lie._
| spenczar5 wrote:
| If you think a sports book is a retailer, selling a
| product, sure.
|
| But sports books pitch themselves like brokers, giving
| fair access to bets. A brokerage-style betting market
| would be perhaps more fair (or at least, the sharks would
| take the rubes' money instead of the casino robbing them)
| but doesn't exist.
| currymj wrote:
| financial markets also work this way -- the current
| market price is for a limited quantity and if you trade
| the price will move.
|
| moreover people go to great lengths to try to avoid
| trading with winners.
|
| there have been cases where people's banks refuse to do
| any more foreign exchange trades with them when it
| becomes clear they are just arbitraging. it's exactly
| analogous to the sports book case.
| rs999gti wrote:
| > If you win a lot, they'll effectively kick you off the
| platform
|
| Insurance companies work the same way.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| But the sales pitch of insurance isn't "you can make tons
| of money!"
| bitfilped wrote:
| Casinos do the same thing, try playing a correct game of
| blackjack (which is the only game approaching fair odds in
| the place). You'll be backed off or the house will change
| the minimum of the table you're on all the while trying to
| extract your ID so they can get you added to their database
| of "advantaged" players.
| midiguy wrote:
| Poker is the only casino game approaching fair where a
| highly skilled player can be profitable as they are
| taking money from other players and not the casino
| (casino just collects their rake on every hand). But
| that's why casinos hate offering many poker tables, it's
| just not as profitable.
| lancesells wrote:
| Not even underprivileged people. It's literally everywhere in
| sports and any kids that watch it are getting inundated with
| betting and gambling terminology. I find it pretty gross but
| it's the gears of capitalism ever turning.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant
| well paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they
| make money. On the other side is just regular people like us
| stressed out trying to survive.
|
| Don't forget social media. I mean, we have some of the
| smartest, best paid people on the planet incentivized to use
| every bit of data they can to hack your evolutionary biology to
| keep you scroll, scroll, scrolling.
|
| I think one reason I've sadly become quite disillusioned with
| technology is because I see it less and less as a tool for
| improving the human condition, and more about creating
| addiction machines to siphon ever increasing amounts of money
| from the system.
| soderfoo wrote:
| > we have some of the smartest, best paid people on the
| planet incentivized to use every bit of data they can to hack
| your evolutionary biology...
|
| It's such a waste of a generation's talent. I think about
| this from time to time.
|
| What problems could we be solving? How much further would the
| cutting edge of innovation be? It's kind of depressing.
| chillingeffect wrote:
| On addition to thinking about "how much better could tech
| be" I insist we begin thinking abt "how much simpler and
| more peacefully could we live?"
|
| Why extract so many resources to run gambling and adtech
| servers? Why doom infants abroad to mining? Why invade
| international boundaries to get their resources?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Making tools for the powerful to use while they manipulate
| the weak is not merely a waste. It's actively harmful.
| We're summoning monsters today that we'll have to fight
| tomorrow.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| The really sad part is that they could even use that same
| technology for good AND profit. If it's true that (for
| example) the facebook algorithm knows if someone is
| depressed, people would pay real money for the algorithm to
| shape their behavior and mood for the better.
| jedberg wrote:
| Heh, people said the same thing in the 80s when all of our
| "greatest minds" were working in Finance.
|
| The last time our great minds were put to a task that most
| people agree bettered humanity was in the 60s, when working
| as a government scientist in the space program was
| considered the best job you could get.
| llm_trw wrote:
| That was mostly a cover to build rockets that could land
| more accurately on Moscow.
|
| I'd rather we have the gambling.
| mdasen wrote:
| I think this is part of the greater problem where companies
| eventually pivot from creating something new and meaningfully
| better for customers to figuring out how to extract a
| marginally larger share of the pie - having people work on
| redirecting value rather than creating value.
|
| Google creates its search engine and its meaningfully better.
| Even their creation of contextual text advertising was
| meaningfully better. But then they start pivoting: the ads
| have a different color background to distinguish them as ads;
| what if we got rid of that so that they looked like regular
| search results?
|
| YouTube brings video to people. Ads might be necessary to
| cover costs and make some money, but then you start pivoting
| to see exactly how much pain you can inflict with those ads
| before people turn away.
|
| Smart TVs allow people to stream content...and then they
| pivot to injecting ads everywhere and spying on what you're
| watching.
|
| For the companies, they pay someone $250,000 and that person
| makes $350,000 for the company and it's a net win for the
| company. However, sometimes people are employed creating
| additional value for society and other times people are
| employed redirecting value from one group to another.
|
| What you've hit upon is that we're having so many of the
| smartest, best paid people working on redirecting value
| rather than creating value. And this isn't limited to
| technology. Companies and people have been trying to do this
| forever. Kings would seek to figure out how they could
| extract the largest cut from nobles without getting
| dethroned. A ruler certainly can create value by ensuring
| wise governance, encouraging good use of public funds, and
| encouraging good investment in the future. They can also
| scheme to take a larger cut of the current pie.
|
| And that's a lot of the negative things that we notice:
| scheming to get more without really creating more value. We
| set KPIs (key performance indicators) for people who are used
| to ace'ing tests and they'll hit those marks whether it's
| useful for the customer (or even the company). One of the
| best examples of this that comes to mind is Facebook
| Messenger. For a while, anytime I added a friend on Facebook,
| I'd get a push notification on my phone from Facebook
| Messenger telling me that I could now chat with that person
| on Facebook Messenger. That little red "1" would stare at me
| until I opened the app to clear it. I can't be sure, but I'd
| bet that some PM had a KPI of increasing weekly active users
| on the app. They knew that if people had to clear a
| notification, more people would open the app each week. They
| probably crushed their numbers and got a big promotion -
| despite not actually creating value for users or for Facebook
| (since it wasn't real activity, just people trying to clear a
| notification). It's not always even companies redirecting
| value to them, sometimes it's individuals who have found a
| way of redirecting value from the company to themselves.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > companies eventually pivot
|
| no, business history is full of selling addictive products,
| using force against labor, and using trick language in
| agreements, to name a few examples. In other words, there
| is plenty of business history that starts from maximum
| exploitation. "pivot" is more like a gravitational
| attraction to maximum exploitation, not "pivot" IMO
| anthomtb wrote:
| > Don't forget social media. I mean, we have some of the
| smartest, best paid people on the planet incentivized to use
| every bit of data they can to hack your evolutionary biology
| to keep you scroll, scroll, scrolling.
|
| I remember this being said about NYC investment bankers
| (often Ivy League grads) during the 2007/2008 Great
| Recession.
|
| Around that time, Silicon Valley upstarts were seen as the
| altruistic alternative. Google, Facebook, whoever else was
| getting started around that time, were giving you a "free"
| service. Whereas Goldman Sachs and company were being broadly
| (and appropriately IMO) castigated for ruining lives and
| crippling the economy.
|
| It is interesting to have lived long enough to see the heroes
| turn into villains.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Somewhat related, the recruiting pitch from Jobs to get
| Pepsi's Sculley to work at Apple: "Do you want to sell
| sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and
| change the world?"
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Apple makes a lot of revenue from addictive games, but do
| they have employees working on or marketing those games?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _This isn 't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge
| power asymmetry and I think "we the people" need protection
| from these forces_
|
| No thank you, I can protect myself.
| stackghost wrote:
| >No thank you, I can protect myself.
|
| In many ways you actually cannot, in any reasonable way:
|
| - You cannot escape surveillance unless you completely (and I
| do mean completely) withdraw from modern society
|
| - You cannot protect yourself from subconscious manipulation
| by advertising and marketing firms that pay billions of
| dollars to find and exploit subconscious weaknesses that we
| all possess
|
| - You cannot protect yourself from sweeping changes made
| (e.g. to legislation) made in response to the interests of
| lobbyists or bad actors, and in consequence from changes in
| the behaviour of _others_ , in response
| ghastmaster wrote:
| > You cannot protect yourself from subconscious
| manipulation by advertising and marketing firms that pay
| billions of dollars to find and exploit subconscious
| weaknesses that we all possess
|
| By learning the techniques they employ, a subconscious
| manipulation by them, becomes a conscious observation by
| us. Education defeats these methods. An argument could be
| made that more money will be spent to continually find
| deeper subconscious manipulations. I would wager, the ROI
| would diminish quickly.
|
| I would rather be manipulated by private industry than
| controlled by government. I cannot out vote a majority, but
| I can out wit a billboard.
| stackghost wrote:
| >Education defeats these methods.
|
| It does not. For example young women and girls, even when
| knowing that an image of a fashion model is photoshopped,
| still exhibit drops in their self body image.
|
| >I would rather be manipulated by private industry than
| controlled by government.
|
| In many cases these two things are the same, due to the
| prevalence and efficacy of lobbying
|
| >I can out wit a billboard.
|
| Lots of people believe this, but it is false.
| debo_ wrote:
| I wanted to observe how great it is to see "ghastmaster"
| arguing with "stackghost."
| card_zero wrote:
| I liked that in the article, somebody with the name
| "Poet" grew up to be an economist.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| > It does not. For example young women and girls, even
| when knowing that an image of a fashion model is
| photoshopped, still exhibit drops in their self body
| image.
|
| In the natural world traits that are wasted on futile
| efforts are eventually not selected. In the human world,
| traits that are ripe for manipulation in a free market
| would result in lower purchasing power. Thus, less
| ability to afford children and pass on the traits.
