[HN Gopher] Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a...
___________________________________________________________________
Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for
society
Author : aloukissas
Score : 409 points
Date : 2025-10-05 04:01 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pewresearch.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pewresearch.org)
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Why is it any different than betting on the stock market? Buying
| a house is also a bet. Even if Americans view it as a bad thing,
| it should be allowed.
| bberenberg wrote:
| Because the outcomes and demographics for sports betting vs the
| other two show different aggregate money movements and we make
| judgements about what we consider to be acceptably and
| unacceptably informed and consenting risk accepting behavior.
| Isamu wrote:
| The odds are manipulated to give the gambling company the
| advantage. Big winners are identified and dropped. It is
| designed to drain money from gamblers.
|
| Stocks are not that, in general. A particular fraudulent
| investment could be that. Crypto investment comes to mind.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by odds being manipulated. The
| bookmaker will generally adjust odds to where the money is
| being placed. Example, in American football if a team opens
| up as a 7 point favorite and betters put more money on the
| underdog than the favorite, the line gets smaller so more
| will take the favorite. Generally the opening line is what
| the book will think half the betters are willing to place on
| the favorite, and half on the underdog. Doesn't always work
| out that way which is why you see lines move.
|
| Also not sure what you mean by winners
| c6400sc wrote:
| Listen to season 4 of Michael Lewis' podcast. He covers the
| downsides in detail.
|
| https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules
|
| I think this is the ep that gets into the most detail, but
| I haven't read the transcript.
|
| https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/against-the-rules/vegas-
| spor...
|
| IIRC, if you're too professional or too lucky, the betting
| apps will restrict you and then lock you out. They only
| want the dumb money playing.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > Also not sure what you mean by winners
|
| https://www.vegas-aces.com/articles/how-betting-sites-
| limit-...
|
| Various forms of this have been practiced in traditional
| casinos for almost a century with increasing
| sophistication, it's a well-established art by now.
| Hamuko wrote:
| You don't need to even win to get banned (limited from making
| bets larger than a couple of dollars). You just need to make
| bets that look too smart and might result you winning in the
| future.
|
| https://youtu.be/XZvXWVztJoY?t=667
|
| Sports betting is just looking for chumps that have little to
| no chance of winning.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I think this is a good question, I'm sorry you're being
| downvoted.
|
| I think the difference is that buying/betting on a house or
| stocks are not a zero-sum game. It is feasible for everyone to
| buy a house, all the houses to increase in real-world value,
| and everyone benefit. Likewise with stocks. And on top of that
| effect, the bets being made are useful for society at large to
| make better plans, because they are a measure of society's best
| predictions. Sports betting on the other hand, is truly zero-
| sum (although I think you could make an argument that it's
| actually worse than zero sum). Additionally, it is not useful
| for society to predict which team will win some set of games.
| This is just wasted effort on a curiosity. There's nothing
| wrong with that effort as entertainment, but it is bad to
| incentivize our minds to take up sports betting, as opposed to
| say finance, engineering, art, or anything productive.
| SJC_Hacker wrote:
| Options markets are zero sum.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Why? Both sides could use hedging, both sides could derive
| economic benefits, etc.
| bob1029 wrote:
| The important distinction between gambling and options is
| that there are many additional information sources
| available to bias the outcome.
|
| Options are a Bayesian game. Jane Street is _much_ more
| likely to win than I am, but there are still rare cases
| where I could come out ahead with very high certainty (I
| know something they don 't).
|
| Card counting and being escorted out of the casino aside,
| there aren't any ways to acquire private information in a
| gambling context.
| fullshark wrote:
| Stocks have positive expected returns: the risk premium. Sports
| bets have negative expected returns in aggregate and if you are
| good enough to only bet the ones you can spot with positive
| expected returns they ban you from the platform.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >they ban you from the platform
|
| Use a respectable platform that doesn't do that then.
| jpk wrote:
| There's no such thing. The house always wins or the
| business collapses.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Yet, Polymarket exists where no one takes a cut* as it
| all happens on a blockchain.
|
| *there are small gas fees for sending transactions on the
| blockchain
| liquidise wrote:
| Are you familiar with any? I know people who bet on sports
| for a living and one of their biggest operational
| challenges is keeping accounts unbanned long enough to make
| consistent income.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Polymarket.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Stocks do not have positive expected return. The return on
| the average stock is 0% in the US which is negative after
| fees (this is a common misconception, market returns are
| positive only because large companies get larger and this is
| contextual, when this isn't true then even the market will
| lose money). This is to say nothing of 0DTE options.
|
| There is a risk premium but this premium can be positive or
| negative. It has been negative in many countries, do you
| suggest they ban stocks?
|
| I don't think stocks are the same thing as gambling btw. But
| it is significantly more complex in that they overlap, some
| financial products clearly exist in the US because gambling
| was illegal. A sports bet is clearly not an investment, but
| neither is a ODTE option. Both are entertainment, the former
| probably more logically so than the latter, I am not sure
| what appeal that latter can have other than to gambling
| addicts.
| oreally wrote:
| If stocks did not have positive expected return no one
| would invest. What you're talking about is daytrading where
| there's a large failure rate so much so people call it
| gambling because of the nature of how swingy and illogical
| it can be.
|
| Besides that, there's also the perspective that options
| help stabilize the market via hedging.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Then why do people gamble? Negative expected return, they
| still do it.
|
| I am also not sure what you are saying. The return on the
| average stock is negative, it is a empirical fact.
| deadbabe wrote:
| No one should be buying 0DTE options, it's idiotic.
|
| You should only use options as a way to make some extra
| money for actions you might have taken anyway, such as
| buying/selling a stock at a certain price.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Why is it any different than betting on the stock market?
|
| We could honestly say gambling and investments were similar -
| _if_ they typically had similar outcomes.
|
| In late 1990s, I set up two customers (in retirement) with PCs
| and internet. One was a day trader and the other did online
| casinos. After a year they were both about as good as their
| contemporaries.
|
| The day trader made more money than he lost but I don't know
| how much.
|
| The gambler hid his habit from his wife. He lost their entire
| retirement savings, maxed out their credit cards, got more
| cards and maxed those out - and took out 2 mortgages on their
| formerly paid-for house. It ended their marriage.
|
| These truly aren't similar outcomes.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Certain forms of stock market operations are indeed banned from
| retail - for example "binary options" in the UK.
| 48terry wrote:
| I buy a house to live in it, WTF are you buying one for?
| tgv wrote:
| > Why is it any different than ... Buying a house
|
| Because your money will at least get you a roof over your head.
| It's not a bet because it involves an element of chance. I
| can't believe you're seriously raising such an argument.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Is it bad for society? It's certainly bad for individuals, and by
| extension their families. I guess if it scales up such that a
| serious chunk of society is affected, then yes its bad for
| society.
|
| Let's start with the obvious- in all forms of gambling the
| gamblers make a net loss. The games are hosted by very
| sophisticated companies, that have better mathematicians, and
| make money.
|
| $x is pumped into the system by the punters, $y is extracted, $z
| is returned. The 'house' is the only winner.
|
| All those TV ads you see? Funded by losers.
|
| Is it light entertainment? Similar to the cost of a ticket to the
| game? For some sure. But we understand the chemistry of gambling-
| it's addictive and compulsive.
|
| If we agree it's generally bad, then what? Lots of things are
| known to be bad, but are still allowed (smoking and drinking
| spring to mind, nevermind sugar.)
|
| It could be banned. Would that stop it? Probably not. Perhaps ban
| advertising? Perhaps tax gambling companies way higher (like we
| do with booze and smokes.) Perhaps treat it as a serious issue?
|
| All of which is unlikely in the US. Business rules, and sports
| gambling us really good business.
| creato wrote:
| > Let's start with the obvious- in all forms of gambling the
| gamblers make a net loss. The games are hosted by very
| sophisticated companies, that have better mathematicians, and
| make money.
|
| It's not impossible to beat them consistently, but if you do,
| they'll limit how much you can bet or just ban you.
| katbyte wrote:
| Seems like an easy solution is just to ban them from banning
| winners.
|
| Regulate them
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| There is no reason why they have to provide a fair market
| to all users. The purpose of the product is entertainment,
| not financial risk.
|
| There are providers who specialise in providing action to
| sharps which then sets the prices that retail-facing
| customers use. If you want to make money, just bet with
| them. But limiting users is a way to provide a sustainable
| product. Again, it is an entertainment product, it is not a
| financial investment.
|
| Also, the quoted text is wrong...gambling companies do not
| employ lots of mathematicians, I am not sure why people
| think this...I am not even 100% sure why people think
| mathematicians are useful, most of the stats used are very
| basic. But retail providers don't, the prices you see for
| the biggest lines are provided by third parties, when you
| make a bet retail providers have no idea what price is
| being offered to you at that time. The only exception is
| parlays which are often priced in-house, these lines are
| very beatable but, again, retail providers limit because
| the purpose of the product is entertainment. Providers that
| do business with syndicates do not have lines on parlays
| because they are so beatable. The protection comes from all
| users being limited in the amount they can bet on parlays.
|
| A side note is that even in financial markets which are
| completely open, market makers avoid informed flow. If
| there was no uninformed flow, there would be no market
| makers. There has to be an ecosystem. Retail providers
| exist to buy advertising to win retail users every weekend,
| to do that they have to run their business in a certain
| way. There can't be a situation where they just lose money
| non-stop to fund someone else's business.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| > It could be banned. Would that stop it? Probably not.
|
| Was not that big of a thing 15 years ago. The goal of a ban is
| not to reduce the consumption to 0, but try to lower it a
| significant amount. Although, since people are generally aware
| of it and participated in it, it might not be that easy to go
| back to beforetimes.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| It doesn't have to be a prohibition either. Advertising could
| be banned. Branding could be controlled so it isn't appealing
| (Provider 1, Provider 2, etc). Parlay bets and "innovations"
| (which burn customer money 10 times faster) could be
| restricted. The "concierge" service that preys on the big
| spending addicts could be regulated/erased.
|
| That's the sort of ban that actually works for society,
| because it is strongly focused on disincentivizing harmful
| behavior, while shutting out the black market.
| fragmede wrote:
| The other regulation would be acredited gambler thresholds,
| that limits how much an individual can bet, based on some
| formula that accounts for a person's income and net worth.
| You're just not allowed to gamble more than a third of what
| you legally earned last paycheck or whatever.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Advertising could be banned.
|
| I always liked how the offshore casinos would setup a play
| money casino on their name.net and advertise that on the
| poker shows. Of course, I imagine a lot of people would put
| in .com instead and accidentally end up on the real money
| casino. Whoops.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Genies are tricky to get back in the bottle - especially when
| you can just as easily go to a company based in the Caymen
| Islands or wherever and spend that way.
|
| Phones allow you to gamble from anywhere on anything. You
| could ban advertising it during sports broadcasts, which
| would probably reduce things a fair bit, but that's likely to
| impact the "casual" gambler who
|
| I don't do sports, but occasionally I'm in a pub and they are
| on. I've seen in the UK over the years how pervasive it is
| now compared to a generation ago. The advertising companies
| paint this picture of it not only being normal, but also
| being the only way to enjoy a game. I'm fairly sure that my
| parents and grandparents who were big into football enjoyed
| games quite happily in the past.
|
| In the 90s the typical sports gambling in the UK was old men
| putting the price of a pint on the pools or in a fruit
| machine, where you guessed which team would win. The winning
| limit on the fruit machines was about 5 pints worth, and the
| pools was a confusing weekly maths challenge while listening
| to results such as "Forfar Four, East Fife Five"
|
| The explosion of "fixed odds betting" machines which
| dispensed with the social aspect of going to a pub and
| spending PS5 over lunch in favour of extracting PS50 in 5
| minutes and moving on, combined with general high street
| abandonment led to a terrible blight on uk town centres.
| Online gambling meant you no longer had to go into a seedy
| shop to hand in a betting slip for the 3:40 at doncaster,
| then wait for an hour or so in the pub next door to watch it
| with acquaintances, but instead you could do it all from your
| own home.
|
| Gambling has become industrialised in the last generation,
| emphasising the cash extraction and reducing the pleasure it
| brought. It's no longer PS3 for an hour of interest, it's
| become about extracting as much money as possible (and thus
| the adverts are all about winning big bucks because you as a
| sports nerd know far more about which player will score first
| than the betting companies do)
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Gambling has always been a part of football. You mentioned
| the football pools, is this not gambling? Horse racing, not
| going to mention that?
|
| Conflating fixed odds machines with sports gambling is
| deliberately disingenuous, it is like comparing a nice
| glass of water with super skunk weed. Sports gambling is
| known to have less harm because it is not possible to
| control many aspects of the experience, unlike with fixed
| odds machine where the experience is controlled to appeal
| to addicts. Also, these machines are very heavily
| regulated, there are categories that separate what places
| can have them, how the mechanics operate, etc. We have
| regulation (you seem to be unaware that regulations have
| changed to limit how much you can wager, you cannot wager
| PS50 in 5 minutes), the problem is purely one of choice.
|
| Online gambling has grown because it is more accessible,
| and that has meant that a higher proportion of the users
| are people who didn't want go into a seedy shop and can now
| put their acca on at the weekend and that is it.
|
| Football pools was also about extracting money from people.
| The people who ran the pools did not do so because they had
| an innate love for the human spirit, they did it because
| people wanted to gamble.
|
| Also, banning advertising would not be a big issue for
| gambling companies. In the UK, it would be a massive
| leveller because Paddy Power is able to generate as much
| revenue as everyone else whilst spending significantly less
| on advertising. However, the issue is that offshore places
| would still advertise in the UK and it would significantly
| incentivize revenue generation from FBOT. If you no longer
| have big retail participation then you have to rely on
| addicts to fund the company. This is the first-order
| effects, past this point it will be different and who
| knows. But there is an ecosystem that advertising is part
| of that generates massive revenue, provides significant
| employment, funds addiction treatment (until 2022, there
| were no gambling addiction centres funded by the
| government, it was all funded by providers), and is a
| generally low-harm product that people enjoy (gambling has
| been a core part of British culture for decades, what has
| changed recently is the makeup of British society not
| gambling).
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| You wrote: > Gambling has always been a
| part of football. You mentioned the football pools, is
| this not gambling?
|
| Did you read this part? > In the 90s
| the typical sports gambling in the UK was old men putting
| the price of a pint on the pools or in a fruit machine,
| where you guessed which team would win. The winning limit
| on the fruit machines was about 5 pints worth
|
| In short, I would say "scale matters".
| ta1243 wrote:
| Losing or winning a pint or two once or twice a week
| isn't the end of the world. The pools involved putting
| numbers into coupons and sending them off each week, it
| cost you PS2 or whatever, and that was it for the week.
|
| Modern sports betting seems (to my untrained uninterested
| eye) to be about extracting multiple bets of PS20+ an
| hour, seemingly competing with the coke dealers which is
| apparently a very common part of football nowadays for
| the income, and using similar tactics.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Yes, gambling was huge in the US before, you just didn't know
| about it. Illegal gambling market in the US was massive
| because you could go offshore. One of the issues with
| offshore providers is no taxes, no harm prevention, etc.
|
| Legalization allows you to generate tax revenue and implement
| harm prevention effectively for the very small amount of
| users that are gambling addicts (if you compare to some of
| the things that are legal in the US, talking about addiction
| makes no sense at all...weed, for example, is inherently
| addictive, gambling is not).
|
| Regardless though, when sports betting was largely illegal in
| the US, the illegal market was by far the biggest sports
| betting market in the world. Continuing to make it illegal
| was extremely illogical.
| watwut wrote:
| > Legalization allows you to generate tax revenue and
| implement harm prevention effectively for the very small
| amount of users that are gambling addicts
|
| You do not need legalization for harm reduction. But, the
| state earning on gambling means effective regulations will
| be against state interests.
|
| Gambling earns mostly on addicts. Not on people who bet a
| little here and there. By extension, state will need those
| addicts existing and loosing money to get taxes too.
| eep_social wrote:
| > weed, for example, is inherently addictive, gambling is
| not
|
| Any science on this? That's a wild statement vs my priors.
| monkeyelite wrote:
| Yes it existed before. But Do you dispute that far more
| people in the US are participating now?
|
| Ease of access and advertising matter.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I'm imagining mandatory disclosures like on cigarette packs,
| except it's some distribution chart or percentile figure for
| bankruptcy.
| viccis wrote:
| >It could be banned. Would that stop it? Probably not.
|
| Absolutely asinine statement. Yeah no shit it's not going to
| deter the most degenerate of gamblers of seeking out a place to
| make bets. Will it stop apps being advertised on TV and the app
| stores from grooming new people into it? Yes. Will it stop
| people mildly curious from betting on sports? Yes.
|
| If "it" in "stop it" is "all sports betting" then no,
| obviously. If "it" is "sports betting in normal society" then
| yep, it will stop it. Anyone obfuscating this simple fact wants
| to make money off of more human misery, remember that.
|
| Remind me of how cigarette usage has gone in nations that ban
| advertisement of it.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| The point OP is making is almost completely unrelated to
| addiction.
|
| If someone is a gambling addict, they are going to do it. One
| of the issues with gambling addicts in the US before
| legalization is that they would use illegal bookmakers, and
| then get their legs broken. Legalizing is the only way to
| implement a harm prevention strategy because states
| regulators can control providers (for example, all states in
| the US have exclusion lists that they maintain and which
| providers have to implement, regulators have direct control
| over operations).
|
| In addition, there is also a lot of evidence that if you
| regulate ineffectively, you will also cause harm. Hong Kong
| is a classic example where some forms of gambling are
| legalized to raise revenue (iirc, very effective, over 10% of
| total tax revenue) but other forms are banned in order to
| maximise revenue...addicts are the only users of underground
| services. Sweden have a state-run gambling operator, that
| operator provides a bad service (unsurprisingly), again
| addicts are driven to underground services.
