[HN Gopher] Addiction Markets
___________________________________________________________________
Addiction Markets
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 101 points
Date : 2025-10-31 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thebignewsletter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thebignewsletter.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Coffeezilla: Exposing the Gambling Epidemic_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45773049 - October 2025
| Hasz wrote:
| Great video. The convergence between traditional stock market
| finance and casino gambling is going to seriously scar a
| generation.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Who do you think was buying options 30 years ago?
| Institutional demand, particularly for non-OTC options, was
| zero. Countries which have legalized gambling tend not to
| have large options markets.
|
| There is no convergence. They have always been the same
| thing. The difference is that you can provide a venue where
| harm is reduced or one where harm is maximised.
| hollerith wrote:
| Options markets help farmers and miners decide how much to
| invest in future production. Ditto the consumer of a
| commodity faced with an investment decision where the
| success of the investment depends on continued access to
| the commodity.
| malfist wrote:
| Are you thinking of the futures market? That's different
| than options
| Hasz wrote:
| Wasn't around to personally witness it, but I do not
| believe the first part is true:
|
| https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1990/9015/901507.PDF,
| specifically page 94.
|
| Also, IMO there is a big difference between an open market
| that allows for price discovery and free trading versus
| placing bets against the same casino at predetermined
| prices.
| thrill wrote:
| "Take athletics. Americans love sports, and that cultural
| centerpiece is being corrupted in an orgy of greed and
| speculative ferver."
|
| Professional (and collegiate) athletics has always been corrupt -
| now it's just more visible.
|
| The only thing needing abolishing is the advertising of gambling.
| InfiniteRand wrote:
| Say it ain't so Joe
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > A quarter of bettors can't pay a bill because of their wagers,
| a third have gambling debts, more than half carry credit card
| debts, and a quarter of them are afraid they can't control their
| gambling.
|
| No way. It's almost like these are addictive products being
| engineered to be as addictive as possible and deliberately punch
| people's brains in such a way to make them stay. That's so weird.
| supportengineer wrote:
| >> addictive products being engineered to be as addictive as
| possible and deliberately punch people's brains in such a way
| to make them stay
|
| The exact same argument could be used to make social media
| illegal.
| cyberax wrote:
| You're saying it as if it's a bad thing.
|
| Limiting social media to be only used for communication, and
| not algorithms is a good thing.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Fuck yeah let's do it.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Hopefully, the responses to this have highlighted the kind of
| people you are dealing with.
|
| No-one can use social media because some people in our
| society can't control themselves. Socialise the losses.
| immibis wrote:
| ...Good?
| daft_pink wrote:
| Should be abolished, but please leave the prediction markets and
| just limit participation to a small number.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| I am really tired of the lazy argument style of using "corporate"
| as a synonym for "bad". I too think it's bad to encourage
| addictive gamblers. I don't care if it is corporate, individual,
| or state run.
| brettgriffin wrote:
| The problem isn't the 70M people who placed bets, its the ~25M
| with broken risk aversion.
|
| These are mostly men, and a very specific type of men. You can
| try to curtail their access to gambling but we're missing the
| underlying problem.
| palmotea wrote:
| > These are mostly men, and a very specific type of men. You
| can try to curtail their access to gambling but we're missing
| the underlying problem.
|
| You should address that too, but gambling is frankly a
| parasitic business meant to exploit such people, and we should
| not let the perfect be the enemy of the good by avoiding the
| re-abolishment of such a pernicious industry.
| hollerith wrote:
| Well, sure, but it is unlikely that we can fix the underlying
| problem: the science of psychology is not advanced enough.
| michaelt wrote:
| Has society ever addressed an underlying psychological problem
| successfully?
|
| Because when it comes to the underlying psychological causes of
| homelessness and drug addiction and school shootings and
| violent extremism my impression is we don't really do much.
| brettgriffin wrote:
| I'm an optimist at heart, but this subject is dear to me, and
| my opinion may seem pessimistic: the short answer is, no, it
| cannot be fixed at any large scale, at least not in a
| lifetime.
| squigz wrote:
| Large-scale societal change requires generations of work,
| indeed. That may be disheartening, but it is the way it is,
| and we should continue to work toward those changes.
| fairmind wrote:
| Anti-Smoking, especially in teenagers, seems to have been
| successful.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Do all of these occur with equal proportion in every
| country/culture?