| Subsidizing via regulations or direct support prolongs
| the subterfuge we are discussing here. Perhaps, in
| perpetuity.
|
| > In many cases these two things are the same, due to the
| prevalence and efficacy of lobbying
|
| The reason there are lobbyist is because we have granted
| those being lobbied control. Take away the control and
| the lobbying is pointless. More rules and regulations =
| more lobbying.
| biorach wrote:
| > In the human world, traits that a ripe for manipulation
| in a free market would result in lower purchasing power.
| Thus, less ability to afford children and pass on the
| traits
|
| This is mostly nonsense
| ghastmaster wrote:
| Air is mostly nitrogen.
|
| How is it mostly nonsense?
| Miraste wrote:
| There are a lot of mistakes here, but for one, lower
| economic means correlates with _more_ children.
| stackghost wrote:
| >Subsidizing via regulations or direct support prolongs
| the subterfuge we are discussing here. Perhaps, in
| perpetuity.
|
| >Take away the control and the lobbying is pointless.
|
| This social anarcho-darwinism nonsense doesn't refute my
| point that you are susceptible to influence and coercion.
|
| You cannot "protect" yourself as the previous poster
| baselessly asserted.
| thecrash wrote:
| > I would rather be manipulated by private industry than
| controlled by government. I cannot out vote a majority,
| but I can out wit a billboard.
|
| Another way of saying this is that you would rather be
| controlled through methods which are subtle, novel, and
| difficult to put a finger on than through methods which
| are overt and fit traditional narratives of control.
| card_zero wrote:
| Cops. On the whole, yes.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This is why doctors and other healthcare professionals
| never become addicted to drugs. Right? They know better?
| bcook wrote:
| > No thank you, I can protect myself.
|
| There's surely some ways you're unprepared to protect
| yourself. Since you're unaware, you wouldn't be able to thank
| them. Ignorance is bliss.
| cma256 wrote:
| Let's let 8 year olds drive drunk. I'm more than capable of
| spotting them on the road and avoiding them.
| clarkmoody wrote:
| Are you responding to an 8 year old?
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| They certainly sound like one.
| cma256 wrote:
| Will my 8 year old be exposed to sports gambling
| commercials?
| joelfried wrote:
| If they like sports at all you absolutely know they will.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Even if you can protect yourself from everything (which I
| would argue you cannot), not everyone is as smart and
| infallible as you.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| You are not immune to propaganda
| dcow wrote:
| You can't protect yourself from psychological manipulation
| that's unavoidable unless you glue your eyes shut.
|
| Let ads and content feeds exist, but make it illegal for them
| to be casually viewed by anybody who hasn't given explicit
| consent to be exposed to deceit and manipulation. I'm dead
| serious. It's a sham that you can cannot drive on public
| roads without viewing billboards, or get to municipal service
| announcements without traversing twitter or FB.
| toss1 wrote:
| There are some states that outlaw highway billboards,
| recognizing the blight they are on the landscape. It is
| _IMMEDIATELY_ better to drive in those states.
|
| Vermont is a great example, which banned billboards, and is
| adjacent to New Hampshire, a similarly sized and situated
| adjacent state. Driving into NH after being in VT for a
| while, it is immediately jarring just how offensive and
| ugly even a few billboards make the place.
|
| It is a damn reasonable regulation, and more states should
| have it. No one is going hungry because they can't put up a
| billboard (especially the damn bright flashing digital
| billboards).
| wnc3141 wrote:
| If it didn't work, no one would make a cent in advertising
| vitalredundancy wrote:
| You are not protecting yourself. You are existing within a
| lifeway and culture where legible and
| illegible/intangible/unspoken agreements create a context
| that allows you to believe you are able to protect yourself.
| Meanwhile, a swirl of beliefs and ideology insulate you from
| unpredictability, choice, and chaos.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Do you have any concern for the people not as strong as you?
| do they deserve any protection or is okay if they're just
| preyed on by the strong?
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _No thank you, I can protect myself._
|
| Said every smoker of tobacco. :)
| adventured wrote:
| Black market approaches to attempting to limit / control
| human behavior are insane and do not work.
|
| That goes for gambling, smoking, prostitution, drinking,
| drugs, et al.
|
| Education, therapy and taxation are about the only things
| that have been shown to work reasonably (eg not spurring
| massive crime outcomes) to introduce effective limiting
| forces or properly respond to the consequences of excess.
|
| Outlawing gambling is just as insane as outlawing alcohol,
| smoking, drug use.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Black market approaches to attempting to limit /
| control human behavior are insane and do not work._
|
| The idea that governments may not be able to
| (completely?) protect people does not invalidate the the
| idea that people cannot protect themselves.
| kqr wrote:
| This reminds me also of the huge difference between gambling
| and gambling. Some games are at least somewhat beatable (sports
| betting, poker) even though the house is most consistent
| winner.
|
| Then there is junk like every slot machine ever, 98 % of online
| casinos, etc.
|
| Lotteries would belong to that category if they weren't such a
| useful way to sell something few people can afford, or to
| finance projects with an opt-in taxation.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| you are trying to say that there is a difference between pure
| random luck and 'skill' based gambling. However the both act
| in the brain the same way and both lead to bad ends to the
| vast majority.
| card_zero wrote:
| Sports was a mistake, a waste of the concern and attention
| of billions of people, ban sports.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Come on, do you see "sports" (completed separated from
| gambling on them) to be a plague on society? Do you have
| anyone in your family or social circle that had their
| lives destroyed by sports? It's not even comparable, your
| comment seems to be in bad faith
| card_zero wrote:
| Except if it involves robots or Starcraft, because I like
| those. But I also like poker, which Sleepybrett seems
| opposed to.
| apitman wrote:
| Assuming this isn't sarcasm... I would be very careful
| about banning or even dismissing anything that has been
| popular for thousands of years.
| parineum wrote:
| Like gambling?
| apitman wrote:
| Yes. Consider the tradeoffs carefully. Try the
| experiments. Do the research. Then make a decision.
| card_zero wrote:
| Haven't you already made a decision by saying "if the
| research finds X is true, we have a moral duty to ban
| gambling"? It's the is-ought problem.
| card_zero wrote:
| Well, sarcasm is against the guidelines I think, so let's
| say it was reductio ad absurdum. I'm responding to the
| idea that gambling+skill is just as bad, or bad enough to
| also ban. It would make the legislation and policing a
| lot simpler, close up some loopholes, and would have the
| side effect of outlawing the stock market, but I'm still
| against it.
| hoorayimhelping wrote:
| >* However the both act in the brain the same way and both
| lead to bad ends to the vast majority.*
|
| This is a poor justification for making something illegal.
| Chocolate and cocaine operate on the same neural pathways,
| but one is clearly more detrimental than the other.
| Following this reasoning, we should ban chocolate, and
| being able to see comment scores on hacker news, and like
| counts on Instagram photos, and reach on Twitter, and
| retirement account balances because they produce the same
| effects in the brain as illegal drugs do.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| The online sports platforms will reduce your max bet size to
| $1 if you win too much.
|
| Should be outlawed and any politician who's advocating
| otherwise should be (at least) journalistically investigated.
|
| It is so unfathomably antisocial that there is effectively no
| morally sound reason to advocate for its proliferation.
| seer wrote:
| The Spanish lottery is actually quite egalitarian and
| produces distributed payouts for communities. It's
| fascinating really - 99 pi did an episode about them a while
| back https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/el-gordo/
| bluecalm wrote:
| Beatable games are even worse than unbeatable ones. They hook
| people who believe they can win. Maybe some can, it doesn't
| matter - they still ruin lives for no benefit. You just add
| some skilled gamblers to the group that runs the house
| directly or indirectly.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant
| well paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they
| make money. On the other side is just regular people like us
| stressed out trying to survive._
|
| A similar argument can be made with healthcare (especially the
| US insurance system). There is all sorts of information
| asymmetry, not only from available treatments/procedures, but
| then also providers
|
| Kenneth Arrow wrote about this (in 1963), "Uncertainty and the
| welfare economics of health care" (see SSII. generally, and
| perhaps SSII. B. specifically):
|
| * https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf
|
| Some disagree with the above assessment:
|
| * https://archive.is/q1nSN /
| http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/liberals...
| mattmaroon wrote:
| One might argue that gambling being illegal doesn't protect
| anyone from it. As a former professional poker player who
| started off in illegal games, I can tell you, there's plenty of
| gambling both legal and illegal available in most places.
|
| The line at the gas station of people buying scratchoffs and
| lottery tickets is proof.
|
| The part we likely need protection from is the marketing.
| Draiken wrote:
| I have to disagree. Scale does matter.
|
| If murder was legal we'd have a lot more of it. We still have
| them despite it being a crime, but nobody would ever suggest
| making it legal because some people do it anyway.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Vices are very different than murder and the fact that
| people equate the two is how we get things like prohibition
| and the war on drugs. Lots of studies have shown that
| legalizing drug use does not appreciatively increase drug
| use, for instance.
|
| It's hard to make an argument that making murder illegal
| was a net harm to society. It's really easy to make that
| argument with vices, in fact any history book probably will
| in the section on prohibition.
|
| Sports betting is not any more insidious than any other
| type of gambling. Even if legalizing it has increased the
| amount of sports betting, which likely it has, we don't
| know that it has increased the overall amount of gambling,
| and we certainly don't know that it has increased the
| overall amount of societal harm from gambling, no matter
| how many great anecdotes we get from newspaper articles.