|
| For some reason the general public perceives gambling as both
| inherently addictive and something that can only be triggered
| by gambling being legal. Neither of these things are true.
| Substances are inherently addictive, gambling is not, the
| proportion of gamblers that are addicted is usually around
| 1%...of gamblers, not the total population. And it isn't
| triggered by gambling being legal, it is a real addiction so
| is present regardless.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If someone is a gambling addict, they are going to do
| it_
|
| Gambling marketing, and the gambling industry, facilitate
| the production of gambling addicts.
| watwut wrote:
| > It's certainly bad for individuals, and by extension their
| families.
|
| When gambler makes debt, then the partner gets half the debt in
| divorce. And they have to pay it.
|
| It is not bad for families just "by extension". It is directly
| harming the family members even after the divorce.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Personal gambling debt is individual unless credited to a
| joint account no?
| watwut wrote:
| In marriage, stuff you acquire during marriage is "common"
| no matter which accout you used. The same applies to debt.
| (Pre existing assets and debts are purely yours).
|
| The common stuff then splits half half unless there was
| prenup or something.
| howard941 wrote:
| This very much varies state-by-state (ignoring prenups
| and emergency med treatment as edge cases). In my
| marriage and state (FL) debts incurred by me remain my
| own. Wifey owes none of it. Compare with states that have
| community property or purchases made as tenants by the
| entirety.
| toast0 wrote:
| I live in a community property state, all of my accounts
| are owned by the marriage regardless of how they're titled.
| I would imagine legal debts are similar. There's some
| exceptions and I suppose gambling debt could be one, but I
| would expect the default to be that the debt holder could
| collect from assets held by either spouse.
| bruce511 wrote:
| This will vary greatly from one jurisdiction to another.
| It can also depend on the specific kind of marriage.
|
| Yes, some marriages are "community of property", some are
| not. Even in community of property though some debts may
| be on the individual not the couple.
|
| So one cannot really talk in generalities regarding this.
| lordnacho wrote:
| You don't have to go into debt for it to be a problem. If
| one spouse spends money gambling, it's still gone from the
| other one's savings.
| debtta wrote:
| There's quite a lot of confusion about this question here.
|
| You are right that debt of this type are individual and
| other parties (spouses, heirs) can't be pursued for it. But
| it has to be taken into account in a divorce.
|
| Johnny and Janey have a $1m property, $200k savings, $200k
| retirement between them. They should each get $700k from a
| divorce (assume they were penniless students when they got
| together and acquired all the assets during the marriage).
|
| If Janey* wants to stay in the house, she only has to
| borrow an extra $300k to buy Johnny out. That plus her
| share of the financial assets, pays for his share of the
| house.
|
| Now Johnny reveals that he owes half a million in credit
| card debt that he never told Janey about. She can't just
| say "That's your problem, it comes out of your share." The
| marital assets are diminished by that amount before
| division.
|
| Janey now gets $450k, an even split of the net assets. She
| has to come up with $550k to keep the house, effectively
| paying off half of Johnny's gambling debt as well as buying
| out the difference between the house and the financial
| assets.
|
| If she doesn't try and keep the house, the cash she gets
| represents half of the assets minus half the debt. If
| Johnny owes $2 million, the married couple together are
| $600k negative. For her to leave the marriage, she has to
| pay half of this towards Johnny's debts. So she will have
| to come up with $300k cash to give him, on top of losing
| all her assets.
|
| Of course, Janey married Johnny for better or worse, and
| that includes his gambling addiction. But it might feel
| unfair to Janet, especially if she didn't know about the
| gambling and couldn't have done anything to stop Johnny
| running up the debt. And Johnny's lawyer makes sure Johnny
| dredges up everything he owes in the negotiation, the
| opposite of the situation with assets where a sharp lawyer
| might tell Johnny to tread lightly owning up to his gold
| coins/offshore account. In the worst case Johnny hits Vegas
| when the divorce seems to be inevitable, knowing that the
| losses will go into the joint pool, whereas his winnings
| can be spent on partying or pocketed in cash.
|
| * Divorce participants' behavior is stereotyped by gender.
| Apologies to all the thrifty houseproud Johnnys and louche
| deadbeat Janeys out there.
| watwut wrote:
| > She has to come up with $550k to keep the house,
| effectively paying off half of Johnny's gambling debt as
| well as buying out the difference between the house and
| the financial assets.
|
| It is even worst - Jane has to pay half those debts even
| if she dont care about house. If assets minus debt go
| negative, which they do in case of gamblers, partner is
| in debt.
|
| That is why the forst advice to partners of gamblers is
| to divorce asap. Because they easily end up paying for
| years.
| debtta wrote:
| Yes, good point, I am editing the answer just so that
| it's not misleading.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Gambling used to be so illegal in the US that it used its
| global Internet jurisdiction to shut down poker companies
| located outside the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg
| bongodongobob wrote:
| And yet every bar I go to, as far back as I can remember, has
| slot machines and somehow that doesn't count? Even gas
| stations. Never understood this.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Scale.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| That is very much state by state in the usa. My state never
| had slots in gas stations or bars.
| GenerWork wrote:
| This sounds like Nevada. I remember arriving in the Reno
| airport for the first time and being astounded that there
| were so many slot machines around. Even CVS had slot
| machines!
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| It's wild, first thing you encounter when you come off
| the plane is just rows and rows of slot machines. Jarring
| mikestew wrote:
| Once you left Nevada, I doubt you saw the same thing. If I
| want to see a slot machine in Washington, I have to go to a
| casino on a native reservation.
| RataNova wrote:
| I do think advertising is the lowest-hanging fruit here.
| There's no good reason we should be letting sportsbooks run ads
| during games that are watched by kids
| slumberlust wrote:
| Kids are the majority of people I know who bet a lot. Mostly
| teenagers on the ski lifts talking about parlays and long
| shots.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > Kids are the majority of people I know who bet a lot.
| Mostly teenagers on the ski lifts talking about parlays and
| long shots.
|
| Woah. What country? I cannot imagine this is happening in
| Sweden, France, Italy, Austria or Switzerland.
| inerte wrote:
| > The games are hosted by very sophisticated companies, that
| have better mathematicians, and make money.
|
| Oh, it's worse than that. In sports betting at least, if the
| gambler consistently makes money, the companies will ban or
| limit their gains. It's a scam.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| > Let's start with the obvious- in all forms of gambling the
| gamblers make a net loss. The games are hosted by very
| sophisticated companies, that have better mathematicians, and
| make money.
|
| > $x is pumped into the system by the punters, $y is extracted,
| $z is returned. The 'house' is the only winner.
|
| This is incorrect, specifically with regard to sports betting.
| Sports betting and poker are both winnable games. Most people
| don't win in the long run, but unlike in table games
| (Blackjack, etc.) there are absolutely winners that are not the
| house.
|
| To be clear, that doesn't mean they're good or should be
| allowed. I used to be a poker player and enjoy putting some
| bets on football now, but I've come around to the general idea
| that sports betting in particular is a net negative for
| society. Still, if you're going to make an argument against it,
| it's always going to be a better argument if it isn't built on
| a basis that's just factually untrue.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Net loss means that if you add all the players together, the
| losses exceed the winnings.
|
| Yes some individuals win (at least occasionally.) But as a
| group it's always a net loss (because the house takes a cut.)
| monkeyelite wrote:
| > Perhaps ban advertising
|
| Yes. Ban the phone apps and had the ads. Advertising works
| people, that's why they pay for it!
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's always an interesting thing. Where does autonomy end and
| the right of the government to intrude into your private life
| begin. The bottom line, that something is bad for you seems to be
| so logical. But when you think about it a bit longer you see that
| there are so many things that are bad for you that it would be
| next to impossible to regulate all of them. Ok, so you only do it
| for the things that are _really_ harmful. But then you 're still
| left with smoking, alcohol, obesity, the state's lottery and
| casinos (always legal, for some weird reason, but just as bad as
| other forms of gambling), parachute jumping, social media, free
| climbing and a whole raft of other items that have the potential
| to massively ruin your (or even someone else's) life. And then
| there are the things you could do but that are illegal, such as
| speeding and drinking and then getting into the driver's seat of
| a vehicle.
|
| I find this one of the most difficult to answer questions about
| how you should run a society. In practice, we aim to curb the
| excesses and treat them as if they are illnesses but even that
| does not stop the damage. In the end it is an education problem.
| People are not taught to deal with a massive menu of options for
| addiction and oblivion, while at the same time their lives are
| structurally manipulated to select them for that addiction.
|
| In the UK for instance, where sports betting is legal (and in
| some other EU countries as well) it is a real problem. But the
| parties that make money of it (and who prey mostly on the poor)
| are so wealthy and politically connected that even if the bulk of
| the people would be against it I doubt something could be done
| about it. If it were made illegal it would still continue, but
| underground. It's really just another tax on the poor.
|
| Sports betting is problematic for the sports too. It causes
| people to throw matches for money and it exposes athletes to
| danger and claims of purposefully throwing matches when that
| might not be the case. This isn't a new thing (
| https://apnews.com/article/sports-betting-scandals-1a59b8bee...
| ), it is essentially as old as the sports themselves.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > Where does autonomy end and the right of the government to
| intrude into your private life begin
|
| I think there are really three questions bundled in there:
|
| 1. At what point is it not really free-will anymore, and more
| like your brain being hacked?
|
| 2. At what point can the government step in to rescue you from
| #1?
|
| 3. At what point can the government step in to defend _others_
| from what you do, voluntarily or otherwise?
| pjc50 wrote:
| I think there's a pretty strong "render unto Caesar" argument
| that any situation where money changes hands potentially
| involves the public interest.
|
| Gambling used to be much more restricted in the UK, although
| horse race betting was always a thing.
| energy123 wrote:
| Generally, I take a realist perspective on this. The line is
| wherever the people who wield power want it to be given their
| understanding of their self-interest. Any talk of "should" is a
| rhetorical exercise to convince people that it's in their self-
| interest to join you and oppose the thing.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Gambling companies have engineered sophisticated addiction
| machines that exploit the brain's weaknesses, so it's very
| different to most of the other things you listed. They also
| deliberately prey on the people most susceptible to getting
| addicted, and even engage in extremely predatory behaviour like
| giving high-risk targets all sorts of "free" perks and benefits
| in order to keep them gambling for as long and much as
| possible. I can't find it now, but a few months ago on HN was
| an article about one of these systems, where the gambler got a
| dedicated "advisor" that was giving them things like free
| rolls, free tokens to gamble with, free alcohol and even
| accomodations, all because they know the addicts will keep
| gambling and use their own money inevitably. They then ban
| people who are gambling too "smartly" or even just on lucky win
| streaks from participating in their "games".
|
| Smoking is a great example and an almost 1:1 parallel to what's
| happening with gambling, they had teams of people and even paid
| off scientists to fabricate studies about the health benefits
| of smoking, and then used deceptive marketing that was very
| carefully crafted to ensure people tried it out, and the
| product itself is just inherently addictive. They ensured they
| can capture the next generation by specifically tailoring their
| adverts towards children and getting them curious to try
| tobacco.
|
| As a result most of the world has banned tobacco advertising,
| and a lot of places are doing things like enforcing ugly
| generic packaging with extreme health issues plastered on the
| boxes, exorbitant prices & taxes on tobacco _because_ of what
| Big Tobacco did.
|
| Gambling should be treated the exact same as tobacco is and
| was. Advertising it should never be allowed in any context
| whatsoever, and the gambling spots and apps should have
| disclaimers all over the place indicating the dangers of it.
| Additionally, the actual companies should be heavily regulated
| to not be allowed to offer "perks" and to also not be allowed
| to pick who can play or not.
|
| Gambling, like most things, is simply something that will
| always be a thing, so just like tobacco and alcohol it
| shouldn't be banned outright. That doesn't mean we need to let
| predatory practices proliferate. Nothing is stopping us from
| making gambling as unattractive as we reasonably can, both for
| the gamblers and the gambling companies. There will still be
| gambling, but just like tobacco there will be a lot less people
| doing it, and at that point the ones that are are at least as
| protected and informed as possible.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's funny how first you say that 'it is very different' and
| then you proceed to show that it is in fact exactly the same.
| monkeyelite wrote:
| No it's really not that nuanced. Society should ban things that
| are obvious traps and cause massive costs to society.
|
| Banning gambling doesn't mean hunting down gamblers, it means
| stopping them from being in the App Store listings and showings
| ads in TV.
|
| If you want to find sketchy websites on your own after that -
| that's your freedom.
|
| Having 20 year old men bombarded with gambling media is not
| freedom.
| angarg12 wrote:
| I left my home country over 10 years ago, and ever since I've
| travelled back once every 1 or 2 years.
|
| Since 4-5 years ago I started to notice these betting houses
| cropping up where my family and friends live. They are impossible
| to miss, with big pictures of different sports and no windows.
|
| The most important thing to notice is where these place are and
| are not. They proliferate in working class and less well off
| neighborhoods, while they tend to be absent from more affluent
| ones.
|
| These places get a lot of foot traffic, all the locals barely
| making ends meet, blowing a few tens of euros here and there,
| with the eventual payoff. It's not difficult to hear stories of
| people getting into the deep end and developing a real addiction
| with devastating consequences.
|
| And it's not only the business itself, but what they attract. All
| sort of sketchy characters frequent these places, and tend to
| attract drugs, violence...
|
| Legal or not these places make the communities they inhabit
| worse, not better. I personally would be very happy if family
| didn't have to live exposed to them.
| kriops wrote:
| Guilt by association: If, e.g., violence is a problem, then one
| needs to deal with the violence. In general, law-abiding
| citizens are--and should--be free to congregate and partake in
| their bad habits wherever they please. And even though
| _gambling_ is generally immoral, it does not infringe on anyone
| else 's God-given rights and has no business being made
| illegal.
|
| Gambling is emphasized above to emphasize we are talking about
| individuals who are not sufficiently skilled to argue they are
| not essentially partaking in pure games of chance.
| Retric wrote:
| It's not about the Gambling, it's the fact these businesses
| are collecting a large number of easy victims in once place.
|
| Imagine you're a loan shark. Which of the following seems
| like a good place to look for customers: upscale restaurant,
| movie theater, random bar, theme park, baseball stadium, city
| park, or a sports betting venue.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Imagine you're a luxury watch thief. Which of the following
| seems like a good place to look for customers: upscale
| restaurant, ... or a sports betting venue.
|
| https://robbreport.com/style/watch-collector/luxury-watch-
| th...
| watwut wrote:
| By customers you mean "people to sell stolen watches to"?
| Cause if that is the question, neither of these is a good
| place. Affluent people wont buy obviously stolen watches
| directly in the restaurant, they will go through
| middleman that makes them look legit.
|
| And people being there to bet wont be buying watches that
| much either.
| Retric wrote:
| Hanging out at the same restaurant is a terrible idea for
| a watch thief, you will be caught over time.
|
| That's not an issue for the loan shark.
| kriops wrote:
| Right. In other words, no one's God-given, negative rights
| are being infringed upon.
| daymanstep wrote:
| Sports betting is not a game of pure chance, but bookmaking
| is arguably ethically quite problematic.
|
| Most individuals are going up against these very
| sophisticated statistical models created by teams of quants
| working with huge datasets that you have to pay substantial
| amounts to access. I think most bettors don't know what
| they're up against.
|
| And the bookie business model is intrinsically anti-consumer:
| if you win too much then the bookies will ban you. Whereas
| bookies are quite happy to keep taking money from addicts
| even when said addicts have already lost their life savings.
| RataNova wrote:
| The whole "sports betting is a skill game" angle is
| technically true in theory, but in practice it's like
| showing up to a Formula 1 race on a tricycle
| SXX wrote:
| And any active investment platforms are not different at
| all. A lot of matketing budget is spent to make people
| believe they can earn money by trading.
| watwut wrote:
| There are some differences: investment platforms wont
| kick you out if you manage to earn money. Gambling sites
| do that. If you are loosing a lot, gaming sites make your
| limits go up. If you are winning a lot, your limits go
| down. Investment sites dont do that.
|
| They also assign "consigliere" to you if you loose a lot.
| He is supposed to create a personal relationship with
| you. If you try to stop playing, that person will try to
| get you back into gaming.
|
| You are not betting against investment platform itself,
| you are betring against other people on it. That is major
| difference.
| daymanstep wrote:
| Yeah, the incentives are completely different between
| exchanges and bookmakers. Exchanges make money regardless
| of who wins or loses. Bookmakers make money from their
| users losing.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Most individuals are going up against these very
| sophisticated statistical models created by teams of quants
| working with huge datasets that you have to pay substantial
| amounts to access.
|
| There are two things you might do as a bookmaker:
|
| (1) Perceive the truth of who is likely to do what, and set
| odds reflecting that perfect Platonic reality, but with a
| percentage taken off for yourself.
|
| (2) Adjust the odds you offer over time such that, come the
| event, the amount you stand to collect on either side will
| cover the amount you owe to the other side.
|
| You don't need to know the odds to use strategy (2). Nor do
| you need to reject bettors who are likely to be right.
| daymanstep wrote:
| Strategy (2) doesn't tell you how to come up with the
| initial prices, and bookies can potentially lose a
| significant amount from giving "bad" initial prices. If
| an individual is winning a lot of money from a bookie
| repeatedly because of these bad initial prices, then it
| is a sign that they might have a better model than the
| bookie, and so it is in the bookie's interest to ban
| them, since sports betting is a zero-sum game: every
| dollar you win from a bookie is a dollar that the bookie
| loses.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If an individual is winning a lot of money from a
| bookie repeatedly because of these bad initial prices,
| then it is a sign that they might have a better model
| than the bookie, and so it is in the bookie's interest to
| ban them
|
| I don't think this follows. If an individual is winning a
| lot of money repeatedly in this way, it is a sign that
| the bookie should give their bets a lot of weight when
| adjusting prices. But that information is something the
| bookie might want.