|
| I am not sure what you are saying with homelessness...it
| isn't some massive baffling issue, someone who doesn't have a
| house, needs a house so build a house? School shootings...I
| don't understand how anyone can believe this is normal?
|
| The US has fairly obvious social problems, these essentially
| inhibit the functional resolution of most of these problems
| you list. However, gambling is not like this, the solution to
| problem gambling is (obviously) regulating gambling so that
| it is possible for the government to control people's
| behaviour. Simple.
|
| Homelessness? Build houses. Drug addiction? Get people clean,
| harsh sentences for dealing. School shootings? No guns.
| Violent extremism? Jail. These aren't real problems. Most of
| the world does not have issues with this stuff (I will accept
| through drug usage in the US appears to be so ingrained in
| culture, that it would never be possible for anyone to do
| anything to fix it...the solutions are known however). It is
| only over the last ten years or so where government has
| appeared totally unable to do anything because of paralyzing
| social discord.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| sure, and that should be addressed. But in the meantime, we
| shouldn't be making it easier for them to engage in that
| behavior and we shouldn't be making it easier for people to
| encounter industrialized gambling for the first time who would
| otherwise find the process too laborious to seek out on a whim.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| These gambling businesses specifically target that 25M. You
| absolutely can make that much harder for businesses to do, and
| it will significantly reduce downstream misery.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This is the logic behind the war on drugs and we all saw how
| that turned out. Obviously there's nuance to be had as I
| think some vices, in both type and magnitude, are worse/more
| destructive than others. But crusades against vice rarely
| turn out well. Instead you'll see the same people huddled
| around in underground betting rooms and backroom card game
| tables where organized crime or just other muscle-for-hire
| are ready to break your knees for not paying your debt back.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| There has to be more options than just the two you
| reference... not saying it's easy, but we can't just throw
| our hands up.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Yes but this article isn't it.
|
| Using ideologically charged words like "corporate
| gambling" and "neoliberal origins" are fun ways to get
| the moral outrage going of market skeptics but they don't
| lead to good policy.
|
| The boring answer is you need to look at how the owner of
| these instruments (since that's what most of these are)
| are making money. In the same way that a regulated
| exchange makes sure you're not dumping garbage onto order
| books, you need to make sure that the bets are fair and
| that there's generally positive EV. Prediction markets
| are a good example of this that isn't predatory but
| sports books are. Unfortunately this article, as is usual
| for most of the moral outrage genre, doesn't make this
| distinction.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| I believe there are studies which show men are more likely to
| have problems with sports betting, but women are with slot
| machines. My anecdotal evidence (and it's bordering on
| statistically significant...) is that these studies are
| correct.
| ivape wrote:
| Imagine waking up every day and looking at your HN karma and
| feeling one way or another about it. Imagine that being the
| basis of your ego. That's the world we've taught people to
| adapt to. Self-worth tied to abstract points on social media
| platforms. We've rewired people, often young ones, with
| addictions that would not have existed in prior generations.
| rybosworld wrote:
| I don't think you can kill corporate run gambling - people will
| just use some offshore website instead.
|
| It might be something we should treat more like smoking.
|
| - Require a disclosure of the EV of each bet as the user is
| placing it. E.g.: Expected loss $5.
|
| - Ad targeting restrictions.
| pstuart wrote:
| As someone who believes in legalizing all drugs and in general
| "personal freedoms", I'd add recreational drugs to this list.
|
| The demand will always be there but there should be strong
| incentives to _not incentivize_ use (e.g., the Purdue Pharma
| debacle). We 're better served by having these markets
| addressed by legit players rather then criminal cartels.
|
| I'm not sure what the best solution is, but unfettered
| promotion to consume is not the way.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| You can't kill murder; murder will always exist.
|
| Surely, like murder, and other negative outcome behaviors, we
| can reduce the occurrences, right?
| cheeze wrote:
| Yeah. Just like we do for smoking. I don't think I get your
| point. Are you agreeing with the prior commenter?
| rafale wrote:
| Gamblers know the odds are stacked against them yet they end up
| stuck in a psychological prison within their own brain that
| they can't escape from even if they realize what they do is
| harmful.
|
| Maybe a better law: check id, you are not allowed to take from
| any gambler more than 10 bets a year and no bet can be over 1k.
|
| For big gamblers, we can have "qualified gamblers" rules like
| we do for qualified investors.