|
| Perhaps people have simply switched from the lottery or
| slot machines to sports betting. Perhaps some are better
| off because sports betting has a much lower house edge than
| the lottery or a lot of other forms of gambling.
|
| I could tell you for sure there is a whole lot of illegal
| sports betting going on, or at least there was. There is a
| seedy black market that I would be willing to bet has been
| largely destroyed by the ability to Gamble from your phone.
| (I'm far too removed from it these days to have any
| firsthand knowledge of the current situation.)
|
| I can also tell you about the negative impact that gambling
| laws have on the lives of non-problem gamblers, myself
| included.
|
| People always reflexively follow the train of logic: vice
| bad, make vice illegal. It failed when we made alcohol
| illegal, the war on drugs has been disastrous for the poor,
| far worse than the drugs we were fighting, and there's not
| much evidence to believe it even significantly reduced drug
| use. The idea that any vice being illegal creates an
| overall harm reduction has pretty much been shown time and
| time again to be incorrect, and yet everybody just believes
| it because it seems like common sense.
| digging wrote:
| Well banning it would also remove the marketing. Just because
| some illegal gambling will still happen doesn't mean banning
| it wouldn't help _a lot_ of people.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Overall harm minimization is more than just helping a lot
| of people. Prohibition of alcohol helped a lot of people
| but hurt even more. Same with the war on drugs.
|
| Combatting vices with prohibition fails over and over,
| badly, and yet people can't get past the "common sense"
| idea that it's an overall harm reduction no matter how many
| times they see proof that it isn't.
|
| A much more surgical approach is called for.
| digging wrote:
| You are arguing that reversing the very recent
| legalization of sports gambling would be a net harm to
| society and that there would be greater suffering than
| there is today because of that ban.
|
| Are you making that argument by accident, because you
| felt compelled to nitpick some word choices, or do you
| seriously believe that?
| mattmaroon wrote:
| No, I really believe that making vices illegal causes
| more harm than the vices they're trying to prevent, and
| that we see it over and over every time we do it. I think
| nobody would disagree with me that that's what happened
| with alcohol. I've been saying that's the case with drugs
| for decades and public opinion is turning that way too.
|
| It's true with gambling too. You just likely haven't seen
| the harm that happens because of it being illegal. Ever
| had a gun pointed at you over a game of poker? I have.
| Doesn't happen online or in a casino. Ever met people
| who've been violently hurt because they couldn't pay
| their gambling debts? I have. Draftkings or your bank
| aren't out breaking knees.
|
| Making it illegal does not make it go away. If you had
| been born into a world where alcohol was illegal for a
| long time, and then it were legal, you'd probably have
| the same opinion of that, but you know (because you were
| lucky to be born with the benefit of decades of
| hindsight) the world is less good that way. This is not
| different.
|
| The harms of gambling can be mitigated much more
| effectively in ways other than prohibition. Regulation is
| always better than outright bans. Look at what we've done
| with cigarettes.
|
| Making online betting legal was the right thing to do, it
| being illegal at all was the mistake, we just need to
| work on harm mitigation.
|
| I just don't even understand people who think vices
| should be illegal. I mean I do, their thought process is
| just overly simplistic and they don't know what they
| don't know, but there's just so much evidence it is the
| worst possible solution and yet so many people can't
| think past "it's bad so it should be illegal". Even
| intelligent people.
| ipsento606 wrote:
| If your argument is that legalized sports betting doesn't
| increase the total amount of sports betting, in the absence
| of extraordinary evidence, that seems implausible on its
| face.
| elif wrote:
| Impossible optimism can be a good thing too. My family and I
| play the lottery whenever expected reward is over purchase
| price. Of course we aren't going to win, but spending $20-50 a
| week to spend a couple hours dreaming about what we'd do with
| half a billion is such a fun uplifting family activity that
| makes us realize our true wishes are a lot closer than needing
| millions of dollars.
|
| Also I probably talk to my father more often about fantasy
| football than for any other reason, despite not caring about
| football.. the gamification and having stakes can be a
| compelling social experience.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > spending $20-50 a week to spend a couple hours dreaming
|
| Guessing that is "disposable" income. Sad when you think of
| people doing the same thing for whom their income is not
| disposable.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| My real wake-up call was the introductory class in my data
| science master's program. We spent a whole week learning about
| all the clever tricks Harrah's data scientists found to keep
| people in the gambling halls. The course's instructor really
| lionized Harrah's for doing this, and loved to talk about how
| much profit it made for the company.
|
| For my part, I was horrified. I couldn't find a way to see some
| of these tricks the use as anything but a form of highly
| evolved confidence artistry. _Legal_ con artistry, sure. But a
| legal scam is still a scam. Even if the people getting scammed
| never wise to the scam, it 's still a scam.
|
| The arguments about tax revenues and suchlike don't make me
| feel any better about it. All I see in their success is a
| demonstration that a great many people will happily turn a
| blind eye to abusive behavior if they believe they can
| materially benefit from doing so. And, of course, they never
| do, anyway. The promises of professional con artists that our
| communities will benefit if we grant them imprimatur for their
| operations turned out to _also_ be a scam. Con artists pulling
| a con; quelle surprise!
| supahfly_remix wrote:
| This class sounds interesting. Where can I learn more about
| these techniques? (I'm curious, not planning on using them!)
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Looks like googling "Harrah's data science" turns up a
| decent volume of articles. I won't link any in particular
| here because I haven't read any of them so I don't know
| which ones are good.
| supahfly_remix wrote:
| Thanks! Yes, I was looking for recommended papers/info.
| schlauerfox wrote:
| Probably here, but might be dry.
| https://link.springer.com/journal/10899
| supahfly_remix wrote:
| Thanks for the link. I wonder if this journal is
| constrained to observing gambling rather than doing
| experiments to trying to exacerbate it as Harrah's is
| doing: "The Journal of Gambling Studies is an
| interdisciplinary forum for research and discussion of
| the many and varied aspects of gambling behavior, both
| controlled and pathological. Coverage extends to the wide
| range of attendant and resultant problems, including
| alcoholism, suicide, crime, and a number of other mental
| health concerns."
| RunSet wrote:
| "Coercion" by Douglas Rushkoff is somewhat dated but by no
| means out of date.
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/348346/coercion-
| by-...
| burningChrome wrote:
| Its interesting to think many of the techniques the casino's
| used to keep people gambling going back to the 60's and 70's
| are the same ones facebook, twitter and youtube all employ
| now in one way or another today. I had the same reaction you
| did in your data science class when I took several psychology
| classes and they talked about the same psychological tricks.
| You quickly realize how easy it is to manipulate the human
| brain and by proxy, human behavior.
|
| Reminds of the quote from Joshua the computer in War Games:
| "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."
| scarby2 wrote:
| Best course I ever took was one on how to counter your own
| cognitive biases
| stickfigure wrote:
| If it's so easy... surely you've figured out how to become
| fabulously wealthy? I'm curious which tricks you use.
|
| I am calling bullshit here. There's a popular narrative
| that we've somehow hacked the code of the human brain and
| can program people to do anything we want, against their
| will. Nonsense. The best you can do is move the needle a
| few percentage points across a statistically large number
| of humans. This is not something to worry about.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > surely you've figured out how to become fabulously
| wealthy
|
| You mean, by starting a big casino, hiring thousands of
| people, advertising all over, etc.? A small investment
| like that?
|
| > The best you can do is move the needle a few percentage
| points across a statistically large number of humans.
|
| That may be true, but a "few percentage points" is enough
| to create enormous profits, if you do what I said above.
| Giving the house a 54% advantage instead of 51% makes a
| big, big difference.
| stickfigure wrote:
| It's obviously not that easy. Casinos go bankrupt left
| and right. Hell, one famous former president is
| responsible for three of them.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Most mobile games too, not just the social media apps.
| docandrew wrote:
| The tax stuff is total bullshit. If it wasn't the schools in
| Las Vegas would be the best in the country and the teachers
| there would be the best paid. They aren't by a long shot.
| jedberg wrote:
| My friend is a High School teacher in Las Vegas. He
| regularly has students tell him that they don't see the
| point in school because they make more than he does parking
| cars at the casinos. He tries to point out to them that
| those tips won't last once they can't run for eight hours a
| day, but the message is often lost.
|
| However, they aren't wrong. They do in fact make about 50%
| more than he does just working part time on weekends.
| wnc3141 wrote:
| About tax revenue. We like to think the more you make the
| more you pay.
|
| But using programs like these just turn the most vulnerable
| into revenue for the state -creating wild conflicts of
| interest. Additionally these types of revenues tend to
| replace other sources of funding rather than supplement.
|
| Like sports betting I know that lottery players skew low
| income - making the state effectively tax low income
| households at a higher rate.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| > We spent a whole week learning about all the clever tricks
| Harrah's data scientists found to keep people in the gambling
| halls.
|
| What sort of stuff are they pulling? Like sending down a five
| dollar cocktail to keep someone spending 20 bucks a hand at
| the craps table?