| daymanstep wrote:
| If bookies want better prices they can pay for prices
| from places that have good models. Or they can buy /
| build their own models. What you're suggesting doesn't
| make sense from an economic perspective.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45483917 ,
| sidethread.
| daymanstep wrote:
| Thanks! I definitely have more to learn in this area.
| nly wrote:
| The vast majority of small bookmakers in the UK don't
| come up with their own prices. They either copy other
| bookmakers or pay for them.
|
| They also typically use off the shelf software for book
| management and risk.
| sd9 wrote:
| I worked for a gambling syndicate. We often made money
| from bad initial prices. Many bookies tolerated us
| because they wanted to know what we thought was mispriced
| and rapidly adjusted their odds after we started betting.
|
| It was a balancing act though. They really wanted to know
| what we were doing, but didn't want to lose too much to
| us. So there was some give and take / bartering around
| the fair value of our information in the form of our
| accounts being banned and limited or bets being voided.
| But they definitely didn't want to eradicate us.
| tpm wrote:
| I have worked in the betting industry for several years.
| And the reason I'm writing is to tell you that while (2)
| sound logical, it was not used during my time in the
| industry. Or to be more precise, of course the odds are
| adjusted all the time to balance the market, prevent
| arbitrage etc, but it was also very common to have a
| 'loss leader bet', usually on the favourite, where the
| betting company would take a loss or make very little
| money if the favourite wins (but if that happens the
| customers still don't make a lot, because the odds are
| already low, and betting on a favourite is not a winning
| strategy because the real fav loss probability is higher
| than the odds would suggest). OTOH what is also often
| done is when 'real odds' are very high (low probability),
| the odds that are offered are way lower than the
| probability would suggest. So if 'real odds' are 100:1,
| the company would offer 50:1, so, even taking into
| account the company margins, you as a customers are never
| offered anything close to the real probability and as a
| consequence unless you are exceptionally good can never
| make money (and if you do your are banned).
| kriops wrote:
| I addressed this in my original comment. What, exactly and
| explicitly, is your point?
| bawolff wrote:
| > And even though gambling is generally immoral, it does not
| infringe on anyone else's God-given rights and has no
| business being made illegal.
|
| Neither does smoking, but we still limit the types of
| advertisements cigarette companies can make.
|
| Gambling is ultimately a predatory business that serves to
| separate people susceptible to addiction from their money.
| happymellon wrote:
| > Neither does smoking
|
| It absolutely does, and the number of people that died from
| second hand smoke is awful.
|
| It doesn't make sport gambling adverts right, but it wasn't
| a great example.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| In a similar vein, many people close to gamblers suffer
| serious consequences from the addiction.
| happymellon wrote:
| Indeed. Gambling impacts the family when they spend other
| people's money.
|
| We have every right to ban things that are abusive to
| society.
| kriops wrote:
| Two word refutation: Passive smoking.
|
| I'm sure there is an argument there somewhere, and I'd love
| to address that if you would care to give it another go.
| watwut wrote:
| Being somewhat skilled does not make it not hazard. And
| practices of books are purely predatory.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Books most definitely won't let you win long term. They
| only want you as long as you're losing and can ban you once
| you win too much. This sounds illegal and isn't.
|
| Discussion 4 days ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45432627
| rkomorn wrote:
| Do you mean hazard as danger or hazard as luck/random?
| kriops wrote:
| Irrelevant. I only bring up the stochastic element because
| of the implicit argument that people are being victimized
| by gambling against their will.
|
| Since you would be extremely off-topic if you tried to
| extend this argument to, e.g., Daniel Negreanu engaging in
| a game of poker, I wanted to explicitly preclude
| individuals _competently_ engaging in whatever activity is
| being deemed 'problematic.'
|
| It was mostly to help the 'other side' stay on topic;
| otherwise, I could trivially refute their arguments by
| counterexamples, e.g., Daniel Negreanu.
| Kudos wrote:
| > it does not infringe on anyone else's God-given rights
|
| Gamblers have lost their homes as a result of their
| addiction, I think that impact on their families counts for
| something.
| kriops wrote:
| It is your right as a human to waste your life away. It is
| also by definition immoral regardless of moral system (so
| long as 'waste your life away' is an accurate assessment
| within said moral system), but they are completely separate
| matters.
|
| I.e., no. It counts for nothing.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Did you miss the point about negative impact on others?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This argument doesn't account for the inherent, drastic power
| imbalance between the average participant of gambling and the
| average owner of a gambling center.
|
| Gambling between people, a basement poker game, that's fine,
| that's no one's business.
|
| Handing your money over to rich people operating black boxes
| that are designed from ground up to mesmerize and mind
| control you into emptying your wallet is a totally other
| story. On the individual level, it ruins the lives of anyone
| who is unable to resist or understand the psychological
| tricks employed on them. Zooming out, it destroys families,
| communities and in effect, societies.
|
| If we are going to base the legality of gambling on consent
| and human rights, we have to recognize the limit where
| consent is no longer valid, due to sickening engagement
| tactics.
|
| Someone's freedom to make money off of my ignorance or
| weakness does not supersede my right to self-determination
| and well-being, neither of which are possible when being
| hoodwinked by exploitative capitalists.
|
| If we are to continue allowing corporate gambling operations
| and 24/7 mobile sports betting, we need to place serious
| restrictions on how these companies are allowed to operate.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| I'm curious how do you feel about drug legalization.
| XorNot wrote:
| I'm fairly okay with legalizing everything but absolutely
| banning advertising it.
|
| Which is what we should be doing with gambling: no
| advertising, as opposed to now where everybody ad break
| has a celebrity endorsing the intelligence you clearly
| have when you choose (betting platform).
| soulofmischief wrote:
| The emotional manipulation of paid celebrity endorsement
| of harmful, engagement-hacking products and services is
| downright sickening, just the thought of how normalized
| it's become makes me sick to the stomach.
|
| I'm very pro gun, pro freedom of consumption, pro crypto,
| etc. but once emotional manipulation comes into play,
| self-determinism goes out the window and people are no
| longer making free choices.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > I'm very pro gun, pro freedom of consumption, pro
| crypto, etc. but once emotional manipulation comes into
| play, self-determinism goes out the window and people are
| no longer making free choices.
|
| To me, this is a very mature response. The whole idea of
| you do what you want as an adult and you own all of the
| consequences. Why do you make an exception for "emotional
| manipulation"? To be clear: I am not trolling in this
| post. I want to know why you think these things can be
| legal, but advertising about them is "morally bad".
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Well, advertising as a concept is fine, but the industry
| is steeped in advanced, refined yet old-as-time-itself
| psychological manipulation tactics.
|
| When addiction is intentionally engineered at a high
| level and wrapped in the Trojan horse of self-sufficiency
| or emotion, deceit, or the power of suggestion, we have a
| problem. Imagine Taylor Swift doing an ad for crack
| cocaine.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| The war on drugs should never have happened. It's been
| used a tool of foreign and domestic terror and control
| for a century. It was designed and popularized by corrupt
| people who stood to gain wealth from restricting the
| freedom of others.
|
| To your implied point, drug addictions similarly ravish
| communities, destroy lives, and in the case of drugs like
| fentanyl, legalization effectively makes it easy to
| acquire extremely potent and discreet poisons, which has
| a huge potential impact for violence.
|
| We can paint a similar story for gun violence. We can tie
| drugs, gambling and guns together even more tightly when
| we look into where cities approve permits for gambling
| centers, where most liquor stores pop up, selective
| enforcement and scandals like the Iran-Contra affair [0].
|
| It's important to have a consistent position on all of
| these topics, so I thank you for raising this point. So
| all of that said, I think drug
| consumption/manufacturing/distribution, guns and gambling
| should generally all be legal at a high level, but we
| must dispense with the racist and classist
| implementations of these systems within our societies,
| and we should have sensible evaluation and certification
| programs in place for access to different
| stratifications.
|
| You should be required to periodically prove medical and
| psychological fitness, as well as operational
| certification, for certain powerful substances.
| Similarly, we need sensible restrictions on gambling and
| guns [1].
|
| The reality is that with freedom comes responsibility.
| Without responsibility, unrestricted freedom leads to
| anarchy or a post-capitalist nightmare. One of the main
| points of government is to balance these freedoms across
| individuals, communities and society at large, in order
| to maximize the well-being and self-determination of the
| people, while allowing for progress and innovation.
|
| I'm curious to hear your own position.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair
|
| [1] To be clear, I am very pro 2nd amendment [1] and am
| not calling for a ban on anything or for the State to
| maintain a monopoly on violence and power.
|
| "Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be
| surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be
| frustrated, by force if necessary" - Karl Marx
| dist-epoch wrote:
| I asked because I noticed this strange cluster (for me)
| of people which want to ban some things like gambling or
| social media algorithms because they are exploitative and
| addictive, but who also want to legalize drugs. I had a
| feeling you might be in it.
|
| Stranger, some of them want to ban/make it harder to
| distribute drugs "legally" through doctors (OxyContin,
| Sackler family scandal) because doctors might be
| monetarily incentivized, but then they also support
| complete drug legalization, including for the same drugs
| (fentanyl). This position is not even internally
| consistent, in this case fentanyl was "legalized" close
| to what they seem to demand, just gated by a doctor.
|
| I don't have a clear position, but I don't think I would
| support legalization of "hard" drugs (anything above
| marijuana/MDMA). I can't see any positive, the negatives
| are clear, and it impacts the whole society (I will
| respect your freedom until it impinges on mine).
|
| I am pro 2nd amendment, but I also believe the State
| should maintain it's monopoly on violence. Otherwise it's
| Mad Max world. The way the 2nd amendment is stated
| (prevent tirany) would not work anyway today, the
| military power of the State is vastly larger, the
| "militias" will never stand a chance against
| Police/Army/Cyber/... So I am pro guns just as far as
| personal protection requires (so no rocket launchers).
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I was reading this chain of responses. They are great.
| The two of you are very thoughtful in your world view.
|
| About your last paragraph: How do you feel about other
| OECD (highly developed) countries that do not allow
| personal gun ownership (except for hunting and sport
| shooting (clays, etc.)? Take Japan for example: Except
| for hunting and sport shooting, ownership of guns is not
| allowed. How do you feel about it?
| dist-epoch wrote:
| If there are no guns around, and if the Police is
| competent, I would be against allowing guns.
|
| But the police must do it's job. Take Sweden, criminality
| is now rampant there, criminals are using grenades.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_
| Swe...
| kriops wrote:
| It absolutely does account for that. Your entire comment is
| a strawman.
|
| If that is not intentional (which I suspect it is not, so
| no offense intended), then I believe a quick search on
| "God-given rights" should help you make whatever case you
| want to in a logically consistent manner. It is a well-
| defined concept that has a specific meaning over a specific
| domain. I get the feeling "negative rights vs. positive
| rights" might be a useful search phrase as well.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| The Judeo-Christian god does not exist, nor any other
| god, so I'm not sure what rights you're referring to. Are
| you referring to human rights? We don't need a religion
| to justify those.
|
| Anyway, you said your argument accounts for it, but
| didn't actually follow through and demonstrate why that
| is. How does your argument take into account the
| aforementioned power imbalances?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > while they tend to be absent from more affluent ones.
|
| It's not that they don't want to be, it's that affluent
| neighborhoods tend to keep things that are considered "low
| class" out of them. The only Safeway in my city that doesn't
| sell lottery tickets is the one in the most affluent
| neighborhood.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I bet the better off do gamble on the financial markets
| though
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| When they do it, it's gambling. When we do it, it's
| investing.
| nine_k wrote:
| Investing is putting money into (hopefully) productive
| use, like a company with revenue, in an expectation of a
| return.
|
| Gambling is basically redistributing money according to a
| random numbers generator, It's a negative sum game
| (because the house takes its fee), but a surprise
| positive _spike_ game. That spike forms an addiction in
| the less fortunate.
| ryandrake wrote:
| When you buy a stock, you're not contributing it to the
| company's productive use. If I buy $1000 of MSFT,
| Microsoft doesn't get an extra $1000 in their bank
| account to invest in their business. That $1000 is going
| to another bettor to settle his previous bet, and at some
| point in the future, I'll sell and get an unknown amount
| of money to settle my bet. Just because historically
| betting on the stock market has been +EV doesn't mean
| it's not still gambling.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _When you buy a stock, you 're not contributing it to
| the company's productive use_
|
| You are marginally reducing their cost of capital.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Sure, but that's pretty indirect and a far cry from
| "putting the money to productive use." Unless you're an
| early investor or IPO participant, your actual money is
| not being directly put to productive use by the company
| you are "investing" in.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that 's pretty indirect and a far cry from "putting
| the money to productive use."_
|
| All finance is indirect. Particularly at small scale.
|
| > _Unless you 're an early investor or IPO participant_
|
| Plenty of IPOs are entirely secondary. And public
| companies regularly raise money via at-the-market
| offerings, where a random trader may wind up cutting a
| cheque to the corporate treasury. (I've been a seed
| investor and IPO investor. My effects on the outcome were
| rarely singularly meaningful.)
|
| In a large offering, a small IPO investor has about as
| much direct effect on the outcome as someone buying the
| pop publicly. In aggregate, however, their actions are
| meaningful and productive.
|
| Put another way: contrast two economies, one in which
| most capital is tied up sports gambling (negative-sum
| game), the other in which it's in equities (positive-sum
| long term), one will outperform the other.
| jogjayr wrote:
| If you buy MSFT specifically you'll get regular, fairly
| predictable dividend payments and not just an unknown
| amount of money in the future.
|
| MSFT goes up a tiny fraction when you buy. That means
| MSFT employees with stock grants get a tiny "raise"
| courtesy of you. Microsoft can also use their more
| expensive stock to make acquisitions. So you are
| contributing to the company's productive use if you buy
| its stock.
|
| Buying MSFT doesn't meet the criteria to be called
| gambling, for me.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Investing is putting money into (hopefully) productive
| use, like a company with revenue, in an expectation of a
| return_
|
| The big differences are time horizon, addiction and
| expectations.
|
| The longer the term, the less actively one must watch it
| and the lower the expected returns, the more likely it's
| investing. The shorter the expected turnaround, the more
| closely one watches numbers go up and down, and the more
| one is focused on turning multiples than yields, the more
| likely it's gambling.
|
| Any stochastic process can produce gambling behaviour.
| Only a positive-sum game can facilitate investing.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| The difference is investing has a positive expected
| return. Betting against the house does not.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > investing has a positive expected return
|
| Can you tell me more about this. I've never heard of it
| before. Is there a theorem?
| tstrimple wrote:
| Plus it's fun and "dangerous" to slum it with the plebs on
| occasion. But you don't want that shit close to where _you_
| live.
| psychoslave wrote:
| Those who already took 99% of the pie can safely bet on
| every possible outcome.
|
| Most can avoid to lose completely while alive, but they
| have no path to a winning position, and others are trapped
| in a situation where it's so hard to go down to a net lost
| that they lose ability to understand that individual hard
| work and wiseness is not going to defeat societal
| asymetries.
| SXX wrote:
| Except everyone on financial markets try to sell idea that
| you can "learn" and actively trade on their platforma and
| make living of it.
|
| Which make it no diffetent for average Joe than gambling.
| garbawarb wrote:
| Financial markets produce a net positive outcome for
| investors (gamblers), no? The average rate of return in the
| S&P500 is about 10% and it's considered the baseline for
| thr stock market.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The gambling equivalent is day trading, not holding VOO
| for a decade.
| prewett wrote:
| There are many ways to use the financial markets that are
| not gambling. Buying an index fund or Coca-Cola isn't
| gambling; it is not even very risky. Nor are individual
| stocks gambling, as you can get a reasonable idea of what a
| company's price ought to be and how it is likely to perform
| in the future, at least for well-established companies.
| It's also harder to get into debt, as long as you don't
| short, because you can only spend money you have, and the
| stock does not become worthless if your analysis is wrong.
| (At least, there are warning signs)
|
| Now day-trading? I consider that gambling, because any
| particular day's price movement is a lot closer to random.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Buying a stock or mutual fund is the very definition of
| gambling: placing a monetary bet on an unknown future
| event. Just because this activity has historically had a
| +EV, doesn't make it any less gambling.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| By this definition prime loans are also gambling. When
| you bet on something risky then you are gambling. When
| you bet on something not risky you are not gambling. Also
| consider that not investing will generally lose money
| over time due to things like inflation. If we define the
| goal to be holding as much value as we can, holding
| dollars is more risky than investing in many stocks (or
| bonds, which also have a risk of defaulting). A better
| definition of gambling is something like "taking
| unnecessary and unproductive risks."