|
| Funny how we don't let average people invest in some stuff but
| we let them gamble.
|
| For offshore gambling pursue them aggressively if they serve US
| clients.
| no_wizard wrote:
| >For big gamblers, we can have "qualified gamblers" rules
| like we do for qualified investors.
|
| This is actually a take I haven't seen elsewhere. Yes, we do
| protect investors at least marginally better (lots of people
| still get fleeced with little recourse, unfortunately) but
| conceptually, this is a very interesting idea.
|
| The fact that gambling exists on a loophole of being "for
| entertainment purposes only"[0] isn't a good enough
| distinction to me.
|
| [0]: This is a brief one sentence summary of it. There's
| actually a bit of nuance involved depending on a number of
| factors, but essentially the core presume rests on some
| version of this.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| His take isn't new. It is deployed in part in the UK.
| Effectively, gambling companies adopt the role of the state
| conducting a full audit into your personal circumstances,
| income, assets, bank statement, utility bills to work out
| whether you can gamble.
|
| I would hope that I don't need to explain why this isn't a
| good idea. But the one you may not have thought of:
| gambling companies love this because small companies are
| unable to audit, margins in the sector collapsed when
| activity moved online, that has stopped AND they are able
| to target customers who they don't want to deal with,
| before these rules it was difficult to identify customers
| who would take their money, now they have your passport,
| your address, your bank statements, they know where your
| money comes from (professional gamblers can still use
| beards but in the UK, students used to be very popular
| beards...that has stopped, regulators have also brought in
| rules to prevent beards being used as part of the changes
| above...the "neoliberal" US doesn't have rules anywhere
| close to this, it is complete madness).
| no_wizard wrote:
| There's a difference here between the concept and
| implementation though.
|
| I agree, giving up _that much_ information to a third
| party, opens too many risks for me, and I don 't want it
| to be standard.
|
| However, I'm sure there is some middle ground here that
| isn't so violating to your privacy. Like mentioned
| before, having a default limit that can only be surpassed
| if you're willing to go through some form of
| qualification. The limit can be set in place without any
| audit required, if its low enough.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Gamblers know the odds are stacked against them and still
| gamble...because it is fun.
|
| You realise that people waste their money on things that are
| significantly less understandable than gambling. Do you see
| someone driving a Ferrari and seethe with rage because
| Ferrari doesn't run a "qualified driver" program?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Why go through all this effort just to enable an industry
| that does nothing but take a profit off of random chance?
|
| Just fucking ban it.
|
| Decriminalize low value bets between average people maybe but
| there's zero reason we need a gambling industry.
|
| It is impossible for this industry to behave. Just kill it.
|
| Your average Fent dealer isn't this predatory FFS
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > I don't think you can kill corporate run gambling - people
| will just use some offshore website instead.
|
| You can block it at payment rails. The reasonable amount of
| avoidance of controls around gambling laws is not zero [1].
| You're making it hard for all but the most determined, who are
| free to lose it all.
|
| [1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-
| fra... (Control-F "This extends beyond payments") Broadly
| speaking, we are not "solving" gambling with these ideas; we
| are, as a society and sociopolitical economic system, pulling
| levers to arrive at the intersection of harm reduction and
| rights impairment. Some gambling, but only so much, for most
| but not all.
|
| (work in finance, risk management, fintech/payments, etc)
| TSiege wrote:
| This is a problem that literally had minimal societal
| consequences just a few years ago before the 2018 supreme court
| ruling[1]. I don't see why we shouldn't just try to move the
| laws back to how things were in 2017.
|
| Source 1:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy_v._National_Collegiate_...
| paxys wrote:
| > people will just use some offshore website instead
|
| No they won't, because moving real money to and from these
| shady offshore websites is a nightmare, and without enforcement
| there will be too much fraud in the system for the vast
| majority of regular people to bother.
|
| Gambling is so prevalent today because 1) there is incessant
| advertising, including being overlaid on the game you are
| watching and 2) it is convenient, taking like 3 clicks and
| under a minute to go from scratch to placing bets. You can even
| use Apple Pay. Take away either of these and participation
| rates will plummet.
|
| You don't even need to speculate, just look at the numbers.