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Among other things, yeah. On an individualized basis. They
| figure out, for example, how much of a losing streak will
| get a particular person to leave the table, and how likely
| they are to keep playing if someone shows up and gives them
| a free drink as thanks for being a Gold Star VIP or
| whatever, and how much more money they can expect to lose
| if you given them that drink, and use all that data to
| optimize who gets free drinks when.
|
| I used to date someone whose father had a rather severe
| gambling addiction, and this is exactly what kept him
| coming back. When he talked about it, it was clear that
| what he was hooked on was the _feeling_ of being a winner.
| Someone surprising you with a free drink and telling you it
| 's because you're part of an exclusive club for winners
| gives some people that feeling even when they're
| objectively losing.
|
| And that is the textbook definition confidence artistry:
| tricking people into thinking you're their special friend
| as a means to extract money from them.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| > The course's instructor really lionized Harrah's for doing
| this, and loved to talk about how much profit it made for the
| company.
|
| I took a marketing class in the course of my CS degree, and
| my main takeaway was that a lot of marketers are aliens in
| people suits. Their ethics and priorities are utterly
| disconnected from anything human.
|
| You really start to understand how e.g. IBM could knowingly
| and cheerfully supply the Nazis with the punchcard hardware
| they needed to keep the Holocaust running smoothly. The
| client's satisfaction is the only relevant criterion. "But
| they're killing millions of people" will be met with the same
| blank, uncomprehending stare as "But the paint you chose
| clashes with my sweater."
| pjlegato wrote:
| How shall we as a society decide who is to be denied agency in
| this way, because someone else determines they are to be
| infantilized, deemed incapable of exercising full
| responsibility for their own -- entirely voluntary -- actions?
|
| Can you propose a universally acceptable formula or philosophy?
| Shall we just consult you on a case by case basis to determine
| when and where a putative power differential exists, and
| exactly when such a differnetial becomes large enough to verge
| into "unfair"?
| snapcaster wrote:
| Why is that the standard? We're in the real world not magic
| libertarian logic automaton world. We have the ability to
| judge social harm and weigh it against the benefits and make
| nuanced decisions
|
| edit: like how we've managed to do with literally every
| single other law?
| pjlegato wrote:
| You mean the way we passed the current laws that allow such
| gambling, which you are now complaining about?
|
| By that standard, we're done, the matter has already been
| concluded in favor of "allow gambling."
| snapcaster wrote:
| Yes, and I think that was a huge mistake. What is your
| point again?
|
| edit: things can improve, women can open bank accounts
| without their husband approving it now! We decided
| something, re-evaluated and made a better decision
| pjlegato wrote:
| This takes us back to the beginning: how shall we
| determine when the social process has failed, and what
| constitutes "improvement"?
|
| Society has already spoken on this matter. It seems that
| your criteria amount to nothing more than "when I
| personally dislike the results of the social process, the
| social process has failed, and we ought to revisit it."
|
| So I ask again the question you've begged: by what
| formula or philosophy are we to determine when a social
| decision such as "allow gambling" is bad? Is there
| anything beyond your personal feelings on a topic that we
| can turn to as a criterion?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >How shall we as a society decide who is to be denied
| agency in this way
|
| By advocacy and persuasion and some level of agreement
| through democracy.
|
| >By that standard, we're done
|
| Laws can change, so we're never done.
|
| Society is a never-ending churn of social forces. There
| will always be a matrix of people who are good and bad
| and indifferent, who think similar and different to one
| another. It will never settle.
|
| To answer your question about sports gambling in
| particular (though you did not ask me): I think the bets
| on specific things happening in a game are more
| manipulable and thus damaging to sports in general, as
| well as to the addictive properties of gambling, than
| simply betting on an outcome of a game.
|
| So yeah, some aspects of gambling are bad enough that,
| now that we've seen the impact it's having, we should
| consider some more guardrails.
|
| Even the college kid libertarian I used to be would say
| that the government should enforce "an informed
| consumer": That people should know what mechanisms
| gambling companies use to entice and addict people.
|
| [edited for tone]
| pjlegato wrote:
| Interesting. Do you then view the lawmaking process as
| nothing more than a chaotic and never-ending expression
| of the randomly changing emotions of the people?
|
| No ongoing rational standards, logic, or objective
| argumentation is required or even relevant -- just might
| makes right, anything goes, whoever convinces the most
| people to agree through sophistic "advocacy" wins?
|
| I suppose that such a system could exist in theory, but
| it seems to be heavily at odds with the constitutional
| legal system that the United States uses.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Interesting how you consistently prompt questions without
| making declarative statements of your own beliefs.
|
| Of course there is logic and standards. Such as my logic
| that sports betting on individual plays is more conducive
| to corruption and more numerous than whole-game outcomes,
| thus more appropriate for regulation.
|
| The constitution was written in the aftermath of a might-
| makes-right event called a war. Among other things, it
| puts in place certain rules more protected than others,
| to add some order to the chaos and protect minoruty
| interests.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > Shall we just consult you on a case by case basis to
| determine when and where a putative power differential
| exists, and exactly when such a differnetial becomes large
| enough to verge into "unfair"?
|
| Yes exactly. Well not "me" or "you" but case by case yes.
|
| It's not necessary that someone be able to articulate and
| defend a universal moral philosophy consistent with a given
| policy in order to enact it. Having systems in place to
| evaluate specific cases as they come up is sufficient.
| pjlegato wrote:
| We have such social systems, and they have already
| evaluated this specific case and determined that we as a
| society want to allow gambling.
|
| Note that I am not agreeing or disagreeing with the merits
| of that outcome; I am just noting that the process you
| describe has already been done, and has determined in this
| case that "gambling is OK."
|
| Why should we revisit that process simply because a few
| people dislike the result? By what right do you suppose
| your personal views ought to overturn this social process
| -- simply because you and a few others personally
| disapprove of the outcome?
|
| Should social processes always yield results that you
| personally like, and be considered invalid when they don't?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| There's no point at which this process is "complete" for
| a given policy and must be merely accepted. We continue
| to evaluate based on the results of implementation, and
| can make changes with that new information.
|
| So yes, I "and a few others" disapprove of this outcome
| and are acting to change it within the constraints that
| we have. You oppose that or not that's your business.
| pjlegato wrote:
| So there are no objective standards possible or even
| relevant in the lawmaking process -- it's purely a
| question of might makes right, whoever can marshal the
| most people to their team through sophistry should win?
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I didn't say that either, maybe you should reread what I
| did say.
| pjlegato wrote:
| You said "yes exactly" when I asked if personal sentiment
| was the means of determining when an unfair power
| differential exists and ought to be legislated against.
|
| Then you said "there is no point at which the process is
| 'complete' for a given policy and must be merely
| accepted..." This sounds very much like you believe it is
| both possible and correct to revisit any policy topic at
| any time, and with no particular criteria for when it is
| valid to do so -- it is always valid to do so, under that
| statement.
|
| Thus, I asked for clarification -- it sounds like there
| are no possible objective standards for the lawmaking
| process in your formulation above; any law or policy can
| be revisited at any time, and without any objective
| criteria that leaves purely emotional arguments and
| whoever successfully gathers a bigger band of followers
| to their side as the main determining factor in what
| policy we get.
| digging wrote:
| You know that laws already exist right?
| pjlegato wrote:
| Of course, and our laws have apparently determined that
| "gambling is OK."
|
| Why ought we revisit and overturn that process in this
| case? Is there any objective criterion beyond "it seems bad
| to me, I don't like the result of our lawmaking process?"
| digging wrote:
| My point was that drawing arbitrary lines for what's
| legal isn't the new invention you acted like it was.
|
| This most recent comment has shifted the topic entirely,
| and I'm not going to address it because it's obviously
| either written in bad faith or just painfully
| unthoughtful.
| pjlegato wrote:
| The lines for what is legal are not at all drawn
| arbitrarily in a constitutional legal system such as the
| United States.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Counterpoint: Yes, they are, within the bounds of higher
| law.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is a perfectly valid criterion. People sometimes
| make stupid decisions and want to reverse them, a wholly
| rational choice.
|
| I don't want to outlaw gambling as such but I think it
| needs to be far more strictly regulated because gambling
| corporations massively exploit people and the industry
| borders on scamming.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > Can you propose a universally acceptable formula or
| philosophy?
|
| While I have found few people to think this acceptable, I
| believe it better than the wanton passing of social laws to
| appease a voter base in order to keep a job. (How many people
| did DOMA[0] practically harm in order to appease the
| metaphysical sensitivities of a majority of voters)
|
| Laws should be to prevent[dissuade] harm __to others__. If
| someone wants to recklessly use drugs, then we have laws that
| punish them for the harm they did to others, with an added
| under-the-influence charge. There is no reason to punish a
| consenting adult doing no harm to another, only possibly
| themself. The problem with this, is politicians don't get re-
| elected for creating education and other services that would
| help those addicted/using it to escape their life or those
| with trauma/mental instability inflicting trauma on others.
| But using "moral" arguments to rile up majority population
| voting bases is low hanging fruit; which the system rewards
| one for going after. Laws that are publicly passed are
| usually done by exploiting the emotions of group-type
| majorities. instead of using funds on analysts to find the
| current emotional trigger to poke, use it to find the best
| ways to help those that are a higher risk to cause harm
| towards others (ie, addicts, mental health - including those
| with trauma that are not as easy to treat with medication and
| basic security needs). And honestly, I find it unethical to
| exploit a persons personal faith for job security.
|
| At some point people have to take responsibility for
| themselves, their actions, and stay out of your neighbor's
| business until your neighbor begins harming other humans
| (whether in their house or outside of it). Laws don't prevent
| harm to others, they establish (or should only establish)
| societal time-outs(rehabilitation) and damage/cost/etc
| retribution/repayment (the word I want to use escapes me in
| describing this exactly), the same way police are law
| _enforcement_ officers, not crime prevention psychics.
|
| TL;DR: "The right to swing my arms in any direction ends
| where your nose begins." (This also encompasses the non-
| physical assault or harm - stealing etc)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Marriage_Act
| lesuorac wrote:
| Well, it's not really their choice. If you're really good at
| picking your bets the sites will all limit or kick you off.
|
| Sports betters really only allow losers to do it. There's a bit
| of a different ring to "We only let losers choose to play".
| scotty79 wrote:
| Shouldn't there be a primary school education about this?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Yeah it's called math class.
| pbreit wrote:
| Is there a viable way to limit the amounts but still make it
| enjoyable? I guess the issue is that $10, $100, $1,000 or
| $10,000 would be different for everyone. I myself only need $10
| or $100 on something to "make it interesting".