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'm not sure I buy any definition of gambling that
| depends on the outcome. If you lose money or tend to lose
| money, then it's gambling, but if you win money or tend
| to win money, then we change the name to "investing?"
| Risk includes upside and downside risk.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| It doesn't depend on the outcome. If a bank only does
| prime loans and spreads out it's loans multiple
| borrowers, has a good reserve ratio etc. and still loses
| it all, that still wasn't gambling. This is more clear if
| you consider that storing value in money is also risky.
| When you get paid in a currency, you automatically begin
| investing in it at the same time. This is even more clear
| with foreign currencies. If you got paid $1 million in
| Turkish Lyra and do not store that value somewhere else,
| that is more gambling-like than putting it in the S&P. I
| guess you can say that any time you increase the amount
| of risk in an investment to get more reward you are
| gambling. But you can invest in something other than USD
| with the same risk but with greater reward. For example
| you can invest it in US bonds (over multiple issues)
| which has a similar risk to the USD but a greater reward.
| Still, under such a definition, any business is gambling.
| We can accept that, but then we have no word that
| differentiates owning a grocery store from betting all
| your money on a coin flip, so then the word "gambling"
| becomes much less useful or really useless in my opinion.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _bet the better off do gamble on the financial markets
| though_
|
| Much less. Something I've noticed is the parents of the
| wealthy teaching their children to invest versus _e.g._ day
| trade. In middle class or poor households, on the other
| hand, it's not uncommon for the kid to be trading crypto
| instead.
| foogazi wrote:
| > The only Safeway in my city that doesn't sell lottery
| tickets is the one in the most affluent neighborhood.
|
| Does the affluent community prohibit it or is Safeway self-
| policing?
| h2zizzle wrote:
| I'd wager (heh) a bit of both. The distinction isn't that
| the affluent neighborhood gets to make its own decisions or
| be cared about by large corporations whose presence
| ostensibly enhances their quality of life, it's that poor
| neighborhoods don't. The reason the latter have these
| socioeconomically deleterious establishments is the same
| reason they don't get grocery stores or gyms: the people
| making the decisions don't see them as customers to serve,
| but as marks to exploit. And suddenly we're back to the
| notion that privilege isn't necessarily having it "better,"
| but sometimes just having what most would consider the
| dignified standard.
| RataNova wrote:
| It's frustrating because technically it's all "legal" and
| marketed as harmless entertainment, but in practice it's just
| another way to extract money from people who have the least to
| spare
| nine_k wrote:
| Maybe their having the least to spare is a consequence, and
| poor impulse control is the cause.
|
| Anyway, it's like making money off other human deficiencies,
| say, poor vision or dyslexia, and mistakes made due to those.
| It feels _unfair_ , it does not feel like a conscious choice.
| Hence the understandable backlash.
| Dusseldorf wrote:
| That doesn't feel like a very apt analogy. Poor vision or
| dyslexia can't easily be hijacked into a cycle of addiction
| the way poor impulse control can. Making a bit of money
| helping someone with poor vision is very different than
| blasting advertisements on every single medium and using
| predatory practices to draw in those with poor impulse
| control. Not to mention the continued exploitation
| afterwards until the victim has nothing left.
| nine_k wrote:
| Making money _helping_ people with poor vision (selling
| glasses) is fine, of course. I mean _exploiting_ their
| weaknesses, like using a tiny typeface to write important
| price information while showing a big price-like number
| prominently. Doing something formally correct which turns
| into a trap because of the customer 's disability.
| MandieD wrote:
| Well over a decade ago, when we were initially looking for a
| place to rent in Bavaria's second-largest city, which is
| otherwise one of the safest cities in the country and the
| world, the quickest way to screen neighborhoods was the
| presence (or absence) of those little casinos/sports betting
| offices.
| mrisoli wrote:
| I also left my home country about a decade ago.
|
| I was already expecting a lot of gambling site ads, they took
| over the soccer tournament sponsorships almost completely
| anyway.
|
| But what I found out when I came back in the last 3-4 years
| 100% shocked me. It wasn't just TV and soccer teams, I saw
| gambling ads in napkin holders at some restaurants, bus stops.
| I went to get a haircut and the barbershop had TV with gambling
| ads adorning their frames.
| xnx wrote:
| Aren't betting houses antiquated now? I assumed even senior
| citizen would be betting through their phones.
|
| Being able to gamble privately, 24/7, with all the
| psychological/engagement "optimizations" is even more
| insidious.
| GalaxyNova wrote:
| Romania?
| bravetraveler wrote:
| If you want to bet on your ball, do it at the counter like the
| rest of us degenerates. Something, something, water cooler chat.
| Gunax wrote:
| I happen to enjoy sports gambling and would be sad to see it
| disappear.
|
| I'm writing this because I want you to know what you're depriving
| me of. Because _other_ people make poor decisions, we need to
| take that decision away from everyone.
| eggsandbeer wrote:
| What an incredibly selfish attitude.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| It's a completely legitimate question. It's the same moral
| consideration behind whether drugs and alcohol should be
| legal. Banning them is good for people who can't use them
| responsibly, but reduces the freedom of people who can. Given
| that we've flip flopped on the legality of alcohol, cannabis,
| and sports betting in the last 100ish years, it's clear there
| is ambiguity about what is the best tradeoff.
| smt88 wrote:
| This is just the same social contract you agree to in every
| part of your life.
|
| Why can't you legally drive over 100 mph when you know you'd do
| it safely?
|
| Why can't you own certain kinds of weapons when you know you
| don't want to kill anyone or yourself?
|
| Gamblers going bankrupt is bad for all of us because they often
| have families and creditors who are harmed by the loss of the
| money, and the rest of us pay the price in the form of welfare,
| loss wages, etc.
| technion wrote:
| How would you feel if we just banned advertising it?
|
| Im all for people like you having the right to make a choice,
| but the way its advertised rubs me the wrong way.
|
| Kids are encouraged to watch the games which is a bit of a
| family event. Then during those games, ads are just everywhere
| for betting. Then theres a "18+ only" fine print.
|
| We banned cigarette advertisements during sports and I would
| say we are better for it, but I wouldn't call to ban smoking.
| katbyte wrote:
| Also it could do with some regulation banning people who win
| to much shouldn't be allowed
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| The entire business model depends on most people losing, and
| those losses often come from people who can't afford it, the
| industry is structured to aggressively market, addict, and
| exploit psychological weaknesses, it's engineered dependence
|
| > Because _other_ people make poor decisions, we need to take
| that decision away from everyone.
|
| Sports betting is to entertainment what ultra-processed food is
| to nutrition, engineered to be addictive, marketed as
| "pleasure" and technically a personal choice, but built on
| exploiting human psychology
|
| You can enjoy a burger or a bet responsibly, sure, but the
| problem is the systemic design, it's optimized for
| overconsumption and dependency, not well being, you end up
| creating problems whole society have to pay for it, it's
| systemic harm
| furyofantares wrote:
| I like gambling too, I was very much for legalizing it until it
| happened and I saw how many lives it's devastated, and how
| vulnerable young people are to it.
|
| Now I don't give a fuck that banning it would deprive me (or
| you) of something we happen to enjoy.
|
| Here's the article that started me toward changing my mind:
| https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-online-sports-gambling-exp...
| toasterlovin wrote:
| If you look at the budget, it becomes obvious that the main
| activity of the federal government is taking money from one
| group of citizens so that another group of citizens, who are
| otherwise capable of working, can enjoy a life of leisure for
| the last 15-20 years of their life. Given that we've
| collectively decided that the bar for when we will massively
| impinge on people's freedom is apparently to provide for other
| people's idleness, I think it's completely justified to also
| impinge on people's freedom so that we can prevent problem
| gamblers from totally ruining their lives.
| Animats wrote:
| If only this had been figured out before the gambling industry
| became too big to fail.
| _delirium wrote:
| I've found myself getting less interested in sports at all
| because of how pervasive sports betting has gotten. The
| announcers are always talking about odds and shilling gambling
| company sponsors, which is annoying and makes me not want to
| watch the games.
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| Sports betting once its in it's never leaving.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| It has before
| fragmede wrote:
| For anybody suffering from a gambling addiction, Gamblers
| Anonymous is a valuable resource.
|
| https://gamblersanonymous.org/find-a-meeting/
| eximius wrote:
| I mean, yes, but it's so far down the list of bad things for
| society we're facing right now.
|
| I'd rather we tackle the root problems leading to these. Increase
| education rather than reduce liberties.
|
| I'm not, like, strongly opposed to reducing this particular
| liberty, but man it's not my first priority.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Where do you put drugs and alcohol on that list? Because
| gambling surely has an equivalent ability to wreck careers and
| families.
| watwut wrote:
| Isnt the root problem a company being able to A/B test the most
| addictive product? They spent huge amount of money to find all
| the psychological tricks, to identify who has gambling
| potential and then target those people.
|
| Education wont beat that. Gambling is not a rational decision
| in the first place.
|
| But, young men gambling (they are the primary target
| demographic) will make them into desperate and hopeless group.
| And not just financially, marrying or dating gambler is even
| bigger mistake then partnering with an alcoholic. Their lives
| will go down the drain in all aspects.
| squigz wrote:
| I don't think we have to take any liberties away to help reduce
| this issue - just banning gambling advertising would help a
| lot.
| pavlov wrote:
| The role of gambling in society has massively expanded in the
| past 25 years.
|
| Legalization of sports betting, online poker, and meme
| cryptocurrencies are all highly visible examples of normalized
| gambling. Young people increasingly seem to believe that they
| need to gamble to get anywhere in life.
| RataNova wrote:
| When traditional paths to financial security feel increasingly
| out of reach (housing, stable jobs, etc.), it's not surprising
| that high-risk/high-reward thinking becomes more normalized...
| hobs wrote:
| You can also see it as the more we let corporations bend and
| break the rules of our society the more we will see the
| monetization of things that harm us directly for some small
| group's material gain.
| keiferski wrote:
| The legalization and popularity of gambling is more than just an
| immoral activity that has negative societal effects. It's
| reflective of people losing hope in the system's ability to make
| their lives better.
|
| Gambling thrives in contexts where a ladder to success doesn't
| exist or is perceived as not existing. If hard work or time
| doesn't make your life better, then fate is just chance, and you
| might as well throw your money at something that has the
| possibility of making your rich, no matter how tiny that
| likelihood.
| roenxi wrote:
| > It's reflective of people losing hope in the system's ability
| to make their lives better.
|
| Broadly speaking I probably agree with their conclusion. But
| they really should consider savings and investment before
| donating their money to a betting website - it is pretty much
| the only choice that is guaranteed to not make their lives
| better in any way. I can hazard a guess as to the major reason
| their life isn't improving, they aren't doing anything to make
| it better. The money supply generally grows at >5% annually in
| most English speaking countries, find a way to get a slice of
| that action if nothing else.
|
| If they really can't think of something to do with the money,
| give it to a friend. Then at least maybe there is some social
| capital for a rainy day.
| keiferski wrote:
| The vast, vast majority of people that have gambling problems
| aren't making rational financial decisions like this. They're
| doing a habitual activity that is reinforced by bad actors
| trying to extract as much money from them as possible.
|
| This is especially noticeable with "traditional" offline
| gambling and lotteries - lower income people play them
| habitually from a kind of learned helplessness, not as a
| rational financial strategy.
|
| https://fortune.com/2024/04/04/lottery-tickets-poor-rich-
| inc...
| roenxi wrote:
| Sure, seems likely in a lot of cases. But if the starting
| point is talking about someone who makes chronically
| irrational decisions then life is going to seem a bit
| hopeless. The issue isn't as much they're giving up as it
| is that they aren't making rational decisions.
|
| Thread ancestor was saying "Gambling thrives in contexts
| where a ladder to success doesn't exist or is perceived as
| not existing". And I think that the problem here is that
| the people involved couldn't climb the ladder if you put
| their hands on it. To climb the ladder of success requires
| the grip of a rational actor. If someone is gambling then
| the #1 problem is not the system in itself, but the fact
| that for whatever reason they don't understand the concept
| of investment at a fundamental level. Can't help that
| person by changing gambling policies around. If they aren't
| going to invest themselves, then at the end of the day they
| are always going to be dependent on the charity of someone
| who will, whether they irrationally waste their money on
| gambling or some other vice.
| keiferski wrote:
| Your opinion seems to be that poor people are poor
| because they're irrational, and that systemic things like
| billion-dollar corporations deliberately feeding them
| addictive behaviors in order to extract as much money
| from them as possible, is not actually a factor at all.
|
| I'm sorry but this comment is so out of touch with how
| poor people (or even people in general) actually
| function, I don't know what else to say.
| roenxi wrote:
| > Your opinion seems to be...
|
| I'd be impressed if you can link that back to something I
| said, I don't think my opinion is that at all. I haven't
| said anything about poor people, for example.
|
| If someone has enough money that wasting it on gambling
| is a problem, then they clearly had no business giving up
| hope because "the system" doesn't have the ability to
| make their lives better. The system that makes their
| lives better is the money they just wasted, but invested
| in something productive.
|
| Someone can't claim to be hopeless about the potential to
| improve their material comfort when the means to do so
| was just sitting in their bank account. They have money
| spare - start spending it to make life better.
|
| I'm happy to accept that gamblers are irrational, but
| their problem isn't that the system is causing them to
| give up hope, their problem is that they are irrational
| gamblers. Sucks to be them, but it isn't anything to do
| with systemic external factors beyond casino advertising
| which is quite a specific thing and nothing to do with
| general hopefulness. Or the quite likely reality that
| they don't know what opportunity looks like despite it
| being right in front of them.
| keiferski wrote:
| You pretty much just repeated the same thing back, so
| yes, I think that is your opinion.
|
| > If someone has enough money that wasting it on gambling
| is a problem
|
| They _don 't_ have enough money, which is precisely the
| point. The link I shared shows how lower income people
| spend dramatically more of their money on lotteries and
| gambling.
|
| > their problem is that they are irrational gamblers.
|
| How do you think they got that problem? Why do you think
| they continue to have that problem? It seems to me, that
| you think it's because they aren't rational enough about
| managing the money they _do_ have, which...is what you
| said before: poor people are poor because they 're
| irrational.
|
| You don't seem to factor in the idea that certain groups
| of people are taken advantage of by bad actors, and that
| these people become accustomed to this exploitation, and
| learn helplessness in the face of it.
|
| I think the points I'm making here are pretty obvious
| truths to anyone that has interacted with / from a lower
| income background, where gambling, lottery tickets, and
| other "vices" are widespread. These aren't rational
| financial decisions, they're consequences of being
| exploited by more powerful forces.
|
| A working class person addicted to gambling isn't going
| to suddenly go, "Oh, I should just invest this money into
| an index fund." That is entirely alien to that culture
| and group of people. It's not something they were taught,
| it's not something their friends do, and it's definitely
| not something the institutions around them are interested
| in doing.
|
| Now, if you said that, "then the goal should be to
| educate people so they invest their money and don't just
| gamble it away," then sure, that's a noble one. But as
| you said:
|
| > Sucks to be them
| roenxi wrote:
| Just putting it out there that I have a better grasp of
| my opinion than you do. Let me try this a different way.
| Which part of your comment do you think I don't know
| about/disagree with and, with reference to something I
| said, why? Let's just pick one thing that you think is
| clearest, but be specific.
|
| _EDIT_ You 'll notice I haven't disagreed with anything
| you've said so far this thread, apart from where you have
| mischaracterised my opinions and your attribution of the
| root cause to hopelessness and lack of opportunity.
|
| > which...is what you said before: poor people are poor
| because they're irrational.
|
| I didn't say that.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > If someone has enough money that wasting it on gambling
| is a problem, then they clearly had no business giving up
| hope because "the system" doesn't have the ability to
| make their lives better. The system that makes their
| lives better is the money they just wasted, but invested
| in something productive.
|
| This seems to be pretty clearly saying that you think
| poor people only gamble with money they don't need and if
| they didn't gamble they would be able to stop being poor
| by investing that money. That seems a pretty clear
| statement that you think that poor people who gamble
| wouldn't be poor if they didn't irrationally gamble money
| that they should have invested in their future.
|
| You say you have a "better grasp" of your opinion. I say
| you don't have a good enough grasp of it to present it in
| an understandable way since this "misinterpretation" of
| your view seems to match pretty well with what you've
| actually said.
| roenxi wrote:
| Well that is progress because now you're attributing
| something to me that is close to what I do believe, which
| is poor people _who gamble_ probably are poor because
| they make terrible financial decisions. I mean, you
| linked an article earlier suggesting that there are
| people who spend more than 5% of their income on lotto
| tickets [0]. No mystery why they 're poor, they make bad
| decisions with money. In percentage terms, 25% of income
| in savings is probably the magic line where suddenly the
| whole thing becomes financially self-sustaining. 5% is
| not an inconsiderable chunk of that. Someone who just
| donates that sort of chunk to a gambling company is not
| competent with money.
|
| But that isn't "poor people", and it isn't reasonable to
| just assume that poor people are all incapable. Most are
| perfectly reasonable people who happen to be poor despite
| generally being responsible with what money they do have.
| And presumably not throwing away 5% of their income for
| no good reason. I suppose I might be over-estimating poor
| people, but that isn't any reason for you to start
| misrepresenting my beliefs.
|
| > I say you don't have a good enough grasp of it to
| present it in an understandable way since this
| "misinterpretation" of your view seems to match pretty
| well with what you've actually said.
|
| Bullshit. You claimed my opinion was "poor people are
| poor because they're irrational". That is both a
| ridiculous statement and a gross mischaracterisation of
| what I said. Realistically I probably should get an
| apology, although getting you to understand what I
| actually wrote is enough for me.
|
| [0] If you read the article closely though, that isn't
| actually mathematically guaranteed. Means can be
| deceptive like that.
| philwelch wrote:
| I think you're establishing a false dichotomy. By and
| large, poor people _are_ poor because they're irrational.
| The businesses that prey on poor people--shady used car
| dealers, payday lenders, bookies--are exploiting this
| very irrationality. If we lived in a society where
| everybody was competent and responsible, none of these
| businesses could survive.
|
| Alas, human beings sometimes have imperfections that
| leave them vulnerable to these predatory businesses.
| What's more, the very irrationality of patronizing these
| businesses obviates any objection to restricting consumer
| freedoms by prohibiting and regulating these businesses.
| sethammons wrote:
| That take feels lazy. Poverty isn't primarily about
| irrationality, it's about constraints. People make
| decisions that are locally rational given their options,
| but the system they're operating in is tilted against
| them.
|
| If rent eats half your income and your car breaks down,
| you're not choosing between "investing" and "consuming."
| You're choosing between keeping your job and getting
| evicted. Behavioral quirks exist, sure, but they're
| downstream of scarcity, and scarcity itself warps
| decision-making.
|
| We've got decades of data showing that when you remove
| the constant pressure (through cash transfers,
| healthcare, childcare, etc.), people generally make long-
| term, rational decisions. The idea that "the poor are
| poor because they're irrational" mistakes the symptom for
| the cause.
|
| It is propaganda to "other" the poor. It is much easier
| to blame irrationality for people being poor rather than
| the systems we choose to keep in place. Those who
| convinced you of this falsehood, what are they gaining?