| There were countless illegal and gray market gambling options
| available a decade ago, both online and in-person. How many
| people were participating back then? I personally didn't know
| anyone who bet on games outside of maybe the occasional trip to
| Vegas, and that too was just for the novelty of it. Today >50%
| of adults in the US are regularly betting online, and the
| number is growing every year.
| vhcr wrote:
| This is not a hypothetical, people already do it like that in
| my country (Argentina), you send your money to a person that
| buys tokens using cryptocoins, since these websites don't
| comply with the local regulation, even kids are addicted to
| gambling.
| Vaslo wrote:
| People buy illegal stuff and dark markets all the time. Even
| a decade ago I knew a guy who was buying dope and having it
| mailed to him from the dark web and he was minimally
| technical. They know there is a risk but they are willing to
| take it. This isn't like buying a lawn motor - people will
| take some fraud as "acceptable losses".
| paxys wrote:
| We are not talking about one person. Yes everyone "knows a
| guy" who will find ways of doing stuff regardless of the
| laws or availability. We don't need to care about that
| person. However if half of America is becoming that person
| then we absolutely need to care.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| You're fighting anecdote with anecdote. Earlier you say
| back in the gray market days you knew nobody gambling in
| your circle. Now you're saying the other commenter's "one
| person" isn't representative. You can't have it both
| ways. Either both anecdotes need more data to support
| them or neither do.
| crystal_revenge wrote:
| Even in your comment you can see the challenge with education
| and gambling. In practice the return on a dollar (just a
| different formulation of EV) is often legally mandated to be
| something around 0.9 and for many games is very close to fair.
|
| But _variance_ , not expectation, is where casinos get their
| edge. The "Gambler's ruin"[0] demonstrates that even in a fair
| game the Casino will win due to their effectively infinite
| bankroll compared to the player.
|
| You can also simulate this yourself in code: have multiple
| players with small bankrolls play a game with _positive_ EV but
| very high variance. You'll find that the majority of players
| still lose all their money to the casino.
|
| You can also see this intuitively: Imagine a game with a 1 in a
| million chance to win 2 million dollars, but each player only
| has a $10 bankroll. You can easily see that a thousand people
| could play this game and the house would still come out ahead
| despite the EV being very much in the players favor.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_ruin
| cogman10 wrote:
| I'd ban all advertisement and put a market cap on these
| companies before mandatory breakups happens.
|
| None of these companies should be worth a billion dollars.
|
| My big fear is these companies are all getting rich which means
| they'll be able to buy political influence.
|
| I'm pretty tolerant of a lot of vices. I also don't really have
| a problem with low levels of gambling. But the way these
| companies are setup is just sick. It's abusive the the public
| and erosive to society in general.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| If that were the case then the SCOTUS decision legalizing it
| nationwide would not have been as impactful as it was.
| gcanyon wrote:
| This line from the ads always strikes me as darkly ironic:
|
| > if you need help making responsible choices, call...
|
| Like, the only "responsible" choice is not to gamble online. What
| do they even think we're supposed to take away from that line of
| the commercial?
| savanaly wrote:
| > the only "responsible" choice is not to gamble online
|
| I don't gamble at all in any form, but I still firmly disagree.
| Some people enjoy gambling in a way that never hurts them--
| I've known countless friends and coworkers who talk about doing
| a bit of it in Vegas or what have you. You're saying every last
| one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from
| me? They know they're not going net positive on the experience,
| usually lose some money, and get some entertainment.
|
| There's a saying about this: abusers give vice a bad name.
| People should be free to gamble if they want to, and certain
| checks should be put in place for people who choose to gamble
| so much it is ruinous to themselves.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| You can't let society keep inventing new vices for profit in
| an uninhibited way.
|
| It feels like a bell curve topic, where the most naive people
| think you should just ban all vices and have a strictly
| better world, the middle of the road thinks it's all down to
| personal fortitude, and then people who know how the sausage
| is made realize the level of asymmetry that exists.
|
| Weed isn't just weed anymore, it's fruity pebbles flavored.
|
| Porn isn't just porn anymore, it tries to talk like a person
| and build a parasocial relationship.
|
| Video games aren't just video games anymore, they start
| embedding gambling mechanics and spending 2 years designing
| the "End of Match" screen in a way that funnels you into the
| next game or lootbox pull.
|
| You need to stop somewhere. Tech + profit motives create an
| asymmetric war for people's attention and money that results
| in new forms of old vices that are superficially the same,
| but realistically much much worse.