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| This may sound crazy, but one way to keep it enjoyable but
| remove all the negatives could be to allow profit-driven
| betting _only_ using non-liquidisable, non-transferrable
| tokens which cannot be aquired or topped up for money. Make
| the betting industry operate on a flat subscription based
| model in which token top-ups cannot be correlated with
| customer payment.
|
| That way gamblers can continue to bet their betting-coins
| like crazy, show off their big wins, and maybe even exchange
| large amounts of "earnings" for non-cash prizes, arcade
| style, depending on what the betting platforms decide to
| offer to the market. However, win or lose, there must _never_
| be a way to top up or increase token wins by spending more
| money on said platforms.
|
| Edit: Maybe, with effective regulation ensuring gamblers
| cannot open (and thus spend) more than X simultaneous
| gambling subscriptions across the market, large betting-token
| earnings _could_ be allowed to be exchanged for cash prizes,
| to the extent the gambling platform may consider it
| profitable. Of course by its very nature this would make top
| cash winnings orders of magnitude lower than when betting
| actual money, given the flat income stream. But that would
| itself be the point, providing no incentive for gambling
| business to encourage addiction for greater profits.
| jnwatson wrote:
| I walked into the local convenience store the other day and it
| dawned on me that it exists solely to serve addictions.
| Nicotine addiction? Cigarettes and vapes galore. Sugar/fat
| addiction? Dozens of options. Gambling addiction? Multiple
| lotteries, scratch off, and a couple of video machines in the
| corner. Alcohol? Plenty of options there too.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| It doesn't exist "solely to serve addictions." Not everyone
| who drinks is an alcoholic, but some are. Not everyone who
| buys a candy bar is on the path to morbid obesity/diabetes,
| etc., but some are. Not everyone who buys an occasional
| lottery ticket or burns $100 at a casino is a gambling
| addict, but some are.
|
| The most addictive item on that list by a long shot is almost
| certainly nicotine, but even then, there are people who maybe
| have a cigar on special occasions every couple of years, but
| otherwise don't smoke.
|
| Black-and-white thinking is a plague on modern society.
| adventured wrote:
| It is a freedom issue. It's exactly that.
|
| Why insist on broadening the premise with "regular people like
| us" and "we the people". If your message is potent you wouldn't
| need to try to speak for a crowd.
|
| I don't need protection from those supposed forces. In a
| functioning market economy - which essentially all developed
| nations possess - I can easily control what food I consume and
| I can easily control whether I gamble or not. That was true for
| the years when I was poor as an adult and it was true for my
| parents who were lower middle class / poor while I was growing
| up.
|
| I don't personally like prostitution, and it should absolutely
| be legal.
|
| I don't personally like cocaine or marijuana, and they both
| should be legal.
|
| I don't personally like late-term abortion, and late-term
| abortion should absolutely be legal.
|
| I find it disgusting when people glug glug glug 72 gallons of
| soda while they sit there 250 pounds overweight. It's
| grotesque. And they should absolutely be allowed to do it. It
| is a freedom issue.
|
| It's either their body or it isn't. The same goes for abortion
| as it does what food you get to consume and whether you get to
| sleep with prostitutes, snort cocaine or gamble (with your
| brain/body and the money from your labor).
|
| Who does your body belong to?
|
| The moment you start dictating that the state owns your body
| and what you can do with it, you have started down the path of
| authoritarianism (whether fascism or other). You'd have to have
| an extreme authoritarian society, to follow your premise to its
| logical conclusion in terms of what it implies about the
| culture and the restraints to be imposed.
| biorach wrote:
| > The moment you start dictating that the state owns your
| body and what you can do with it,
|
| No one said that, and it's a very extreme interpretation of
| the comment you're replying to
|
| > you have started down the path of authoritarianism
|
| That's an example of the fallacy of infinite progression -
| that a societal trend will continue forever once started
|
| In a complex system like a society, it's perfectly possible
| for a trend for e.g. regulation of the personal sphere to
| give rise to countervailing forces that end up in a steady
| state
|
| There are plenty of societies e.g. the Nordic states, that
| have much higher regulation than the USA, yet have remained
| stable for decades and show no sign of descending into
| authoritarianism
| Hasz wrote:
| I hate gambling, so I don't gamble.
|
| However, if you want to gamble, more power to you. However, I
| don't want protection enforced by the government here. I want
| the government to protect the air, water, military, forces of
| nature, etc. I do not want them regulating and optimizing every
| facet of my life.
|
| Drinking is objectively a drain on society, but you can see how
| well banning that in America went.
| boesboes wrote:
| There is a big difference between regulating advertising for
| something and banning it.
| acomjean wrote:
| Someone in the research offices at IBM had a bumper sticker
| that said "the lottery, a tax on people that don't understand
| math"
|
| Also the local conscience store I frequented at one job in
| newton, the owner put up a sign saying "people here have won
| $500,000 in the lottery last year". I noted that seemed like a
| lot, she looked at me and said, I know what they spend, it's
| not a lot, then proceeded to go on a little talk about gambling
| being bad. When another customer came in that ended. I bought
| my snack and moved on.
|
| That said, I'll loose 100$ every couple years gambling in
| person. I do enjoy it as entertainment. I can't see how it's
| enjoyable online though..
|
| When you win something, it's a little thrill. I can see how it
| can overwhelm you.
|
| Also people only tell stories of "winning". It rare to hear the
| loosing stories.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| > I can't see how it's enjoyable online though..
|
| With Sports gambling the entertainment doesn't come from
| actually placing the bet, it comes from watching the game
| that now has higher stakes.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > The older I get the more I hate gambling
|
| > This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge
| power asymmetry
|
| ive been fiercely libertarian most of my life but, like you, im
| starting to realize its just not practical.
|
| libertarianism made sense 100 years ago; you still needed a
| limited but powerful government to monopoly bust, but the
| consumer was close enough to the source of all information.
| smart people could invent products and whole industries from
| the ground up. you could know whats going on.
|
| this is no longer the case. god help me for the pseudomarxist
| thing im about to say (and believe), but individual people are
| helplessly separated from the source; everything is insulated
| by layers of abstraction. the gift of reduced margin via
| capitalism and globalisation has cursed us with powerlessness.
|
| how many information wars are you prepared to fight? teflon,
| ddt, pfoas, bpa, bpb, bps, bpf, bpaf, lead, asbestos, cocaine,
| heroin, marijuana, psychedelics, birth control, opioids,
| hormones, climate change, plastic waste, electronic waste,
| landfilling, recycling, antibiotics, urban planning, housing
| development, GMO food, monocropping, wastewater, topsoil, algae
| blooms, overfishing, deforestation, AGI, LLM, ad tech, social
| media, diet (sugar, cholesterol, fat), msg, processed foods,
| radiation (cellular, microwave, electromagnetic power lines),
| conflict minerals, 3rd world labor and global supply chains,
| slavery (theres 10s of millions of literal slaves in the world,
| remember?), human trafficking, israel and palestine, north
| korea, china, Uyghurs, russia and ukraine, ongoing gender
| apartheid in parts of the middle east, war torn africa, local
| state and federal politics.
|
| plus the hundreds i didnt think of and the thousands i dont
| know i need to care about.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| 100 years ago there were literally people selling snake oil
| as medicine. There have always been soft rubes to fleece.
| What changed is our society decided there should be limits to
| that, and could afford to do something about it so now we
| have things like the FDA. A society has the ethics it can
| afford.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Yeah well said. I've gone through a similar journey in terms
| of my thinking on these topics
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I think at a fundamental level it _is_ a freedom issue.
|
| There is one and only one limit on freedom which I believe in:
| when one individual (or group) begins to infringe the freedoms
| of others.
|
| The problem which I see in a lot of ideologies which purport to
| value freedom, is a naive idea that government is the only
| organization which can infringe on individual freedoms, and
| this is blatantly and obviously false. Corporations and
| religious organizations can and do infringe individual freedoms
| all the time, and a society which fails to address this problem
| becomes less and less free as these organizations become the
| de-facto oligarchy.
|
| We don't need to set aside our belief in freedom to fight
| against these organizations, and I think when we do that, we're
| making a huge concession we don't need to make. Casinos and
| advertisers manipulating people to take their money and provide
| little value in return absolutely _is_ a freedom issue: casinos
| and advertisers are manipulating us to give up the freedoms
| money allows us. When we make concessions like,
|
| > This isn't some "freedom" issue
|
| I think we lose a lot of the people who care about freedom,
| when we _could_ be explaining to those people how these
| companies infringe their freedoms.
| czhu12 wrote:
| I'm kind of the in "hey its their choice" camp but would love
| to hear an alternative perspective.
|
| My main gripe is that it seems like a strangely weird place to
| decide where we need protection.
|
| I would think a similar article could be written about, just
| off the top of my head:
|
| * Junk food
|
| * Participating in dangerous sports (Football, Boxing, etc)
|
| * All forms of gambling
|
| * Alcohol, cigarettes
|
| * Pornography
|
| All of which are also dangerous, potentially addictive, and
| probably has a larger net negative impact than sports gambling.
|
| What principles could be adopted to not turn this into a larger
| and larger bureaucracy that decides which of these industries
| gets preferential treatment over another?