| philwelch wrote:
| People aren't helpless pawns and they aren't perfect
| either. There's variability in the human ability to make
| rational economic decisions, isn't there? So what do you
| imagine happens if someone routinely makes bad economic
| decisions?
|
| I don't think this explains 100% of why poor people are
| poor, but it doesn't explain 0% of it either. And to
| bring it back to the original point, we need to recognize
| that certain economic decisions, like sports gambling,
| are virtually always irrational decisions, and there's
| virtually nothing to be gained by protecting the
| consumer's freedom to make those decisions.
|
| You seem to have a load-bearing assumption that in order
| to care about the poor, we can't even entertain the
| notion that any of them could ever possibly have become
| poor as a consequence of their own imperfections. Why is
| that? It seems obvious to me that when people end up
| poorer as a consequence of their gambling addictions, the
| obvious solution is to prohibit or at least more strictly
| regulate gambling, not to just leave those people to
| their fate.
|
| > It is propaganda to "other" the poor. It is much easier
| to blame irrationality for people being poor rather than
| the systems we choose to keep in place. Those who
| convinced you of this falsehood, what are they gaining?
|
| That take feels lazy and a little bit like projection.
| I'm not "othering" the poor, I'm trying to understand at
| least one of the problems they face and what solutions
| are possible. And one of "the systems we choose to keep
| in place" is this recent innovation of allowing online
| gambling to proliferate and freely advertise on every
| platform, which directly contributes to gambling
| addictions, which can and do ruin people's lives. Who
| stands to gain? The bookies. Yet you're the one arguing
| that the addict who blows his kids' college fund betting
| on football is "making decisions that are locally
| rational given their options", and I'm the one arguing
| that we should make it harder for the gambling industry
| to exploit him.
| sethammons wrote:
| You are so wildly off base from my lived experience that
| I have to assume you have no experience with generational
| poverty.
|
| You are not saving up to improve your life because the
| savings rate is too small to effectively matter. And all
| the savings you muster can be wiped out by, well, any
| extra expense. Car breaks down, medical copay, kid needs
| clothes due to a growth spurt, bank fees, etc.
|
| If any chance event will break you, it is not entirely
| illogical to lean on chance to save you.
|
| If you don't see light at the end of the tunnel, or you
| think that light is an oncoming train, you are not going
| to "act rationally" for arriving at the end of the
| tunnel.
| gaindustries wrote:
| Yes. Of all people, Jordan Peterson used to talk about
| this a lot. He said anybody will break from enough cycles
| of hard work with no reward, and that's when people do
| stupid things. The nickel and diming of everything alone
| is enough to drive a person insane if they don't make
| enough money to ignore it.
| 48terry wrote:
| So very true, homie: Why didn't all the gambling addicts
| put their money into a Vanguard account instead? Are they
| stupid?
| sethammons wrote:
| The post you replied too says, "they have no hope," so they
| toss their money away on a chance, the last unit resembling
| hope.
|
| The solution is enabling hope. Your solution is to ignore
| that entire aspect and accept they have no hope and to be
| more pragmatic with their money.
|
| It is like telling a depressed person they should try being
| happy.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| I would say gambling in itself isnt immoral. The problem is
| that a small % of people get addicted and end up spending all
| their money and more on betting. And that the industry makes
| almost all their profits on those that are addicted.
| keiferski wrote:
| Sure, we could get into a discussion on the morality of
| gambling itself, but if we look at pretty much every global
| ethical tradition (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc.) it is
| frowned upon strongly. It seems to me like _widespread
| gambling = negative social effects_ is a pretty widespread,
| obvious conclusion that most civilizations have reached.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling#Religious_views
| 1659447091 wrote:
| From the wiki page, Christianity from the bible's
| perspective doesn't have a problem with gambling itself:
|
| > _Although the bible does not condemn gambling, instead
| the desire to get rich is called to account numerous times
| in the New Testament._
|
| And the Catholic's problem with it is the competition:
|
| > _Some parish pastors have also opposed casinos for the
| additional reason that they would take customers away from
| church bingo and annual festivals where games such as
| blackjack, roulette, craps, and poker are used for
| fundraising._
| keiferski wrote:
| You left out the entire first half of the section on
| Catholicism, which is an extremely misleading move on
| your part:
|
| _The Catholic Church holds the position that there is no
| moral impediment to gambling, so long as it is fair, all
| bettors have a reasonable chance of winning, there is no
| fraud involved, and the parties involved do not have
| actual knowledge of the outcome of the bet (unless they
| have disclosed this knowledge),[33] and as long as the
| following conditions are met: the gambler can afford to
| lose the bet, and stops when the limit is reached, and
| the motivation is entertainment and not personal gain
| leading to the "love of money"[34] or making a living._
|
| _In general, Catholic bishops have opposed casino
| gambling on the grounds that it too often tempts people
| into problem gambling or addiction, and has particularly
| negative effects on poor people; they sometimes also cite
| secondary effects such as increases in loan sharking,
| prostitution, corruption, and general public immorality_
| 1659447091 wrote:
| > which is an extremely misleading move on your part
|
| No, I was pointing out the hypocrisy with the Catholic
| view.
|
| You are adding to what I pointing out about the wiki and
| Christianity generally not having a problem with gambling
| _itself_ : "The Catholic Church holds the position that
| there is no moral impediment to gambling" -- again no
| moral issue with gambling itself. Your source to back up
| your argument is simply not what you made it out to be.
| keiferski wrote:
| I think it's fair to say that the Catholic opinion is
| very much against the type of widespread gambling that is
| prevalent today, especially in the sense of it having
| negative social effects.
|
| I don't think that is hypocritical, more just nuanced.
| Church bingos aren't putting people into poverty.
|
| https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06375b.htm
|
| Your critique of my initial comment seems to be hinging
| on the single phrase of _gambling itself_. I just meant
| the commonly used sense of the word, today, which IMO
| implies the aspects that the Catholics label as negative.
| (I.e. most people don't call bingo a gambling activity.)
|
| But sure, Catholicism has a nuanced view and it's
| inaccurate to say they are against gambling in itself.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| The post of your I replied to with the source says
|
| > _Sure, we could get into a discussion on the morality
| of gambling itself, but if we look at pretty much every
| global ethical tradition (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism,
| etc.) it is frowned upon strongly._
|
| Yes, that was how it reads to me, that gambling itself is
| frowned on; based on the post that reply was for where
| they stated _" I would say gambling in itself isnt
| immoral."_ and that the problem is addiction and money.
| And I also agree with that. But gambling is gambling and
| while no part of it is immoral to me (I hold higher
| standards for that word), there are major issues with it
| due to greed.
|
| Which is what your souce is saying Christians have a
| problem with, not it being widespread or happening at all
| -- simply the trying to get rich, the addiction to money
| -- thats the sin. Not gambling, gambling is fine; it's
| when it turn into a money issue, then there is a problem.
| And that can happen at your local bingo parlour or Macau,
| or Vegas or the back-room of a gas station or your
| buddy's poker game. The Christian bible/church have an
| issue when greed happens, not gambling (widespread or
| not).
| keiferski wrote:
| I think this distinction is not actually useful in real
| life, where 99% of the money problems are from certain
| types of gambling and not from others. When people
| discuss gambling, they aren't talking about bingo games
| and school raffles, they're talking about the thing most
| people mean by the word gambling.
| 1659447091 wrote:
| If the root problem is greed how is making that
| distinction not useful in real life?
|
| What does the type of gambling matter? If we focus on the
| core issues: greed and money problems -- over trying to
| "protect" [my emphasis] others from the bad gambling --
| we end up helping them with adjacent greed/money
| problems. Labeling outside things as the problem is the
| problem. Help the people learn to master the inner
| compulsion towards these things (and other skills to help
| pull themselves out of dire situations); the rest is just
| trying to find an enemy to blame because helping others
| in a real way is hard.
| wredcoll wrote:
| In the same way distinguishing between heroin and codeine
| is useful. You can get addicted to either, but one sure
| makes it a lot easier.
| kqr wrote:
| > widespread gambling = negative social effects
|
| Though this is conflating correlation for causation. As you
| note yourself in GP, dire social conditions is what makes
| people see gambling (or risk-taking more generally) as one
| of the only viable options to get out.
| hollerith wrote:
| Just because the causation goes one way doesn't mean it
| cannot go the other way, too. We call those vicious
| cycles.
| kqr wrote:
| Yeah but those are separate claims. "Lead causes health
| problem, and vicious cycles are a thing, therefore health
| problems cause lead!" is not a valid shape for an
| argument. It may well be true, but both directions have
| to be established before calling it a vicious cycle.
|
| In this case, I can agree bad social conditions cause
| gambling, but I don't think the data supports the
| opposite, at least not more than many other things we
| take for granted, such as
|
| - alcohol,
|
| - beauty/fashion industries,
|
| - social media,
|
| etc.
| wredcoll wrote:
| You don't think gambling causes negative societal affects
| to any greater degree than the fashion industry?
| kqr wrote:
| I've not heard any convincing arguments in favour of that
| hypothesis, no. Have you met young women? They self-harm
| over unrealistic ideals.
| hollerith wrote:
| Cause-and-effect relationships can be complicated and it
| is important not to jump to conclusions, but do you deny
| that there are millions of Americans who can correctly
| identify an addiction when they see it in someone they
| have some sort of ongoing relationshp with (either
| because they have training and experience in treating
| addiction or because they themselves or someone close to
| them were once addicted)?
|
| Do you deny that those observers can correctly identify
| the substance or the activity that the addict is addicted
| to?
|
| Do you deny that addiction is quite deleterious both to
| the addict and to the people with whom the addict is in
| some kind of relationship?
|
| Many news stories claim that many Americans (young men
| particularly) are getting addicted to online sports
| betting. Do you dispute the accuracy of those news
| stories?
|
| If so, can you guess as to the motivation for publishing
| these inaccurate news stories? Often a campaign to
| mislead the public is done because some group would gain
| something quite valuable if the campaign is successful.
| What would any group have to gain (aside from a slightly
| healthier country) from a successful campaign to make
| online sports betting illegal?
| kqr wrote:
| I do not dispute any of that. Many young Americans also
| get addicted to alcohol. Many young Americans self-harm
| over unrealistic ideals brought to them by the
| beauty/fashion industries. Many young Americans get
| depressed over social media.
|
| We need to help these people, but we do not help them by
| driving their vices underground.
| hollerith wrote:
| So, how should we help all the groups of young Americans
| you mention?
| kqr wrote:
| Strong, publically-funded social safety net is a good
| start, I think. Using vice taxes to contribute money to
| it is probably a decent idea.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Moreover, one simply needs to look at which games casinos
| select to see how not only does the house always win, but
| it chooses to win more and entertain less --- Faro was once
| a popular game, and by all accounts is a great deal of fun
| to play, but a Faro table does not make as much money for
| the house as Blackjack and other games, so one doesn't see
| them in casinos these days.
| sigwinch wrote:
| In the Abrahamic tradition, seeking benefit by avoiding
| labor is sinful. I don't think it needs to be widespread to
| serve as an example. One data point that widespread
| gambling was eroding norms was that professional gamblers
| could not give testimony.
| singlepaynews wrote:
| OK, so what is to be done when access to labor is
| gatekept? If you can't have a job, or can't benefit from
| a job beyond "give a man a fish, he eats for a day", are
| you not meant to look for an opportunity to generate
| income outside of working?
| huhkerrf wrote:
| > OK, so what is to be done when access to labor is
| gatekept?
|
| The unemployment rate in the US is 4.3%.
|
| Before you say anything, the U-6 rate is 8.1%.
| singlepaynews wrote:
| Okay, so 30 million people, or more conservatively 16
| million people. Same question, and before you say
| anything, don't be condescending.
|
| ETA: Maybe most conservatively, let's use only the %
| uniquely included in U-6 and excluded in standard, or
| 14.4 million people. I'll claim these 14m people are the
| "gatekept from full employment" in that they don't
| qualify as narrowly unemployed unless you include "all
| people marginally attached to the labor force, plus total
| employed part time for economic reasons"(1)
|
| Same question. 14m people who are being excluded from
| labor, are they not free to attempt to generate income
| via means other than labor, lest they suffer the
| judgement of Abraham?
|
| In other words, is Abraham hiring? If not, are the people
| he refuses to employ meant to accept serfdom to preserve
| their soul?
|
| (1):https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
| sigwinch wrote:
| If you're a bookie, and an adherent of these Iron Age
| religions, then you might be instructed to Render upon
| Caesar. If being a bookie means feeding your family, you
| can relax so long as you realize that your responsibility
| is to slightly nudge the right players to win.
| tgv wrote:
| Gambling (without very strict rules) has a net negative
| outcome. You're not doing anything valuable, nor neutral, by
| gambling. So it could well be viewed as immoral.
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| Gambling is addictive because it gives you a dopamine rush.
| That's why people gamble because it's actually enjoyable.
|
| I personally don't see the argument for categorising it as
| immoral on the basis that's it's not useful. The same could
| be said about plenty of other enjoyable things.
|
| However exploitation is clearly immoral. That's where I
| have issue with gambling. Gambling operators don't get rich
| thanks to the average users but because addicts give them
| much more than they should. That's clearly immoral be it
| from a casino, a gambling website, or micro transactions in
| mobile game. Every companies which profit from that should
| be held accountable including Apple and Google which are
| clearly complicit.
| tgv wrote:
| It was more to provide an alternative to the parent's
| remark that it isn't. I fully agree that its exploitation
| is by far the greater evil.
|
| I do not concur on the dopamine argument. There's no
| solid evidence for it. The underlying mechanism is
| probably much more complex. But since we're not
| discussing a signal path to addiction, it's an
| unnecessary complication of the argument that instills
| the belief that there's a medical cure.
| hollerith wrote:
| Most Americans regard as immoral any substance or
| activity to which ordinary people become addicted at a
| significant rate.
|
| Addiction breaks social ties. For example, when an addict
| starts to struggle to continue to pay for his addiction,
| he often starts to steal from friends and family members.
|
| The average view on this on HN is quite different from
| the American average. Personality psychologists have
| observed that people who do well in software development
| and entrepreneurship tend to be high in a trait called
| "openness to _experience_ ". Maybe HNers are more
| tolerant of addictive substances and activities than the
| American average because addictive substances and
| activities tend to be interesting _experiences_.
|
| (I am restricting my universe of discourse here to the US
| only because it is the country I know best.)
| LexiMax wrote:
| > Maybe HNers are more tolerant of addictive substances
| and activities than the American average because
| addictive substances and activities tend to be
| interesting experiences.
|
| I think the more accurate lens would be that Hacker News
| likes money.
|
| On the surface at least, it seems like running a gambling
| or sports betting company would be a dream job. You get
| to systemically rip off your customers through your house
| edge, you retain the right to back off skilled players
| that can bypass your house edge, your expenses go to
| infrastructure as opposed to creating anything of value,
| and you get to externalize the wider societal
| consequences by blaming nebulous mental illness.
|
| "This guy wants to pay me for the privilege of gradually
| losing money to me, why should I stop him?"
| kqr wrote:
| I think this is hard to argue against because you haven't
| defined what you mean by strict rules, but here are some
| positive outcomes of gambling:
|
| - Insurance prevents financial catastrophe by aggregating
| risk, yet it is nothing more than wagering you'll get into
| trouble.
|
| - Market liquidity is provided by people willing to bet on
| price developments, which smoothes out fluctuations in
| availability.
|
| - Large infrastructure projects and charity donations been
| financed through lotteries -- it's a way to raise money
| without a guarantee of return.
|
| - If you want to sell something which a single buyer cannot
| afford, and it is difficult to share, it can be sold
| through a lottery which lets buyers buy a ticket's expected
| value rather than the full cost of the thing.
|
| These benefits still exist when unregulated, but of course
| it seems to work even better under the appropriate
| regulation.
| tgv wrote:
| What I mean by strict rules is (but not limited to): no
| profit for the organizer, loss limit for everyone across
| all bets, etc. But I don't know what set of rules would
| qualify to make gambling neutral.
|
| - Infrastructure is better off paid by taxation. That's
| much fairer, and more predictable.
|
| - I don't see insurance as gambling. It has a chance
| element, but that's not enough to qualify something as
| gambling. You buy security _against_ large losses at a
| moderate price (*), instead of building up large losses
| for nothing. It 's also a step which you hope doesn't pay
| out (sickness, fire, theft).
|
| - Selling through lottery is exploitation.
|
| (*) YMMV
| dpark wrote:
| > no profit for the organizer
|
| You've ruled out not just all gambling but all business.
| The examples the parent comment above you gave are all
| profit generating for the organizer.
|
| Insurance in particular seems to be a clear societal win
| and is in fact gambling. You make a (relatively) small
| wager that pays out nothing if you don't need it or
| potentially huge if you do.
| sigwinch wrote:
| Insurance is moral stewardship, and not unearned gain. In
| fact, refusing insurance when your neighbors are of the
| same religion is seen as gambling.
| dpark wrote:
| You don't earn a payout for cancer treatment. It is
| definitely unearned.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| If you paid into the insurance pool, then how is the pay
| out unearned?
|
| Did you choose to get cancer or fake it?
| tgv wrote:
| We're clearly having different views on society. Yours
| seems through a strict financial lens, but correct me if
| I'm wrong.
|
| > potentially huge if you do.
|
| No, it isn't. You've just incurred a (probably larger)
| loss, elsewhere. There's no pay-off. Insurance makes
| large losses bearable for the individual and society.
| That's unlike gambling.
| dpark wrote:
| "I bet you $500 a month I'll get cancer."
|
| Insurance absolutely has a societal benefit. It is also
| absolutely gambling.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If you made this bet, then got cancer, would you say
| "hooray, I'm rich!"?
| dpark wrote:
| No. But not the definition of gambling.