|
| Gambling specifically online might just be giving tech
| companies too many knobs that are too easy to tune under the
| umbrella of engagement and retention.
| snuxoll wrote:
| > You can't let society keep inventing new vices for profit
| in an uninhibited way.
|
| I agree, but:
|
| > It feels like a bell curve topic, where the most naive
| people think you should just ban all vices and have a
| strictly better world, the middle of the road thinks it's
| all down to personal fortitude, and then people who know
| how the sausage is made realize the level of asymmetry that
| exists.
|
| There's a wide gap in beliefs of the people who "know how
| the sausage is made" which is why I'm guessing you didn't
| ascribe a certain view to them.
|
| Realistically, I think it breaks down into three camps:
|
| 1. They agree with the other end of the curve, and think
| the potential harm is too great.
|
| 2. They're in on profiting from it.
|
| 3. They are open to people being free to make decisions,
| but think there needs to be regulations on outright
| predatory behavior and active enforcement of them
|
| I don't have a problem with anybody choosing to _safely_
| engage with recreational drugs, pornography, gambling,
| alcohol, and a number of other vices - humans have sought
| these activities out for an extremely long time, and
| outright banning them simply (as we have seen time and time
| again) leads to unregulated black markets that are more
| harmful to society as a whole. But it feels like we 've
| done a complete 180 and now we have barely _any_ regulation
| where it 's needed, late-stage capitalism at its finest.
|
| So many states have put ID verification laws out for
| accessing pornography, exposing citizens to huge privacy
| risks in the process, but we've got casino empires draining
| their savings accounts and can't do anything about it?
| Please.
| snuxoll wrote:
| The problem is this: the house always wins. Casinos, online
| sports books, the lottery, all of it is designed such that
| all but quite literally a lucky few will lose money. If you
| understand this properly, then, yes, there's absolutely
| nothing wrong with it being a form of _entertainment_ , but
| that means you need to go in thinking about cost per hour
| instead of any notion of leaving with more than you began
| with.
|
| This is why I have a _huge_ problem with the recent
| development of online gambling outlets that you can access
| via your smartphone. In the past you had to _go_ somewhere to
| gamble, it was a physical act that provided a barrier to
| entry. Now? You don 't even need to think about it, your bank
| account is already linked, just spend away!
|
| Personally, I'd rather states loosen laws and allow physical
| casinos be built and properly regulated than be in the
| current situation we have with these poorly regulated online
| money-siphons.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| These services make a relatively smaller piece of their
| profit from "responsible" people with a lot of self-control.
| In many cases, the business is probably not viable without
| problem gamblers. Problem gamblers account for anywhere from
| 51% of revenue for sports betting apps, to 90% in the case of
| casinos [1,2] and the numbers seem to be getting worse.
|
| [1] https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/DMHAS/Publications/2023-CT-
| FIN... [2] https://www.umass.edu/seigma/media/583/download
| savanaly wrote:
| I can readily believe that to be true, but my point still
| stands, the person I'm replying to made a really sweeping
| and incorrect statement.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| You don't think it's ethically and morally questionable
| to frequent a business that knowingly harms the majority
| of its customers?
|
| I agree there's a some sort of gray area here, but it
| feels awfully narrow... especially with the recent sports
| betting companies.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| "some gray area" is an understatement.
|
| Sports betting companies structure their odds and order
| books to disadvantage most bettors. There are plenty of
| markets where that isn't the case.
| savanaly wrote:
| I feel like the goalposts have been shifted massively in
| this conversation. The original sentiment was "there's no
| way to responsibly gamble online", and that's all I was
| ever responding to.
| kulahan wrote:
| Whales provide the most value? You don't say.
| gcanyon wrote:
| It's not whales, it's compulsives. The stories are
| horrific. People have moved to non-gambling states, and
| the casinos send them nice letters saying, "We miss you!
| Here's a coupon for a free flight to our state, you don't
| even have to promise you'll gamble, just come and have a
| steak dinner in us"
| strgcmc wrote:
| I got curious and validated your source [1], to pull the
| exact quote:
|
| "The proportion of Connecticut gambling revenue from the
| 1.8% of people with gambling problems ranges from 12.4% for
| lottery products to 51.0% for sports betting, and is 21.5%
| for all legalized gambling."