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> What principles could be adopted to not turn this into a
| larger and larger bureaucracy that decides which of these
| industries gets preferential treatment over another?_
|
| How about evidence based policy? We've seen what happens with
| drug prohibition and we've seen what happens with gambling
| prohibition. The former leads to an extensive underworld and
| tons of negative consequences but the latter wasn't nearly as
| bad.
|
| What were the downsides of the prohibition on sports
| gambling? How many fewer people lost their savings to a
| blackmarket bookie versus the number of people who lose money
| now on the easily accessible mobile apps? I struggle to think
| of any net-negative effects of the prohibition on gambling -
| all the negative effects of gambling get _worse_ when it 's
| legalized.
| card_zero wrote:
| What happened to the numbers racket(s), and why do I want
| to consign that to the past and the era of prohibition? Did
| it decline along with the mafia? Was it diluted by state
| lotteries? Was it never so bad in the first place?
| czhu12 wrote:
| Well, I'd argue the net negative effects are people who
| enjoy responsible sports gambling aren't able to do it
| anymore.
|
| The state can of course, claim that no one should be
| gambling on sports anyways, so its not a problem that
| people lose access, just as it can with any other vice.
| People who have no interest in sports gambling would of
| course, not care either way.
|
| If there is no value assigned to having the freedom, in and
| of itself, then of course, banning anything becomes
| trivial.
|
| I think under this criteria, as long as we can have an
| "effective" ban (ie: no black markets are created) on
| anything that is not healthy for people to participate in,
| it would be worth banning.
|
| So basically, anything that is unhealthy, but not yet
| banned, is only allowed because the state cannot yet find
| an effective way to ban it.
| throwup238 wrote:
| There is lots of value to _personal_ freedom. You are
| free to bet with your friends and play poker or whatever.
|
| That doesn't mean that corporations should have the
| freedom to exploit society for profit while being a total
| net-negative. Enabling a vice in the name of "freedom"
| isn't a virtue.
|
| A little black market gambling is completely fine as long
| as the bookie is the one committing crimes and not their
| customers.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Agreed that it's not totally clear cut on some of these, but
| I would just advocate for:
|
| - a recognition that humans have exploits, we're not rational
| automatons. The power/resource asymmetries in a lot of these
| industries make it fundamentally "unfair" to model this like
| we would rational utility maximizers
|
| - evaluate these things in terms of societal harm
|
| That being said, yeah junk food should absolutely be
| regulated the industry is killing and crippling millions of
| people right now
| youniverse wrote:
| The argument I'll put forth is that having some friction for
| the masses to engage in behavior that can impact their life
| is probably good.
|
| Gambling is one of the worst addictions one can acquire (no
| health drawbacks) and unfortunately young men seem more
| predisposed to such dopamine hits. I think it is one of the
| more less seen issues that is growing today. At least going
| to a casino is a friction point and optimizing for a one
| click app is probably not good. Perhaps we should cut it off
| before yet another insanely powerful lobby that feeds on
| addiction grows and can't be stopped. It seems the boulder is
| already rolling down the hill though.
|
| Look at what happened with Robinhood when they made trading
| feel like a game and removed fees. That $10 commission used
| to make people stop and think, even for just a second. Now,
| there are tons of young guys who've lost a lot, if not
| everything, but we don't hear about them. My younger brother
| and his high school friends are literally counting down the
| days until they turn 18 so they can get on Robinhood, hoping
| to get rich like people did with Gamestop. Maybe we could
| have a higher age limit like 24 or something because the real
| issue is the youth who are prone to sabotaging themselves.
|
| While it might seem like a weird place to draw a protective
| line, but I don't know, I'm sure many people today would want
| protections for half the stuff you mentioned if our congress
| was actually functional. I'd say we have to start somewhere
| and online gambling is definitely a behavior that is not
| worth optimizing our access to. If we know people are
| vulnerable to this stuff psychologically, why put more
| potholes that people can fall into? Are we really doing this
| just to build another multi-billion dollar industry that
| leeches off regular people? Let them go to a casino when
| they've saved up a couple hundred bucks for a fun night, not
| blow $100 in their car during a 10-minute shift break.
|
| Anyway just my thoughts happy to hear counters, we could just
| allow people to make their own decisions but can anyone make
| the argument that overall society has the discipline to turn
| easy sports betting into a net positive? Perhaps but hey we
| can bet on it. :)
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| No commission trading predates Robin Hood.
|
| But making it a flashy app is really what seems to drive
| meme investing.
|
| I was buying stocks and mutual funds on Schwab for years
| before RH came along, but it was boring (as investing
| should be).
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| > * Junk food
|
| Regulated in many places. Some Energy drinks are frequently
| banned from sale to minors. Nutrition labeling is required.
| Taxed at different rates than other foods in some places.
|
| > * Participating in dangerous sports (Football, Boxing, etc)
|
| Professional boxing matches are heavily regulated. Doctors
| have to be onsite for most bouts. Helmets are extensively
| tested, and there are rules at all levels about safe and
| unsafe hits.
|
| > * All forms of gambling
|
| Deeply regulated, down to what games can be played, who can
| work in a Casino, how they can advertise, what happens if
| there is a dispute. Etc.
|
| > * Alcohol, cigarettes
|
| Again, deeply regulated. Age restricted. Courts can monitor
| your alcohol intake if you get in trouble. You have to have a
| license to serve alcohol in some jurisdictions. Manufacturing
| alcohol has a licensing process that takes years in most
| places. You can be held liable for what happens if you
| overserve someone. Cigarettes can't really be advertised in
| the US anymore. In Canada, the actual nicotine product is not
| allowed to be displayed at retail outlets.
|
| > * Pornography
|
| Extensive recordkeeping requirements. Hardly ever advertised.
| Age and ID restrictions.
|
| You basically listed some of the most restricted and
| regulated products. Many of them are required to com with
| warnings about the dangers of using them, and can't be
| advertised to general audiences.
|
| You won't see former sports stars taking a puff on a nice
| smooth Lucky Strike and telling you all about the tobacco
| curing process at half-time on the broadcast. But you will
| certainly see that same sport star breaking down the odds,
| and the bonuses that new customers get on that show.
| czhu12 wrote:
| I think in that vein sports betting is also regulated,
| although I don't know the exact regulations, I do know that
| you still need a license.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| I have no problem with gambling. I used to frequent gambling
| boats that would go to international waters to do their thing.
| I have a huge problem with how sports gambling has been
| marketed lately (at least here in Florida).
|
| Its basically the same as smoking/vaping for me. Allow people
| their choice. It should be illegal to market it in 'cool' /
| 'sexy' ways, which is what I am seeing in todays advertising.
| sfg wrote:
| I find the power asymmetry is in my favour. I give money to the
| bookmaker or I don't.
|
| If I don't, then the bookmaker is powerless as regards my
| money.
|
| If I do, then I also gain some power over the bookmaker's
| money.
|
| I don't expect many to see it the same way. Most people are
| more concerned than I am with the problems suffered by those
| whose decision making does not interact well with the existence
| of the gambling industry. Given their concerns, it is
| understandable that they wouldn't share my perspective.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Do you tend to believe the weak should be protected at all
| from the strong? I mean just as an overall belief, not
| specific to this issue
| sfg wrote:
| Yes.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| Add social media to that list
| llm_trw wrote:
| >When i was younger I tended to think "hey it's their choice"
| but i've realized how unfair our society is in terms of things
| like this.
|
| Where do we stop? Drugs? Medication? News? Elections?
|
| People choose bad things all the time. Thinking you know better
| is how you end up banning alcohol because it's obviously a
| terrible vice.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| We go through periods of liberalization, and then it's opposite,
| as the ills of each regime become salient. For example, in the
| US, Oregon abandoned its legalization of hard-drugs, and I expect
| to see a national push to restrict and regulate cannabis more
| heavily, for example, regulating THC content more stringently,
| etc.
|
| With so many things, finding the right balance takes trial and
| error, and what the right balance is may change as other
| variables change as well.
| jjice wrote:
| I've commented about sports betting a bit of HN in the past, but
| it's such a tricky situation for me.
|
| On one hand, this is actively bad for people. You can make the
| argument that some people win, but the vast majority do not (over
| any extended period of time). People are hurting themselves and
| the people around them. I personally know so many young guys who
| have lost thousands of dollars that they really didn't have the
| opportunity to lose on sports betting in the last few years.
|
| On the other hand, why would I restrict someone's freedom to
| choose to make a poor decision?
|
| I find this so hard to make a personal judgement on because I see
| myself going both ways in my own life. I drink alcohol despite it
| being bad for my health, but I scoff at smoking cigarettes for
| the same reason. You can actively justify either of these, but
| that's not the point I'm trying to make. I just don't know where
| we begin to restrict people's choices when it primarily affects
| them - the obvious exception being their friends and family who
| are affected as well.