|
| Insurance is hedging. Aka hedging your _bets_.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Appeal to definitions is rarely useful in such
| discussions. Insurance is not a central member of the
| category, since people rarely get addicted to filing
| insurance paperwork, but people very much do get addicted
| to sports betting.
| dpark wrote:
| "Is insurance gambling" is a question of definition.
|
| You're trying to argue that it's not gambling because
| it's beneficial. But that's absurd because you're trying
| to define gambling as specifically "bad" in a
| conversation of whether gambling is bad.
|
| You can't argue circularly and then gripe about
| clarifying definitions.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| No, nobody's trying to argue that gambling is _by
| definition_ bad - that is to say, nobody 's defining the
| category boundaries of "gambling" contingent on
| possessing the property "is bad". Some people have
| constrained the definition of "gambling" such that it
| only contains things they view as bad, and then observed
| that all the things they consider "gambling" are bad, but
| that's not the vacuous, circular claim you make it out to
| be.
|
| In lieu of re-quoting other parts of the thread, I'll
| instead ask you to please re-read the arguments people
| have made, more slowly.
| dpark wrote:
| Reread your own message.
|
| > Some people have constrained the definition of
| "gambling" such that it only contains things they view as
| bad
|
| If there is some internally consistent definition that
| excludes all the "good" stuff without excluding it
| specifically for being good, no one has shared that so
| far as I've seen.
|
| The arguments about insurance so far have been "but it's
| a good thing" and "you aren't happy when your insurance
| pays out". The former is exactly gambling==bad and the
| latter is just wrong. I could bet that a politician I
| despise will win and I won't necessarily be happy that I
| won. I'll be _more_ happy that I got a payout than not,
| exactly the same as insurance. That's what a hedge is.
| koolba wrote:
| The words for this are hedging and speculation vs
| gambling.
| dpark wrote:
| Amusingly speculation is generally classified differently
| from investment in that speculation is considered
| gambling.
|
| Hedging is a strategy for reducing risk in gambling (or
| investment).
| kqr wrote:
| > taxation. That's much fairer
|
| Extortion is more fair than voluntary contributions?
| Maybe on arguments from regression but it's not obvious.
|
| > You buy security against large losses at a moderate
| price
|
| Flood insurance is literally saying "I bet my house is
| going to be underwater" and winning the big cash price if
| it is.
|
| Sure, you made an offsetting gamble when buying the
| house, but I don't see how you can claim a gamble is no
| longer a gamble when a partially offsetting gamble exists
| -- that's just two gambles, and indeed prudent risk
| management when it comes to big gambling.
| mrweasel wrote:
| When Denmark liberalized gambling small "casinos" with slot
| machines and sports betting started to pop up everywhere.
| Those wouldn't be an issue if it was regular people popping
| Friday afternoon to get a coffee and spend $10 - $20 on the
| slot machines and perhaps put down a few bucks on this
| weekends big game, but you're right, it no.
|
| The addicts and lonely line up waiting for these places to
| open, they spend everything they've got and the gambling
| places encourage it by providing them with free coffee,
| snacks and in some cases dinner.
|
| No, gambling isn't immoral, but praying on the addicts, the
| mentally challenge and the lonely is. If you can't stay in
| business without exploiting the weak, you have no right to
| exist. The only negative consequence I see from banning
| gambling is the potential dangers of a black market.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| And that is demonstrably very high.
| bhc wrote:
| The gambling industry has funneled a ton of cash into
| academic researchers producing papers that gave credence to
| the idea of "addictive personality," which in turn was
| massaged by PR experts into the notion that some people are
| just born addicts, and the gambling industry can't help it if
| they become addicted to gambling too. "Addictive personality"
| itself is on very shaky grounds statistically, and the
| derived PR messaging certainly is false. The gambling
| industry is likely more culpable in this mess than even a
| typical, generally well-informed person might be aware.
| Theodores wrote:
| "Addictive personality", now there is a deprecated phrase!
|
| In drug rehabilitation, the phrase is no longer used.
| Instead people have a bingo card of disease, conditions and
| syndromes to go with addiction. Once people have been
| pigeon-holed in a dozen ways then the die is cast, these
| conditions are no longer imaginary, you have to hold
| yourself up in life because X, Y and Z prohibit you from
| even giving it a go.
|
| Regarding the article, I detest organised gambling,
| however, relatively few chronic gamblers end up homeless
| and destitute. You need a good dose of class A drugs and a
| smorgasbord of childhood trauma to guarantee the truly
| negative outcomes.
|
| I don't object to gambling amongst friends, even if it is
| on a card game. I might bet someone that they can't beat me
| on Scrabble, but I would be getting the dopamine hits from
| laying some massive, high-scoring words on the board to
| devastate my fellow players, but winning that PS10 just ups
| the stakes and my competitive drive. If I am just betting
| on a sport (or even a Scrabble game) played by others, then
| it isn't quite the same.
|
| What does amaze me about modern day gambling is that you
| know it is rigged. I don't trust an app to honestly flip a
| coin for me. My version of the app would be 'if heads show
| tails and vice-versa most of the time'. Yet people pour
| their life savings and some more into apps that are black
| boxes with no way of peeking inside to see how it works.
| The seasoned gambler must know that every game is rigged
| and that the house always wins, but they still queue up for
| another spin.
| lux-lux-lux wrote:
| In terms of negative outcomes - suicidality, etc. -
| problem gambling is roughly equivalent to an opioid abuse
| or meth.
| watwut wrote:
| > relatively few chronic gamblers end up homeless and
| destitute.
|
| They rank up unpayable debts and their married partners
| end up being legally obligated to pay half of that even
| after divorce.
|
| Getting life together after gambling is super hard to
| impossible. It is literally easier to get back on track
| as alcoholic, as those have much smaller debts.
|
| And it is easier to avoid keep alcohol out of house then
| ... cell phone put of house.
| axus wrote:
| Selling a product or service to its addicts is immoral.
| Consumption isn't, its just stupid
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| The chicken farmer necessarily seeks out the chickens that
| lay the most eggs, because that's how he makes his living. In
| an economy that incentivizes the highest profit-margins, this
| exploitation becomes intrinsic to the operation of a gambling
| establishment sans regulations that prevent it.
|
| Games of chance and friendly wagers amongst friends may not,
| in themselves be immoral or harmful but gambling as an
| organized business activity is absolutely harmful
| Tangokat wrote:
| https://oldcoinbad.com/p/long-degeneracy
|
| In the author's words, long degeneracy represents "a belief
| that the world will only get more degenerate, financialized,
| speculative, lonely, tribal and weird".
|
| The most concise and holistic explanation of this trend is:
|
| "As real returns compress, risk increases to compensate".
| keiferski wrote:
| Great post, thanks for linking to that. The prevalence of
| crypto millionaires is definitely a big factor. Especially
| for people under 35; when you see your peers becoming rich
| from essentially random behaviors (like buying the right
| coin), it really undermines the idea that success is linked
| to hard work. And that impression funnels back into culture.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I dislike the author's framing of this in terms of right-wing
| meme culture, but almost all of the analysis is nevertheless
| correct. An orthodox Marxist could make essentially the same
| argument using different terminology - except about the
| inevitability of the trend continuing forever.
| estearum wrote:
| > except about the inevitability of the trend continuing
| forever.
|
| Which is important because it yields completely different
| behavior from the believer...
| qlm wrote:
| The combination of anime children, terms like "degeneracy",
| and crypto shilling is frankly extremely repellant.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| He's living proof, I suppose. Why care about image of you
| think the world is burning around you anyway?
| shusaku wrote:
| > Gambling thrives in contexts where a ladder to success
| doesn't exist or is perceived as not existing.
|
| This is a neat moral message... but is it really true? Gambling
| is addictive, so the reality might be that even without such
| deep social problems you get similar levels
| hiatus wrote:
| It can be a bit of both no? Drugs are addictive but drug use
| increases when conditions worsen.
| kqr wrote:
| Brenner, Brenner, and Brown wrote _A World of Chance_ in
| which they draw from large reams of data and conclude that
| gambling is often used by those that see no other way up.
| ls612 wrote:
| Gambling is addictive for _some_ , in the same way that
| alcohol is addictive for some, yet blanket alcohol
| prohibition is not considered a great idea in hindsight.
| byronic wrote:
| I don't know how we could put limits on gambling that would
| make sense, though. There's a huge difference in bets that
| I used to make (which were all black-market sports bets,
| usually on 'game winner' or over/under) ~ once a week
| during the NFL season vs. the shit going on with FanDuel
| and all these phone-based gamified services. And that stuff
| absolutely encourages you to make bets that you can't
| afford and can easily turn into a problem even for someone
| who isn't 'addicted' per se -- it's like the predatory loot
| box model from video games.
|
| TLDR I don't know how you write a law that would put hard
| and fast limits on what can be bet on and how much an
| individual is allowed to bet during a week in a way that
| would be palatable to the companies. I'm in favor of the
| blanket ban at this point; the black market for betting has
| always existed and it was better than the current setup.
| ls612 wrote:
| You could make it so that if someone called the gambling
| hotline then they automatically are suspended from
| betting at all sports books for a year or something. Idk
| if this is the perfect policy but it took me about 5
| minutes to come up with it.
| lapcat wrote:
| > you might as well throw your money at something that has the
| possibility of making your rich
|
| I don't think anyone is getting rich from sports betting. It's
| not like the lottery, where the jackpots are massive and the
| odds are very long. And the jackpots get massive in the lottery
| because they accumulate when nobody wins, whereas in sports
| bettings, the gambler always either wins or loses, based on the
| outcome of the sporting event; there's no carry-over.
| tpm wrote:
| You are right customers are not getting rich from sports
| betting, but the true reason is that once 'the house', the
| betting company sees a consistent winner, it will ban them or
| lower their betting limit to discourage them from betting
| again. There are people that would get rich otherwise. Also
| betting companies are coordinating their odds to prevent
| arbitrage.
|
| And also, of course: there are gangs influencing the outcomes
| of the sport events and selling the bets or organizing
| betting on them. Fraudster bosses, if they are smart, are
| absolutely getting rich. And betting company owners too. But
| you didn't mean those.
| lapcat wrote:
| > There are people that would get rich otherwise.
|
| This is highly unlikely. Nobody has the magical ability to
| predict the outcome of sporting events.
|
| > there are gangs influencing the outcomes of the sport
| events and selling the bets or organizing betting on them.
| Fraudster bosses, if they are smart, are absolutely getting
| rich.
|
| This is highly unlikely for most of the things that
| Americans are gambling on, such as NFL games.
|
| > But you didn't mean those.
|
| It doesn't appear to be what the OP meant.
| tpm wrote:
| > This is highly unlikely.
|
| It is my experience from working in the sports betting
| industry for several years, including the risk reporting
| and risk managing part. In fact I'm pretty sure several
| people lived comfortable life by going around our risk
| management by using a loophole that was possible at the
| time in our country - it was possible to bet anonymously
| in person. So while we could limit maximum winnings per
| bet, we could not tie particular bets to persons, and
| they just placed several bets in different locations, or
| they used helpers.
|
| I'm not going into speculations how they acquired the
| knowledge. Some people are just nerds, others sit at the
| stadiums and place bets right from there etc., but I'm
| pretty confident there are customers who are able to make
| money on sport bets and are not fraudsters.
| lapcat wrote:
| > several people lived comfortable life
|
| > in our country
|
| A comfortable life in which country?
|
| And "several" means "more than two but not many".
|
| > they used helpers
|
| So, this doesn't sound like just ordinary people who have
| lost hope.
|
| The thing about lottery tickets, as opposed to sports
| betting is that the lottery requires zero skill. You buy
| a ticket, and if you get lucky and your numbers are
| randomly chosen, you win. Anyone can hope to win the
| lottery. But becoming a professional sports gambler, or a
| professional poker player, for example, is not really the
| usual response to losing hope.
| tpm wrote:
| > A comfortable life in which country?
|
| Not that important, if you are able to win 150k USD/EUR a
| bet several times in a year.
|
| > So, this doesn't sound like just ordinary people who
| have lost hope.
|
| Not sure where the 'hope' got in, but in our country
| ordinary people are perfectly able to enter a bar and ask
| patrons to place a bet in exchange for a beer and a
| vodka. In fact the bar and the betting shop are often the
| same place.
|
| > But becoming a professional sports gambler, or a
| professional poker player, for example, is not really the
| usual response to losing hope.
|
| It's not the usual response but there is a sort of people
| who do this. They will not work 9-5 a stable good paying
| job although they are able to, but absolutely will put
| huge effort into finding a way to make money any other
| way.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Not sure where the 'hope' got in
|
| That's where this discussion started! From the OP: "It's
| reflective of people losing hope in the system's ability
| to make their lives better."
|
| You've taken the discussion off on a tangent that's
| mostly unrelated to the original point that I was
| addressing.
| tpm wrote:
| Well I hope the reader now understands that it is
| sometimes possible to make money by betting.
| jmcdowell wrote:
| I was quite interested in one of the CEOs from a premier
| league team who runs StarLizard which is a private
| gambling syndicate focused on sports. They're making a
| lot of money off building models to predict sport
| outcomes.
|
| I'm not sure if you'd discount that as obviously thats
| completely different than 1 person sitting in their
| bedroom placing bets but just thought I'd raise it incase
| this level of sports betting interests you.
|
| From what I understand they place their bets in Asian
| markets rather than the markets consumers in the west
| would.
| Simulacra wrote:
| I agree that it's 100% hope. And a little hope can be very bad.
| I once read an article about kidnapping, and the author stated
| that often kidnappers will reassure their victims that they
| will be let go, that everything will be all right, and that
| little bit of hope keeps the victim compliant.
|
| I think casinos do the same thing..
| bdangubic wrote:
| > has the possibility of making your rich
|
| the core issue is that such possibility does not exist. if you
| are successful gambler to the point where you are on the path
| to riches you will be banned from all platforms faster than
| Jets are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs
| polio wrote:
| In sports betting contexts, you're often just betting against
| other players, I believe. If they're anything like prediction
| markets, the exchange isn't going to care how successful you
| are, as long as you're betting.
| estearum wrote:
| They're not like prediction markets. They do exactly what
| GP says they do: if you win, you effectively get banned
| (max bet sizes shrunk toward $0). If you suck, they do the
| reverse and expand your max bet sizes and offer you loans.
|
| These things are so unfathomably antisocial that I
| earnestly believe every single politician who advances them
| should be (journalistically) investigated as extensively as
| is legally possible.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| There is parimutuel betting, but the payouts change based
| on the final pool size
| rurp wrote:
| Not only do winning players get quickly banned like sibling
| said, the house take on the major platforms is vastly
| higher than with traditional sports betting.
| thrance wrote:
| We already live in a country where owning capital generates
| more income than actually working. And this is rapidly getting
| worse. The GOP has sold the country on blaming minorities, and
| so things will get _much, much_ worse before they can be
| better.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > We already live in a country
|
| The context is unclear. What country?
| thrance wrote:
| Know many countries with a political entiry known as "The
| GOP" that likes to blame minorities for everything wrong in
| society?
| ta1243 wrote:
| Pretty much any country. If you have $1m in assets you can
| simply stick it in a passive fund and earn more than the
| average wage in the highest earning countries. You can
| certainly live like a king in low cost countries.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| You're either using nominal, not real, returns, or
| assuming that passive fund is taking on a lot of
| risk/recency bias.
|
| If you had said $2 million, I'd say that's closer to
| accurate, although there's still a conversation to be had
| about risk vs return.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Over the last 30 years the s&p with reinvested dividends
| has returned an average 9%, so fine, $90k off $1m assets.
|
| Median wage in the USA is globally very high at just over
| $60k.
| darkhorse222 wrote:
| My understanding is that a big appeal of sports gambling is
| that it adds stakes to entertainment. So instead of casually
| watching the game you're much more invested. Given this angle,
| I don't think the majority of casual sports betters are
| thinking about this in terms of getting rich. It just makes
| their frequent content more engaging.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _It's reflective of people losing hope in the system's
| ability to make their lives better._
|
| Kyla Scanlon (?) coined the term "financial nihilism" to
| describe this feeling:
|
| * https://kyla.substack.com/p/gen-z-and-financial-nihilism
|
| She thinks it's why things like cryptocurrencies/BTC have taken
| off: it's a chance to 'hit the jackpot', as many folks don't
| see another way to (financial) success.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| This cryptocurrency craze already happened in other places
| like South Korea where cryptocurrency user base is bigger and
| more active than the stock market, might be a glimpse at the
| future in the USA with SK's plummeting birth rate.
| adriand wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious to what extent the hardships younger
| people face economically are related to wasting huge amounts
| of time on screens. The average Gen Z person spends nine
| hours per day on screens. The average 18-24 year old American
| spends more than three hours per day just on social media.
|
| I recognize all the various societal and structural factors
| that disadvantage younger people. At the same time, people
| have agency. When I was in my early twenties (twenty years
| ago) my job was software development and my primary hobby
| was...software development. I was constantly improving my
| craft, primarily just because I loved it. Many of the people
| I worked with were the same.
|
| It is, of course, not entirely fair to criticize younger
| people given that there are teams of psychologists working to
| make these products as addictive as possible. So perhaps we
| older people need to do something about it. Yes, I sound old
| AF: "kids, get off your phones and do something useful!" Yes,
| I say this to my own kids, with little discernible efficacy.
| But I honestly wonder what you all think of this. Do I have a
| point or is this just victim blaming?
| squigz wrote:
| > When I was in my early twenties (twenty years ago) my job
| was software development and my primary hobby
| was...software development. I was constantly improving my
| craft, primarily just because I loved it. Many of the
| people I worked with were the same.
|
| So... you spent a lot of time in front of a screen, huh?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > Do I have a point or is this just victim blaming?
|
| A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B
|
| so the nihilism is real and warranted, if they don't
| inherit at least a downpayment for a house from you while
| you are still alive, the jobs available - even for highly
| pedigreed people - don't provide the income for the
| downpayment, for the most part. they would need arbitrage
| with high paying work in a very low cost of living place,
| for a long time, or the same but coupled with a
| socioeconomic equal who also doesn't want any gaps in their
| high income employment.