|
| Without going into details, I do have some ability to check
| if these numbers actually "make sense" against real
| operator data. Will try to sense-check if the data I have
| access to, roughly aligns with this or not.
|
| - the "1.8% of people" being problem gamblers does seem
| roughly correct, per my own experience
|
| - but those same 1.8% being responsible for 51% of
| sportsbook revenue, does not align with my intuition (which
| could be wrong! hence why I want to check further...)
|
| - it is absolutely true that sportsbooks have
| whales/VIPs/whatever-you-call-them, and the general
| business model is indeed one of those shapes where <10% of
| the customers account for >50% of the revenue (using very
| round imprecise numbers), but I still don't think you can
| attribute 51% to purely the "problem gamblers" (unless
| you're using a non-standard definition of problem-gambler
| maybe?)
| rsync wrote:
| Bob and Alice and the eavesdropper is Eve ...
|
| What name do we give "the guy who says it's fine to tear down
| Chestertons fence" ?
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Ah yes, let's blame it all on the weak-willed addicts... That
| hasn't been tried before, and would certainly help.
| gcanyon wrote:
| >every one is a degenerate
|
| Not at all. First, yes, people should be free to make their
| own choices. But that means making _free_ choices. Just as we
| don't allow advertising for cigarettes, we shouldn't allow
| advertising for gambling.
|
| Second, there's a world of difference between "hey, let's go
| have a crazy weekend in Vegas" and "I have a blackjack dealer
| live on my phone 24x7."
| turtletontine wrote:
| We're not supposed to take anything from it, it's a simple
| legal liability thing. (And maybe actually mandated by law?)
| It's like mandatory workplace trainings: they do almost nothing
| to prevent people from acting badly, but they let employers say
| "look we told our employers not to do this!!! it's not our
| fault they did it anyway!!"
|
| (More apt comparison is obviously alcohol commercials saying
| "please drink responsibly")
| mrguyorama wrote:
| They are legally required to include that. They don't actually
| care.
|
| Casinos and gambling institutions absolutely and purposely
| optimize to attract and capture more problem gamblers.
|
| The evolution of digital slots is a great example of this. An
| average person could have a little fun with an old fashioned
| basic slot machine, but the modern ones are so aggressively
| optimized to trigger addiction and keep addicts going that if
| you aren't vulnerable, they are massively offputting.
|
| But they don't care, they don't have any desire to serve
| "Normal" people, and trying to make gambling more fun for
| people who aren't vulnerable to gambling addiction isn't
| something they do.
|
| Because nearly all profit comes from addicts.
| mberning wrote:
| I don't have an overly paternalistic view of the government. I'm
| rather libertarian in that regard. But is it too much to ask that
| we place some guardrails on things that are know to have trouble
| with? Smoking, drinking, gambling, etc.
|
| I certainly feel that people should be able to do it if they
| really want to, but making it super accessible and highly
| advertised seems like a bad idea.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| Agreed. Aside from actions that harm others (like theft,
| murder, etc.) the government shouldn't be policing what
| individuals do. But it should absolutely protect the citizenry
| from malicious businesses whether it be praying on addictions
| like gambling and smoking, data privacy, polluting communities,
| and any other antisocial behaviors that harm the people.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Very contradictory statement.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| How so?
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| There are guardrails. Gambling is legalised to introduce
| guardrails so that regulated providers can exist and provide a
| product that stops people using offshore.
|
| Neither accessibility or advertising impacts rates of
| addiction. It is a real addiction. Does a lack of advertising
| stop heroin use? Behave.
| cal_dent wrote:
| There has recently been many looks at the epidemic in gambling.
| Wonder how all of the focus seem to happen at the same time
|
| Off the top of my head:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-31/great-bri...
|
| https://kyla.substack.com/p/gamblemerica-how-sports-betting-...
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/e80df917-2af7-4a37-b9af-55d23f941...
|
| https://www.dopaminemarkets.com/p/the-lottery-fication-of-ev...
|
| https://www.investors.com/news/investing-gambling-robinhood-...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-premier-league-footb...