|
| Do we step in and prevent this transitive negative effect? I'm
| really not sure.
|
| I've seen some other comments mention having heavier regulation.
| That idea makes sense as a middle ground to me, I guess (although
| I'm really not sure).
| bcassedy wrote:
| The some people win argument isn't even really true for sports
| betting. Casinos just ban anyone that wins with any regularity.
|
| Of course any individual bet can win but casinos stack the deck
| by only taking action from players they know will lose over the
| long run.
| asdflkjvlkj wrote:
| > On the other hand, why would I restrict someone's freedom to
| choose to make a poor decision?
|
| Ok, let's ignore the individual. But gambling losses that lead
| to bankruptcy hurt creditor, for instance. Since creditors
| can't really easily separate out gamblers from non-gamblers,
| those defaults get spread across society as costs.
|
| The linked article asserts that a large proportion of
| government welfare funds in Brazil are gambled away.
|
| The linked article asserts that losses inspire domestic abuse.
| Consider that net winners may only win 51% of the time-- that's
| a lot of losses even if the individual makes out better in the
| long run.
| mattm wrote:
| > why would I restrict someone's freedom to choose to make a
| poor decision?
|
| Because there's a societal cost that goes beyond just the
| individual
| neves wrote:
| Gambling is a stupidity tax.
| anon291 wrote:
| It's shocking to me that the very same groups that want you to
| think drug legalization is a good idea are pearl clutching over
| gambling. In the grand rankings of vices, drugs are significantly
| worse.
|
| Gambling is a vice, no doubt, but honestly Americans are too
| puritanical about it.
| currymj wrote:
| like a lot of libertarian experiments in the US, we seem to have
| done it in the worst possible way. implementation matters.
|
| if it had been up to me, sports gambling should have been
| restricted to physical locations, and marketing prohibited or
| highly restricted (perhaps only print advertisements in local
| markets informing people where they can gamble). perhaps also
| allow an existing customer to place bets via a telephone call.
|
| the way I think about it is, the main reason you want to legalize
| a vice is to prevent criminals from selling it.
|
| so you want legal operators to have an easier time doing business
| than the criminals, so they can outcompete them -- but just
| barely.
|
| app on your phone and unlimited marketing on the internet and
| primetime television goes way too far.
| setgree wrote:
| In a sane society, sports gambling would be legal but with a lot
| of guardrails:
|
| * If apps detect compulsive behavior, they could go dark on your
| phone for a day/week/month/year
|
| * All bets could have delayed payoffs (e.g. greater than 10
| minutes [0]) to avoid optimizing for a quick dopamine hit
|
| * Apps could be linked to a credit score/measure of financial
| health and allow larger bets for people with higher credit
| scores, or they could stop you from placing bets if there's
| evidence of negative impacts on your overall financial situation.
|
| In general, the question of: how can we let consenting adults
| take risks that they find pleasurable (drugs, sex work, gambling,
| free diving, etc.) while also limiting the worst harms and/or
| protecting the most vulnerable people, is under-discussed
| relative to its importance, IMO.
|
| [0] https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1822382269669228822
| loceng wrote:
| I've thought that there should people, your family and/or
| friends, who have to sign on to enable you to gamble - where
| they will be on the line for any debt or a certain % of the
| debt the person has, etc.
|
| E.g. Dana White of UFC appears to have a gambling problem, but
| maybe with how much money he earns it actually isn't a problem
| - but what if it at some point it gets out of control, and that
| is hidden from friends or people that care about him - and
| where that loss of control could be hidden from sight, kept
| secret until it's perhaps too late - however that looks?
| hx8 wrote:
| I'll be your friend and enable you to spend all of your money
| for 1% of any earnings you make.
| loceng wrote:
| Sure, if you're taking on risk then that seems like it
| could be a fair arrangement - and then perhaps there's a
| requirement of putting some of the potential debt you're
| promising to cover to be held in escrow.
| astr0n0m3r wrote:
| * Make all bets above a certain threshold public information
| with the bettor's name and wager amount like political
| contributions.
|
| I think this would result in some sort of credit score, which
| would be used by countless institutions. At least people
| wouldn't be able to hide it from their family. When a person
| wins the lottery, their name is supposed to be public although
| there's ways around this.
|
| Obviously, it would create a black market for anonymous
| gambling, and lots of people would use an intermediary.
| NickC25 wrote:
| I don't think legalizing it was a mistake.
|
| I think allowing the betting houses and websites to advertise as
| prolifically as they have been (with very little restrictions)
| was a massive mistake. Advertising for sports betting is fucking
| EVERYWHERE.
|
| And athletes, such as LeBron James, who while already a
| billionaire, decided to take the money and advertise for betting
| companies. When you've got enough money to convince a billionaire
| with a pretty good image to advertise for you, something is
| amiss.
| mikhael28 wrote:
| Yeah, huge mistake. I see way too many people casually addicted
| to wasting their money and burning it for no good reason. I enjoy
| playing fantasy football, but gambling on it is a sad use of your
| hard earned money that will only impoverish people and keep them
| working for the man.
| bugtodiffer wrote:
| Having it unregulated as fuck was, I can go bet anywhere anytime
| and get drunk there too. It should be way more serious, then
| people wouldn't go there to chill.
| pfdietz wrote:
| To what extent should society protect people from themselves?
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| One fascinating aspect is that gambling addicts are basically
| paying for my podcast listening habit.
|
| So much of advertising is pushing stuff that is exploitative of
| some hope -- wealth, health, etc. -- the makes people susceptible
| to things with questionable efficacy.
| moi2388 wrote:
| Poor people from low socioeconomic families will always find a
| way to ruin their lives.
|
| Gambling, smoking, drinking, drugs, risk taking behaviours,
| crime.
|
| We can either ban everything, or accept that certain groups of
| people will just abuse literally anything
| tobsimobsi wrote:
| Do they find a way or are the ways engineered to squeeze every
| Cent out of them?
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Gambling is terrible, and I'll never do it, but unless casinos
| are holding people at gunpoint and coercing them to play, they
| aren't depriving anyone of anything against their will. Marketing
| needs to be truthful of course, and sane regulation is OK, but
| anything pleasurable can be addictive.
|
| The whole puritanical notion that anything pleasurable is
| dangerous and needs to be strictly regulated/outlawed is not a
| good reality, doesn't really do anything except make people lie
| about what they really want to do (which causes obssession and
| addiction), and honestly needs to be buried with all the other
| outmoded concepts.
|
| I'm getting tired of "addiction" being used as a justification to
| reduce freedoms. If you want to fix addiction, fix the underlying
| causes instead of banning shit. This involves designing societies
| where everyone's basic needs are easily met, where people who run
| into problems can get help easily, where people are encouraged to
| treat each other equitably, and lowering anxiety and panic. It's
| hard and doesn't make anyone any money which is why it's not the
| default state in many societies, but it does prevent these
| societies from collapsing
|
| But all this howling in this whole topic about how gambling hurts
| the poor, yet no one is actually talking about how to stop
| creating poor in the first place - is just sanctimonious virtue
| signaling. Even if you have a poor friend or relative who got bit
| by a gambling loss - why is he/she addicted - what did you or
| society do to address _that_?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Let adults be adults.
|
| The hypocrisy is amazing, many states ban gambling, but have
| scratches. Online scratchers, state owned digital slot machines.
| How is that fair when online casinos are banned.
|
| The State has a much lower Return to Player.
| bentt wrote:
| Every time I watch SportsCenter and hear the word "parlay" I
| vomit a little.
|
| They sold their souls.
| catchcatchcatch wrote:
| You all sound like you have adhd. If you can't budget you will
| never get a corporate job and youll be odd about panhandling and
| asking for money. Gambling is fun when budgeted, sports gambling
| can have a positive expected value, unlike the games, but they
| can be fun. There's people that don't have money anxiety you live
| in a money bubble. Go play catch. Most people here need to see a
| doctor about getting perscribed adderal.
| superultra wrote:
| This is one of the most Reddit comments I've ever read on
| hacker news.
| catchcatchcatch wrote:
| Why? If someone loses all of their money gambling they'd have
| to ask everyone for money anxiety free. That's what a CEO
| does in general idk what to tell you what do you think y
| combinator is if guys all want to be a millionaire you can
| ask 1 million people for a dollar and then gamble and then do
| it again
| superultra wrote:
| Your account is 9 mins old. You started an account to
| defend sports gambling? Ok. Corporate sports gambling
| thanks you for your service.
| catchcatchcatch wrote:
| You're probably naricistic and miss the point of freedom
| and what the community wants. If everyone wants to gamble
| all jobs would be at the casino because that's what
| people want to do.
| catchcatchcatch wrote:
| Anyways life more about the time budget
| liendolucas wrote:
| Argentina is currently facing a huge teenager gambling addiction
| on illegal websites, we're talking about kids from 11 years old
| onwards. They gamble on school breaks, among their friends as
| something completely natural. Mobsters catch them by giving away
| for free an initial fixed amount of money, then they get hooked
| and keep betting and burning money. The worst part of it is that
| is an extremely silent addiction: parents would only realize
| about it once a kid is so full of debts that they get threatened
| by the mobsters that run these sites, in their despair they
| reveal the situation to their parents. They easily search them
| online through social networks and pressure them really hard for
| the money that they owe. In my opinion online gambling is a f***g
| disgrace and should simply not exist at all. It ruins lives and
| families. It should only be possible to play/gamble/bet
| physically in a casino or authorized venue.