|
| many new-money parents want their children to prove...
| something... related to income and autonomy, which puts
| inheritance while living into "entitled handout" territory,
| instead of practical. while due to lifespan, any
| inheritance will only reach the child when the child is 60+
| years old, where its impact to the utility and direction of
| their life is nullified, and it's just bean counting for
| the mere concept of "keeping money in the family" but
| doesn't give anyone a leg up in social status, partner
| selection, even where you own children's children go to
| school.
|
| (note: if you actually are not confident in your retirement
| income and end of life care costs, then you are not parent
| this applies to. for parents sitting on big wins in real
| estate and other capital, it does.)
|
| but the financial reality doesn't really support this
| slower moving culture. the share of people in the US that
| are both homeowners and married by age 30 has fallen to
| nearly single digits percents. Aside from marriage being
| less attractive too, many delay everything related due to
| being preoccupied with meager work and financial
| instability.
|
| now that being said, the thing you are more familiar with,
| hustle, _does still work_. pumping earnings into an
| investment property somewhere less expensive does still
| work, only suboptimal because they would still need to be
| paying rent in the higher cost of living area. what 's
| different is that burnout is just not valued any more.
| hustle culture itself is not valued, its nothing to brag
| about and a silent path one might pursue. while experiences
| are valued. entire generations of people watched gen-x and
| boomers delay gratification and saw their bodies fail by
| the time they reached the finish line. its seen as a
| cautionary tale, not discipline.
|
| so yes, lots of people overcorrect into a defeatist
| attitude, but the incentives support it. normal jobs won't
| get them anywhere, high paying jobs also won't get them
| anywhere, the training for high paying jobs doesn't
| guarantee a high paying job either.
| adriand wrote:
| I appreciate the thoughtful reply. I guess one theory,
| then, of excessive screen time is nihilistic too: if you
| can't get ahead, why not spend your time absorbed in an
| alternate reality, perhaps including alternate realities
| where you can get ahead, like GTA.
|
| That said, what I see in young people around me (because
| of my age, there's quite a few) is a lot of addiction,
| not nihilism. These are kids with opportunities based on
| their socioeconomic status and yet many are just wasting
| huge amounts of time. The underlying question behind my
| post is essentially, does Cal Newport's theory of success
| - so good they can't ignore you - hold? And what happens
| to society when a generation is sucked into what they
| themselves literally refer to as "brain rot"?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > if you can't get ahead, why not spend your time
| absorbed in an alternate reality, perhaps including
| alternate realities where you can get ahead, like GTA ...
| That said, what I see in young people around me (because
| of my age, there's quite a few) is a lot of addiction,
| not nihilism.
|
| I think we both conclude that its not a conscious choice,
| screens are addictive.
|
| I also think many people levying this scrutiny are just
| as addicted.
|
| I took a community college class a few years back and for
| the first few sessions I was fidgeting, until I course
| corrected because I knew that was abnormal for me from
| the last time I was in formal education. My ability to
| course correct made me think about how younger
| generations may be at a disadvantage because they don't
| know any other way to operate.
|
| > The underlying question behind my post is essentially,
| does Cal Newport's theory of success - so good they can't
| ignore you - hold? And what happens to society when a
| generation is sucked into what they themselves literally
| refer to as "brain rot"?
|
| I think it holds, income and work look different to many
| people. A steady high paying job is still optimal for a
| broad population, but being influential on social media
| or making a roblox game, all of which is built in the
| ecosystem they spend time on, seems practical too.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >The underlying question behind my post is essentially,
| does Cal Newport's theory of success - so good they can't
| ignore you - hold?
|
| Sure. But that bar is sky high now because it's very easy
| to ignore you otherwise. If you're not already running a
| successful company, releasing some viral piece of media,
| or publishing some novel research, you're going to be
| ignored. Having a 4.0 GPA with multiple interesting side
| projects and even an internship isn't necessarily getting
| you a job out of college anymore. Or at least, for now.
| Things you need to do to be noticed basically mean you
| already have means to somewhat sustain yourself.
| piva00 wrote:
| We both lived through an era where there was a sense of
| community, even online, I would also spend boatloads of
| time learning how to program in my youth some 20+ years ago
| but that was around the same IRC channels, the same forums,
| with people who were in those spaces for years.
|
| I would bond with them through this shared hobby, make
| acquaintances, even friends, people who you could recognise
| even if it was just a nickname.
|
| My first real software development job was through friends
| I met on IRC and forums, they knew me for years, and
| offered me an internship after we had worked on a hobby
| project for a Ultima Online game server.
|
| Fast-forward to now, it is really hard for young people to
| find shared spaces with a sense of community, in the real
| world or online. Everything they experience online is
| through mass platforms where everyone is basically
| anonymous even though it became much more common to share
| your real name. How can you bond with someone in the
| comments section of a YouTube video about your hobby? Or in
| the comments of some TikTok/Instagram post that was quite
| interesting? You simply can't, that post or video will
| disappear from others' feeds, there's no sense of
| permanence of the members of a community.
|
| I think the closest to this experience might be some
| Discord servers, it's one of the ways I found to try to
| meet people on my current hobbies but the experience is
| still very different than the tight-knitted groups of IRC
| channels from the past. Forums, for the most part, were
| eaten by reddit, for some hobbies there are still quite a
| few active ones but the discoverability is much worse, you
| will have to jump through some hoops (usually starting on a
| subreddit) to find one of those.
|
| My feeling is just that community in general is in decline,
| I'm lucky to have managed to keep finding these bubbles and
| sticking with them, online or in the real world, but when I
| talk to my colleagues in the 20-24 age bracket I sense they
| simply don't have communities. They have a few friends who
| they might meet for a shared activity but they generally
| don't know a place where they can go and meet other
| similarly-minded folks.
|
| The screens end up as a bad refuge to try to find these
| connections that were much more natural when we were young.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| > Everything they experience online is through mass
| platforms where everyone is basically anonymous even
| though it became much more common to share your real
| name.
|
| And sadly even this diminished engagement you are talking
| about is somewhat optimistic in that it assumes the
| people they are interacting with on mass platforms are
| even real people, which is increasingly not the case.
| jwilber wrote:
| Hardships do come from high screen time, definitely. The
| poor job market is not one of them.
|
| The "screen" effect doesn't exist. But the percentage of
| students enrolled in cs programs grew a lot of the last few
| years, and I've seen the passion difference have an effect.
| Two friends of mine graduated last year. Both had zero
| offers out of undergrad (this is the norm right now, again,
| completely irrelevant to screen time). One of them was
| passionate about coding and kept working on side
| projects/leetcoding, eventually landing a role at a tech
| company after a year of working at a boba shop. The other,
| who struggled with coding and was verbally not passionate
| about it (complained about it a lot, didn't interview prep
| much) ended up throwing in the towel a few months on the
| job hunt.
|
| An anecdote, but probably generalizable across those in
| today's job market. But the market is the core problem,
| second to the individual's willingness to grind. Neither
| are related to screen time.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Hardships do come from high screen time, definitely.
| The poor job market is not one of them.
|
| This times a thousand. I wouldn't have the jobs I do
| today if I didn't spend probably on balance an unhealthy
| amount of time in front of my own screens in the 90's. I
| got into programming because I loved screens and wanted
| to make them show me different things.
|
| The difference today is two-fold IMO:
|
| * The job market, as stated, is shit, especially for tech
| right now. For decades kiddos have been propagandized
| into going into a future in comp science of varying
| depths and qualities, both here in the US, and overseas.
| We have more tech workers than ever, wages are falling
| because of over-supply, and too many are focused on niche
| framework technologies who's skills don't translate well
| across the wide breadth of what's _actually used_ in
| industry. Example: my company is hiring right now and it
| 's DIRE to try and find mobile developers who actually
| develop in Kotlin/Java/Swift/Objective-C. I'm drowning in
| resumes for React developers but we don't use any of that
| and have no desire to.
|
| * The screens now used by would-be budding hackers are
| locked down to hell and back, and were put in their hands
| when they were likely still shitting in their pants (no
| judgement of course, we all did it for awhile) and they
| don't conceive of them as "machines I could play with"
| but instead, simply as a never ending font of distraction
| and entertainment, perfectly curated to their individual
| desires.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I took the ancestor comment to be more about the "3-4
| hours a day on social media" than time on a screen doing
| something like learning/improving programming skills.
|
| Now, if you're spending three hours a day writing your
| blog and promoting your reputation as a skilled developer
| that's possibly going to help you. If you spend it
| surfing TikTok that's almost certainly going to do
| nothing for you. Though back in my 20s I could waste
| hours just watching stupid shit on TV.
|
| It's possibly harder now to get a great job offer right
| out of school, but getting a lot of rejections as a new
| graduate isn't new either. It used to be a thing for
| seniors near graduation to paper their living room or
| hallway with all their rejection letters.
|
| Most people are average. They will end up with average
| jobs and earning average money. One negative thing about
| social media is that it makes the top overachievers seem
| normal, and when you compare their lives (at least as
| they portray them) to your own it can make you feel
| hopeless.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| The hard job market drives more screen time. Less jobs,
| less money to spend at bars or any other third place that
| has become paid, less money to network. You aren't
| spending time honing your craft now, you spend times on
| hustles trying to launch your social media account or by
| doing gig work on deliveries and rides hating.
|
| You spend more energy than ever making less money than
| ever and probably under more stress than ever over all
| the looming costs. That's not a state of mind where you
| just sit down at the end of the day and start working on
| your side project. Anyone who can do that is
| extraordinary, but I hope that isn't how we expect our
| future generations to operate.
| jama211 wrote:
| This feels like you're metaphorically walking around with a
| hammer looking for a nail.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| I think it's rational in the same sense as insurance.
| Insurance is a small cost to cover the costs of a potential
| event that you can't afford. Lotteries are a small cost for a
| potential event that you can't afford not to benefit from.
|
| The key is that in a well-functioning society and wisely-
| lived life, you don't need to spend the cost on lottery
| because you can afford life/retirement without it's winnings.
| rightbyte wrote:
| That is in interesting take. An underfunded insurance.
| "Your only chance is winning the lottery".
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > It's reflective of people losing hope in the system's
| ability to make their lives better
|
| On the contrary all epicenters of gambling are extremely rich
| areas populated by people who have mastered such art.
|
| The proximities of the stock exchanges of every country are
| basically the richest zip code in the country
| estearum wrote:
| Stock exchanges are not _themselves_ anything like a casino.
| You can bet within them in similar ways, but you can also
| make bets at a stock exchange that you would never find at a
| casino.
| dpark wrote:
| > On the contrary all epicenters of gambling are extremely
| rich areas populated by people who have mastered such art.
|
| This does not seem to be a rebuttal. The "extremely rich
| areas" are generally funded by the not at all rich who lose
| their money gambling.
|
| Additionally most in the "extremely rich areas" are not
| actually wealthy. And there are many, many gambling areas
| that are not rich at all.
| oreally wrote:
| I'd like to present a different perspective, abeit slightly
| radical.
|
| I believe that there's a place for a time-efficient, minimal
| human approval, risk-reward system for a society in which jobs
| have been gatekept to ever-higher requirements and are even
| harder to sustain due to pressures of the people gatekeeping
| you out and around you once you've gotten in (ie. the
| bureaucracies of your co-workers and your boss's temper
| tantrums).
|
| If you've ever talked to creative-passion professionals(ie.
| media-content, artists), clients don't really respect them and
| abuse their passion, plus the people around them put a lot of
| pressure on them. In addition, polishing their work takes up a
| lot of time. So it's highly probable that they would be stuck
| in this loop if they didn't do something.
|
| You could say 'oh, they can upskill themselves' or whatever.
| However that carries significant risk and still binds the
| individual to people's approvals and their hidden/overboard
| requirements. All the while, time and mental health is being
| sapped from them. I knew a programmer in gamedev who pivoted to
| robotics. It was all math heavy stuff and consumed him and his
| mental health to the point of his relationships suffering.
|
| Point is skills-pivoting is hard to execute, and gets riskier
| by the day (think ai and jobs). However, say there's a system
| that is easy to execute, but the rewards are variant. But if
| that individual is able to figure out a plan to generate
| positive expectancy, that's a great alternative to the system
| of 'get a job and another job and hope you tick the
| requirements'. It's like a business in which you fail until you
| don't.
|
| Of course, the keyword is being able to turn whatever you're
| doing into *positive expectancy*. Like a business with a new
| offering/venture, everything new looks like a gamble because
| you don't know the information, the theories and the outcome.
| Do you want really want to kill off these new businesses?
| keiferski wrote:
| I think what you're saying is that society would benefit from
| a kind of lottery system that made it easy for people to earn
| a sizable amount of money _randomly_ , without any sort of
| gatekeeping?
|
| I agree with the premise, however, in actuality gambling
| systems are almost all designed to just extract money from
| people. Not function as a wealth redistribution system.
| oreally wrote:
| it's not really lottery, that system has to involve growing
| a 'skill' such that one could possibly get 'good' and
| 'rewarded' at it, and that 'skill' doesn't need human
| approval, which will make it a true alternative to getting
| jobs. bonus points if one can scale it up.
|
| Take daytrading for example, of the 99% who fail are they
| all gamblers or are they just tolerating enough failures
| until they get a positive expectancy?
|
| > however, in actuality gambling systems are almost all
| designed to just extract money from people. Not function as
| a wealth redistribution system.
|
| Yea what I'm talking about isn't exactly a gambling system
| which will try to screw you over the instant you get some
| momentum of out a positive expectancy system.
| sigwinch wrote:
| Maybe playing sports is the closest?
| sigwinch wrote:
| Doesn't the House very effectively gatekeep sharps from the
| table?
| oreally wrote:
| yea what i'm talking about excludes the house banning
| people from playing their game.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| I mean hard work has never made anyone wealthy, it usually
| makes someone else wealthy. What makes you wealthy is being
| good at negotiation and intepersonal skills, family
| connections, and luck. And, of course, a touch or genius--
| there's a reason that some of the wealthiest people in tech are
| also sometimes the most brilliant. Somebody who figures out and
| properly leverages a labor saving technique, even if it seems
| obvious afterwards, will become wealthy in most circumstances;
| someone who had their finger on the pulse of a market, whether
| it is art, fashion, or the S&P 500, can become wealthy by
| making the right investments and sales. But hard work? Nobody
| ever became wealthy by working in a coal mine 12 hours a day,
| nobody ever became wealthy spending hours and hours
| meticulously and painstakingly setting up a script that
| could've been prompted out in under 5 minutes. Wealth is
| something that always involves a level of risk and chance,
| that's why sports betting is so enticing, because it operates
| on the same principles as the rest of the market, even though,
| clearly, like in a casino, the house always gets its cut. But
| there are many people who live comfortably just playing poker 3
| to 4 times a week, and their wealth is no accident.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I disagree. What a high level professional gambler is doing
| is hard work.
|
| Hard work doesn't make you rich, but it's part of the things
| that you need to prosper. I'm no inspirational poster child,
| but hard work, building a network, doing good things for
| people were all essential to my long term success. I didn't
| have the benefit of familial connections, but that helps too.
| There's a saying that you make your own luck, which is
| true... if you're not on the field, you can't get lucky.
|
| People making a living playing poker is fine, but it's just
| like being a working musician, an investor or an athlete. I
| had a friend who made a living on horse better. You've
| developed a set of skills and have a usually limited window
| to cash in on them. The 95% of people gambling aren't
| attracted to the game of skill, and flop around with the 101
| things to do in a gambling establishment that aren't poker.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| I agree that hard work is often a pre-requisite for being
| successful, but it is not key to being successful by any
| means. Like I wouldn't agree with your definition because
| most people wouldn't claim that, say, getting into bitcoin
| early and then working like 10 hours a week max trading and
| setting up mining rigs is "hard work," even if it made some
| people extremely wealthy, just because they got on the
| trend early.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Gambling encourages and creates bad behavior. I got to hang out
| at a local state-licensed casino for a few nights due to a work
| obligation.
|
| Try it some time and people watch. At best, there's groups of
| people having a good time. Usually they seemed to be associated
| with music or convention activity. Mostly, it's depressing,
| with old people blowing their pensions on stupid slot machines.
| At worst, there's really obvious criminal activity with people
| washing money on table and poker games.
|
| The only gambling thing that I ever thought could be good was
| the state lottery bonds they have in the UK and Ireland.
| Basically, it's like a CD for lottery... you the interest is a
| prize pot. But your principal is still there.
|
| The online sports betting thing is gross. My son is 13, and
| many of the boys are totally enthralled with sports betting.
| We're creating addicts before they even earn money.
| Retr0id wrote:
| What are the 13yos doing? Is there some fake-money sports
| betting platform or are they able to burn real money on it?
| ineedasername wrote:
| My son has mentioned friends whose fathers let them place
| bets. "Hey, who do you like for the wildcard game tonight,
| I'll put a tenner ($10) on it for you." It's not seen the
| same way as a parent giving giving their kid alcohol or
| other age-gated things like that.
|
| Interestingly, considering the role that sports have in day
| to day social discourse & self-identity with teams ("we"
| need to win this game), I've heard a few acquaintances say
| basically "placing a bet makes watching it more
| interesting, it's too boring otherwise". And given the
| social/identity thing you can't _not_ watch it. "Hey you
| catch that play last night? 'We' fell apart, awful..."
| gotta be able to keep up with the tribe chants.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| When I was 13 my parents would let me have a (small)
| glass of wine with dinner.
|
| I'm sure many parents place proxy sports bets for their
| kids. Maybe to teach them how to use betting as a form of
| entertainment and learning how your money can also just
| disappear. I can see it being a good thing if done
| carefully. I can also see it going wrong.