| catchcatchcatch wrote:
| Gambling in general is not addictive unless you have adhd and are
| extremely impulsive. That leads to other problems. There's people
| without adhd that think it's fun and sports betting can be a
| winner not much different poker. They have computer models that
| are profitable funds a lot of stuff in a world where people think
| controlling inflation is a good idea. Most people here sounds
| like they have Parkinson's or something. Go play catch or lift
| some weights
| catchcatchcatch wrote:
| Maybe they can stammer like the swift compiler on type
| annotations or that Bachman turner overdrive song you ain't
| seen nothing yet
| davewritescode wrote:
| I personally love sports betting and I'm glad that it's legal to
| do and I don't have to send money to the Caribbean to do it. For
| me $10 is enough to get me interested in a game and I don't
| gamble compulsively.
|
| The cat is out of the bag with sports betting, any teenager can
| open up a Bovada account with no verification.
|
| I'm happy to talk about advertising and reasonable regulation but
| banning sports betting at this point seems silly.
| bnpxft wrote:
| Let's say it like it is, it is the legalization of profiting off
| of an addiction that is the mistake.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| They legalized online gambling basically. It's a online casino,
| using sports as the random medium. Casino for all.
| stcroixx wrote:
| Is allowing people to follow an active investment strategy in
| various markets also a mistake? I understand the need for CME
| weather futures contracts for a farmer, but anyone is allowed to
| do this. Hedge funds have rules regarding who can participate.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Yeah its weird to me that gambling is regulated at the state
| level while investment contracts are regulated at the federal
| level and therefore have nothing in common, despite the user
| experience of throwing your money out the window being the same
| Jaepa wrote:
| This is a motte-and-bailey fallacy that got brought up a lot by
| gambling proponents early on. The biggest difference is that by
| design investments on average will return a zero or net
| positive potential for return. Gambling will always return an
| average negative return by design.
|
| EDIT:
|
| There was a study that came out a month ago that showed that
| state by state when online sports betting became legal, there
| was about a $20/month reduction in retirement investments.
| Considering only ~12-20% of the population has taken part in
| sports betting, this is not an insignificant reduction in
| retirement investments.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| to hold the libertarian belief that "people will do it anyway so
| might as well make it legal", you must believe marketing and ease
| of access have no impact on usage.
| aa_is_op wrote:
| You don't say.... something banned for decades was not a actually
| banned by accident!
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I think regulating or limiting ads is a decent direction
| benreesman wrote:
| So complete prohibition seems bad: it drives activities
| underground, makes them the purview of organized crime, and is
| ultimately an insult to the freedom and agency of adult human
| beings to make their own choices.
|
| But turbocharged advertising and online "engagement" and
| "monetization" hyper-optimization by unscrupulous growth hacker
| types who heavily optimize for excessive and reckless gambling by
| targeting, with malice aforethought, people with issues and
| aggressively try to recruit new people into a risky activity
| seems maybe even worse?
|
| How about door #3: keep it legal to avoid most or all of the
| downsides of prohibition, and absolutely fuck up the
| profitability of hyper marketing it?
|
| So many problems have plausible if not compelling solutions if
| you always care more about the welfare of the vulnerable than
| anyone, anywhere, who is getting shit rich by doing harm.
|
| It took a long time, but we finally took the gloves off with Big
| Tobacco. You can still buy cigarettes, but you so rarely see them
| anymore. Even I gave up (which I swore I'd never do) because it's
| just impossible to smoke most places, they're not sold everywhere
| anymore, and it's expensive as hell.
|
| There will always be diehard smokers, but it's not the crisis it
| once was and you still don't have drug dealers involved.
|
| How is this not the playbook?
| lgdskhglsa wrote:
| As someone who worked for a major sports betting company, these
| are the things we built but only used if required by the
| country/state/tribe/whatever:
|
| * Deposit limits, per day/week/etc to limit the damage someone
| could do and also to limit money laundering. This could be self
| imposed or regulator imposed.
|
| * Withdrawal limits. This was mostly to limit money laundering.
|
| * Wager limits, per event/day/etc
|
| * Self exclusion for a certain time period or forever. This kept
| people from using our stuff to make bets based on our best
| efforts to identify them. Sometimes we had a government ID,
| sometimes we didn't.
|
| * Other exclusions, i.e. blacklisting for things like not paying
| child support.
|
| * Geofencing to prevent people from using our app outside of the
| legal jurisdictions. Also, geofencing to only allow people to
| _register_ for our apps in certain locations, such as a casino.
| That could easily be extended to prevent people from using the
| apps outside of a casino, but I don 't think that was required
| anywhere.
|
| These things are technically possible and would greatly help if
| required globally, short of an outright ban.
| matthewolfe wrote:
| I also work in industry. I think a national self-exclusion
| scheme (like the UK has) would be huge.
| lacrosse_tannin wrote:
| _Sports_ is not some basic fact, moral good in the world. It's
| just games. If you want to argue against something you need to
| find some other reason than it's inconvenient to professional
| sports.
| alex5092 wrote:
| The impact of problem gambling on families can be devastating and
| we see it first hand in the financial counseling that we do.
| (Disclosure: I'm the founder of MoneyStack and we run GamFin.org)
|
| Since many of you have commented about regulation, check out the
| SAFE Bet Act
| https://tonko.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=...
|
| Also, the GRIT Act may bring much needed federal funding into the
| prevention and treatment system across the US.
| https://www.ncpgambling.org/advocacy/grit-act/
| matthewolfe wrote:
| I'm the founder of BeeBettor (YC S24). I've been working in this
| space for a while.
|
| A lot of the points in the article are valid. I have two major
| issues with online sports betting (OSB) in the US.
|
| 1. Sports betting advertising before, during, and after games is
| horrendous. There is no way to watch sports without being
| bombarded. Obviously, this is a huge issue for problem gamblers.
| Sports become unwatchable.
|
| 2. Self-exclusion is impossible. There's 40+ sports betting apps
| available. There is no centralized body a person can say "hey
| don't let me bet anymore" and then be automatically restricted
| from betting across all apps. This is something I think we can
| help with in the near future.
|
| So what can be done now? I don't think OSB is going to be
| redeclared illegal. I don't think that would be a good idea
| either. Millions of people have started sports betting. If it
| becomes illegal, it won't make them stop.
|
| Happy to discuss this further. Email is in my profile.
| volleygman180 wrote:
| > So what can be done now? I don't think OSB is going to be
| redeclared illegal. I don't think that would be a good idea
| either.
|
| I disagree - I think it would be a great idea. While some may
| argue that gambling is a zero-sum game (which isn't exactly
| great, in and of itself), it's really a net loss. While some
| people may win a bit of money, I'd argue that the degree to
| which their lives are improved is much less than the degree
| that some others' lives are destroyed. Gambling, ultimately,
| being a negative sum.
|
| > Millions of people have started sports betting. If it becomes
| illegal, it won't make them stop
|
| I disagree with this too. It's substantially easier for any
| random person to simply tap a few buttons on their phone to
| place a bet than to find and arrange opportunities with others
| to bet on sports or visit a brick & mortar betting site. The
| level of effort of placing a phone bet is so small (and with
| 24/7 access), you'd have a very hard time arguing that making
| OSB illegal would only marginally impact the amount of sports
| gambling taking place.
|
| Bottom line: gambling is an addictive activity for all people
| and some more so than others. Limiting access to it will have a
| positive impact on pretty much everyone who does't own or work
| at a gambling company.
| matthewolfe wrote:
| > you'd have a very hard time arguing that making OSB illegal
| would only marginally impact the amount of sports gambling
| taking place.
|
| "Offshore sportsbooks" are another thing to consider. These
| companies are not regulated in the US market, but still take
| online bets from people in the US. The ease of placing bets
| online does not go away with making OSB illegal. Just
| eliminates any consumer protection we could have had.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Let's be honest. A person who would habitually loose more than
| half of their monthly income to betting or other things they
| would do better without is mentally disabled and should not be
| given money in the first place. Instead they should be given
| professional care like senile elderly people and underage
| children receive. The rest can invest their money whatever the
| way they see fit.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This article doesn't address it for whatever reason, but any
| discussion of sports betting in the US is going to have to deal
| with the actual reason PASPA was struck down. It was found to be
| unconstitutional. That doesn't mean sports betting needs to be
| universally legal across the entire country, and it isn't, but if
| you're going to make an argument that it should be legally
| banned, that has to be done on a state-by-state basis. The US
| Supreme Court, as an institution, changes its mind over time, but
| I'm not aware of any notable instance where exactly the same
| court only six years later reverses its own decision. Likely a
| few of these justices would need to die and be replaced by
| someone with a different legal opinion before change was
| possible.
|
| You can make these kind of consequentialist arguments anyway.
| It's worthwhile discussion. But the legal decision itself wasn't
| made on a consequentialist basis. The court didn't decide PASPA
| was illegal because it was socially bad and we'd have a better
| world without it. The proposed "just ban it outright everywhere"
| can't happen under the current legal regime. It's fine to propose
| things that can't happen but we should acknowledge this becomes a
| hypothetical discussion.
| larrydag wrote:
| I place the lottery in the same category. Punitive on those who
| least likely can afford it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-27 23:01 UTC)