| watwut wrote:
| There is a out zero chance it is done carefully or done
| to teach them "money disappears". Be serious. It does not
| even make sense as a lesson.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > I can see it being a good thing if done carefully.
|
| My experience with raising three kids is there's a limit
| to the amount of messaging that gets through with any
| fidelity. So, the only financial teaching I did with
| them, was the stocks, bonds, diversification, risk and
| prudence schtick. I could see the attempted teachable
| lesson about gambling losses going sideways and crowding-
| out the rest.
| analog31 wrote:
| I was pretty much the same way with my kids, with one
| more detail: Teaching a reasonable level of skepticism
| about advertising, marketing, and peer pressure in
| general.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > It's reflective of people losing hope in the system's ability
| to make their lives better.
|
| I think this passes the buck. It's not the addictive apps and
| ads, it's society! Don't regulate us!
| brookst wrote:
| It is possible to see both systemic and individual concerns.
| Binary thinking for blame or credit rarely makes sense in
| complex systems.
| screye wrote:
| It's not just gambling. Influencer and VC culture incentivize
| this same 'hit it big or die trying' ethos. I have seen '5
| million is too little to retire on' type of messaging on HN
| too. The only way to save more than that is to take on an
| irrational amount of risk (ie. Gamble).
|
| For genZ, the squeeze comes from 3 sides. On one side, few
| professions promise long term stability. There is a feeling
| that the ground can vanish under your feet at any moment. (SWE
| jobs in particular are feeling this pressure). 2nd, Social
| media has raised the goalposts on the idea of a good life.
| Lastly, Nimbys and opaque healthcare policy have put the lowest
| (and most quantifiable) aspects of Maslow's pyramid out of
| reach. (Safety needs)
|
| Gambling is a symptom. Nowdays, people don't invest in good
| bonds because there is no such thing. Similarly, people don't
| invest in steady jobs because increasingly, there is no such
| thing.
|
| Housing reform, transparent healthcare and a small degree of
| worker protections would go a long way towards incentivizing
| stable decision making.
| nharada wrote:
| I agree with this 100%, it's not just gambling it's that the
| idea there's a steady path you can follow to success has
| basically disappeared. In a survey[1] asking how much money
| was required for financial success, Zoomers averaged $10MM,
| almost double millennials and 10x boomers.
|
| A lot of people online took the opportunity to criticize
| zoomers as out of touch and financially illiterate, but I
| think most people under 30 have looked at the trends over
| their lifetime and determined that their lives are going to
| have so much volatility they need a massive amount of money
| to weather the storm.
|
| [1] https://fortune.com/2025/01/20/gen-z-9-5-million-
| financially...
| programjames wrote:
| Shouldn't you expect Zoomers to be more than double
| millenials? They're 20 years younger, which means money is
| 4x cheaper.
| whateveracct wrote:
| > $10MM
|
| Ah, so they are just basing their life decisions on
| falsehoods then? lol
|
| I know the world is different now, but I graduated high
| school in the wake of the 08 financial crisis. A lot of
| this Zoomer doomerism sounds like what people said about
| millennials.
|
| But I (and my future wife) just went to a state school with
| in-state tuition. Got tech/eng degrees with some debt (5
| figures). Have worked in the industry with ups and downs
| (including layoffs) for a decade or so now. Paid that debt
| off. Lived in a high CoL city in a nice apartment. Got a
| nice house after 5y of saving (but not being super frugal,
| just savvy I'd say. e.g. drove the same 08 Civic the whole
| time). And now we have a baby and only one of us works at
| all (and the other WFHs).
|
| We didn't get giant donations from our parents (although
| some reasonable college savings helped, which I am
| repeating for my kid). Didn't go to prestigious fancy
| schools. Didn't even exceptionally excel in school.
|
| But the key was to not throw our hands up and say the
| system is fucked. It's waxed and waned since that 08
| crisis, and not participating is the main way to have lost.
| So yeah, thinking insanely wrong stuff like you need 10 mil
| to succeed is just stupid and self sabotaging haha.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I don't know. If you're definition of success is owning a
| home and having a family, it gets close.
|
| you need to clear 1-2m for that house by itself in any
| mid-high COL area right now.You need another 1-2m in 18
| years to take care of your kids (they can live on less,
| but is that "successful"?). In 20 years we're already
| talking about 3-4m dollars before we even dive into the
| other bills and emergencies to address.
|
| We have to remember that "financially successful" isn't
| some precise term. Some may treat "able to eat food and
| keep a roof over head" as successful, where others may
| see "can raise a healthy family" as so.
| tredre3 wrote:
| The 10MM figure might be a falsehood, but I think that
| you're falling for the same thing previous generations
| have fallen for: Assume that because it worked out for
| you, it will work out the same for the current
| generation.
|
| I'm not sure that it's an accurate view of reality this
| time. And to be clear I'm older than you, so this isn't
| me being a doomer and throwing my hands in the air about
| my own future. This is me noticing that if I myself can't
| afford a house in my city, how is the younger generation
| supposed to do it? They simply can't, not after only 5yrs
| of savings at least. Not even if they cut down on avocado
| toasts.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yeah, after doing the numbers, 5M makes sense for my
| generation. But of course it depends on what "financially
| successful" means. This isn't defined in this piece, so I
| defined it as "can myself for a career, save for
| retirement, and pay off any emergencies". My current yearly
| expenditures are $60k or so, so if I give a 50% buffer for
| taxes, savings, and emergencies funds, then take that over
| a career of 40 years... 3.6m dollars.
|
| And to be fair, my expenditures are very small compared to
| most others. No loans, no major medical issues, single
| person living alone. Having a family easily triples this
| number and we get right on that 10m figure.
|
| The incomes are still wonky, though. I don't know how
| financial success is double, but income demands are
| tripled.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Better said: people are lazy and would rather the quick buck
| than hard work
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I think we have to caveat that we're all speculating here. I
| would assume there are studies of habitual gamblers, but since
| it was only nationally legalized a few years ago, there likely
| isn't a lot of recent research on regular people who weren't
| specifically seeking it out in the past.
|
| But just to say, having been a sports fan my entire life, as
| well as growing up with a grandmother that lived in Vegas, I
| bet a tiny bit myself but knew quite a few who bet a lot more,
| and it wasn't really like you're saying. Nobody expected to get
| rich. Hitting it big enough to make a meaningful impact on
| lifetime wealth requires parlays that are statistically just as
| unlikely as the actual lottery, at which point you may as well
| simply play the lottery, which was already available.
|
| Instead, sports bettors seemed to come in a few varieties. One
| is the analytically minded fans who just wanted to see if they
| could make some amount of predictable extra income. I fell into
| that category back in college and grad school and did
| consistently earn money, but a very small amount, in the four
| figures a year, less than you'd get working part-time at
| McDonald's. Another is the casual fan who just finds the games
| more entertaining if they have a personal stake. These are the
| kinds of people who participate in office super bowl pools and
| it's pretty innocuous.
|
| The problems start to happen when people from either of these
| groups has some kind of unforeseen financial problem, no other
| way to get money quickly, and figures they'll try something
| like throwing a bunch of money into a boxing match they think
| they can predict. Not get rich levels, but something like
| betting enough to hit a 50 grand payoff. It becomes a problem
| because one of two things happens. You succeed, but then you
| can't acknowledge the role of sheer luck, think you're smarter
| than you really are and can predict the future, and you keep
| doing it. Otherwise, you lose, but can't let it go and chase
| your losses to try and recoup them. Either way, you end up
| losing. The only way to win is get very lucky and then have the
| discipline to immediately quit, which almost no one has.
|
| But realistically, people have bet on sports as long as sports
| have existed, in every civilization we have a record of. It's
| hard to say it's reflective of any kind of specific social
| condition. It's a natural thing to do. Most bets are small and
| effectively just people throwing away money on a pointless
| purchase no more harmful than buying junk on Amazon they don't
| really need and will never use. It's becoming a problem because
| legalizing it gave the sports leagues and broadcasters
| themselves a financial incentive to market it. Every game and
| every analysis now includes ads and the pundits themselves
| giving their picks, making it appear to be an important part of
| being a fan than everyone should do. They took something that
| could have mostly been harmless and industrialized it. A whole
| lot of people who easily get addicted to anything addictive are
| now specifically getting addicted to this, simply because they
| can. It's problematic in exactly the same way alcohol sales
| are. The marketing industrial complex is making it seem like
| you're not a full human if you're not doing it, but if everyone
| is doing it, then the addicts are going to be doing it, too. At
| a small enough scale, it's still destroying a few lives, but
| it's like hoarding, rare and most people vaguely know it's out
| there somewhere but never think about it. If the most popular
| entertainers in the world, emblems of civic pride and identity,
| started running ads and on-air segments telling you that you
| should hoard and exactly how to do it, then we'd have a much
| larger scale problem.
|
| The problem we have as a country, though, is the court logic
| legalizing it couldn't have realistically been different. There
| is no sane way to justify having it be legal in Nevada but
| nowhere else. It _should_ be legal nowhere, but then you 're
| banning Las Vegas, and even if that's the right thing to do, we
| don't have a ton of precedent for doing that much harm to
| corporate bottom lines. It took 50 years of incontrovertible
| evidence to do it to tobacco. It'll probably happen eventually,
| but in the same way. We won't outright ban betting, but it will
| be heavily marketed against, socially stigmatized, and banned
| from advertising.
| AfterHIA wrote:
| Bingo!
|
| Pun intended.
| spike021 wrote:
| It's become very toxic in baseball. just google "baseball
| player", "threats", and "gambling" and you'll see what I mean.
|
| edit for examples:
|
| * https://www.newsweek.com/sports/mlb/red-sox-pitcher-confront...
|
| * https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giants/article/mlb-threat...
| Balgair wrote:
| NCAA women's sports too.
|
| These young women don't have the money to hire security and are
| especially vulnerable as a result
| RataNova wrote:
| Honestly, it's starting to look more like social media 2.0...
| like built on engagement, dressed up as entertainment, and slowly
| warping how people relate to something that used to just be...
| fun
| ksec wrote:
| Interesting, Horse Racing and Football in UK doesn't seems to
| have that effect at all. I wonder why is it specifically US?
| arlattimore wrote:
| Wow, took them a while.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I'm happy to hear that. By my (short) experience working for this
| industry, some companies seem to forget they're a legitimate
| business now.
| gverrilla wrote:
| The USA is gambling it all away. Dangerous and dumb.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| China just straight banned it. Not a terrible idea IMO
| elliotto wrote:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tHiB8jLocbPLagYDZ/the-online...
|
| This less wrong piece by a libertarian who examines the numbers
| and struggles to reconcile them with his beliefs is one of the
| best indictments on sports betting.
|
| There is a small proportion of the population who cannot handle
| this. And they become prey to the predators in the sports betting
| industry. These guys make money off destroying their lives.
| eep_social wrote:
| Good read, thanks! I was surprised that the author brushed by
| restrictions around marketing while concluding that limited
| access would be an improvement. The normalization of betting
| and odds via inclusion in broadcasts, celebrity endorsements,
| etc strikes me as a narrow precursor to harm that would be
| relatively easy to target and puts the onus and focus on the
| providers to find a sustainable business model.
| rf15 wrote:
| I wonder when they see legal betting on a company's future
| success as a bad thing for society. For now one can only dream,
| unfortunetaly.
| walthamstow wrote:
| What I find most sad about this is the symbiosis between the USA
| and the UK and how corporations (or politicians) in each one will
| look to see the most profitable (or divisive) in the other and
| copy it.
|
| This is how the US ended up with rampant sports
| gambling/advertising, something the UK has had most of this
| century. It's also how we ended up with voter ID in the UK
| despite having near-zero problems with voter impersonation.
| bentt wrote:
| Sports gambling is perverting sports. When ESPN has special
| segments on good bets you know we have lost our way.
| Throaway152 wrote:
| What I'd like to know is why did legalizing sports betting =
| complete change of the sports media landscape? Like the question
| asked doesn't seem to be around how sports betting has been
| integrated. it's just "is sports betting good or should we ban
| it."
|
| Im fine with sports betting, what Im not fine with is my hockey
| games being saturated with ads, odds, and commentary about
| something that they keep telling us is tangential and not
| supposed-to-be-taken-seriously!
|
| The whole thing is pathetic and I don't see how it's sustainable.
| There's going to be a Mothers Against Gambling movement or
| something after enough lives get wrecked.
|
| And I'd like to add that most of the people throw the term around
| "lives get wrecked / ruined" flippantly around this, but that's
| exactly what it is. Your life is wrecked, you can't fix it,
| nothing can fix it. If only you never started gambling...
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > What I'd like to know is why did legalizing sports betting
|
| Financial interests.
| swydydct wrote:
| I see adds for these companies all the time on Muni buses. It's
| very frustrating, and I wish the city would be more choosy about
| who they let advertise.
| brikym wrote:
| The system is run so that the corporations are #1 and people
| just there to feed the economy. That's why sports betting is
| allowed. Advertising in public spaces is another thing as
| you've noticed. Those bright electronic billboards are a net
| negative to society but still allowed. Guess who needs
| advertising come election time?
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| Everything is gambling . You are either gambling money or time or
| a combination or both to end up ahead in a particular metric that
| interests you
|
| However gambling time is seen as virtous and to be celebrated,
| whereas gambling money is the devil.
|
| At least if you lose money you can make it back, when you gamble
| time good luck getting back your 4 year studying for a gender
| studies degree.
|
| Also here on HN gambling on a startup which most likely go to 0
| is seen as amazing, whereas betting on the Jacksonville Jaguars
| to win the SuperBowl is seen as bad and to be condamned , even
| though the Jaguars bet is at least an order of magnitude more
| likely to generate profits than the startup one.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| Gambling on aggregators and platforms is bad because you are the
| new kid on the block betting against experts, people with
| enormous computing power and of course win or lose you have to
| give a cut to the aggregator or the platform.
|
| Gambling and betting should be 1v1 , as soon as you introduce a
| pool or an aggregator the wise advice is to stay away if such
| pool or aggregator has more than say a certain amount of bettors
| (100k-1M), because you become the new kid on the block and the
| new kid on the block gets skinned.
|
| Thing is the implication of all the above is that we should stay
| away from every stock market and that would be quite right
| considering how it produces such loopsided outcomes, not unlike
| the gambling platforms or even worse
| tqi wrote:
| It's been fascinating to see how outlets like the NYT (which owns
| The Athletic) have largely given sports gambling companies like
| Kalshi and BetMGM a pass on this, given the amount of pearl
| clutching animosity that typifies rest of their tech coverage.
| Guess sponsoring 90% of all sports related content has it's
| benefits...
| macinjosh wrote:
| You should be able to make a friendly competitive bet with your
| mates or coworkers or even strangers without getting in trouble.
| I am even fine with businesses facilitating this with apps or
| whatever. But I don't think anyone should be able to bet so much
| that it could make it hard for their social financial obligations
| to be met (taxes, rent/mortgage, utility bills, child support,
| etc). Otherwise society ends up having to help feed, house,
| clothe, rehab these people. You are giving people the choice to
| substantially wealth and at worst be saved by the social safety
| net, many people would take that bet.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| It's a tax on dumb people and addicts. It's bad for society
| because it's just draining resources from people who probably
| can't afford to lose them.
| obscurette wrote:
| I've seen gambling destroying more lives than alcohol in my
| lifetime. And I live in the area which is rather on top of the
| world by alcohol consumption per capita.
| deadbabe wrote:
| One day some athlete is gonna get shot in the head by a crazed
| gambler who lost a lot of money on a bet because of them.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I'm not sure why we're talking about sports betting as if the
| "sports" part is relevant. The gambling industry in general is
| the business of selling hope to hopeless people. All of it is
| bad, and as long as we have the states themselves selling
| hundreds of millions of dollars of lottery tickets primarily to
| those living in poverty, this is never going to go away. It
| should not be legal to make money off of other people's
| suffering, which is exactly what this is.
| nekusar wrote:
| I remember when gambling was actually just illegal in most of the
| USA.
|
| In my state, it was the state run lotto that was used to sell the
| idea "Hey we'll take lottery proceeds and fund education with
| it!!!!!". Of course, state-run lottery was legalized, and yes,
| the proceeds did run schools.
|
| The next funding session, they CUT the existing funding to
| schools and had the lottery run the bulk of the funding. They
| naturally never said that part out loud.
|
| And riverboat gambling was a quazi-legal thing. Then casinos were
| legalized. Then normalized gambling everywhere. Even the local
| groceries have state-run lotto vending machines that gobble 20's
| and 50's for a chance to strike it rich, or more likely, get
| poorer.
|
| I prefer when gambling was decriminalized individually, but not
| endorsed for the state or companies to run. I also don't want cop
| squads cracking down on the penny or quarter games in peoples'
| houses.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| I honestly think we had a pretty good middle ground with people
| having to go to Vegas/Reno/AC to gamble. It can be fun, but you
| have to go out of your way to do it. If you have a fun Vegas
| weekend and blow a bunch of money once in a while, that seems
| pretty okay relative to being able to constantly bet on
| anything from your phone.
| christophilus wrote:
| Reminds me of the quote: "Count on Americans to do the right
| thing... after they've exhausted all other options."
| layer8 wrote:
| ...as opposed to illegal sports betting? ;)
| animitronix wrote:
| Should never have been allowed in the first place, but no one
| learns from history
| brikym wrote:
| It's working as intended. Politics is setup to take from plebs
| and transfer to lords.
| basisword wrote:
| The problem isn't gambling. It's America's obsession with excess.
| There are always going to be people that get addicted but most
| people can enjoy it with limited downside if it's regulated
| properly, as it is in lots of other countries that have had
| legalised sports gambling for decades and more. Instead, sports
| in American have made gambling part of the broadcast and almost
| the point of playing the game.
| manchicken wrote:
| I don't think there's anything intrinsically awful about sports
| betting. I do think that the way American corporations have set
| it up, though, has made it a lot more predatory than many fans
| want to admit.
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