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/a39d0a2e-950c-4a54-b339-4784f7892...
| neonnoodle wrote:
| > Wonder how all of the focus seem to happen at the same time
|
| Because this practice was made legal very recently in most
| places in the US and a concomitant advertising boom has
| saturated the media. Before the last few years, your average
| American couldn't bet on sports without visiting a casino
| sports book in person, or having a bookie (i.e., entering into
| a risky relationship with organized crime). TV sports coverage
| now openly refers to how you can use their analysis to make
| bets.
| neaden wrote:
| Also because the NBA is going through a gambling scandal with
| players being involved with the mafia.
| robotnikman wrote:
| This is the first time I heard of this, I decided to look
| up some of the news stories behind it. Maybe I'm nieve, but
| I thought the Sicilian Mafia died out decades a
| nekusar wrote:
| People are also leaving out stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and
| Magic The Gathering.
|
| All of them also introduce rarities (arbitrary exclusiveness),
| hidden cards in a pack, and extreme gambling gamification.
|
| The only non-gambling MtG packs are the preconstructed commander
| decks. All 100 cards are published. But the packs and boxes? Pure
| gambling, especially for the chase rare cards.
|
| And before anyone asks, yes, my username is based after this $2
| card. https://edhrec.com/commanders/nekusar-the-mindrazer
| belkinpower wrote:
| The Pokemon card mania in particular is deeply weird to me. I
| play Magic at a local card shop a few times a month and it's
| always full of people playing Magic, D&D, or various board
| games. I don't think I've seen a single person playing the
| Pokemon card game. So who's buying the valuable singles? What's
| keeping the market afloat? It's bizarre.
| squigz wrote:
| My guess is literally just the people who trade them - and
| maybe like, 10 13 year olds.
| squigz wrote:
| I think there's a massive difference between card packs - which
| have been as you describe for decades - and the recent boom in
| sports betting. Most people don't even know what MTG is, or
| that there's even a market for those cards. Everyone now knows
| that you can bet on any sport you want - and if some reports
| are to be believed, a large percentage of people are
| participating.
|
| Anyway, this is why I play MTG online - same with 40k, although
| there's no gambling there. Just too expensive to play either
| IRL even if I wanted to.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Predictably gets several things wrong.
|
| 1. Gambling is a real addiction. It is quite strange that someone
| using the term "Addiction Markets" fails to understand this.
| People who are gambling addicts were gambling before it was
| legal, they were just getting their legs broken in a way that was
| non-visible to you.
|
| 2. If you ban gambling, the ability of people to gamble online is
| not reduced in any way. None. The US offshore market was the
| biggest sports gambling market in the world before it was
| legalised. Not even close.
|
| 3. I would take a close look at how offshore gambling operators
| work before casting aspersions about onshore. Onshore, providers
| are working with regulators to an extremely significant degree.
| Offshore, sites will advertise that you can gamble on their site
| if you are on an onshore ban list. If onshore providers are so
| terrible, why is this the case?
|
| 4. The attempt to say that lotteries are addictive is just
| nonsense. Generally, there is a very poor understanding of what
| gambling addiction is (again, point 1). Certain games are
| designed to appeal to gambling addicts (again, the most prevalent
| ground for these was...the US...before online gambling was legal,
| biggest market by far, almost all the large companies making
| these games come from the US), those games are harmful. Lottery,
| sports gambling, raffles, DFS, etc. lack all of these properties.
| In particular, providers will often use virtual events (virtual
| horse-racing) to try to mimic the properties of more addictive
| products (with relatively little success)...because the original
| thing is not as appealing to addicts.
|
| 5. It is correct that the UK has "stake limits" (not quite sure
| what the author thinks this...all regulated US providers also
| have these, some states also have deposit acks...which would be
| beyond the UK standard, I would say many US states are ahead of
| the UK) but this is only on certain kinds of machines. The author
| spills a huge amount of words, talks about Trump, talks about the
| 1980s...but doesn't seem to talk about these machines, which are
| more prevalent in the US, at all. The author doesn't say anything
| about the issues in the UK being the same. VIP programs in the UK
| aren't regulated in any way different to the US (providers have
| no market lists). There is one important difference: in the UK,
| the government has given gambling providers that powers to
| perform extensive background checks, they take your income, an
| audit of your assets and then decide whether you can use their
| product...people opposed to gambling never mention this. How does
| that fit with neoliberal? A company being given the same powers
| as regulators?
|
| 6. There is an issue with corruption in the US. There is no
| coincidence that the law on online gambling changed within a few
| months of one of the largest donors blocking this. Both sides
| benefitted from this as the largest Democrat donor in those years
| was the Las Vegas casino workers union. Again, because this
| corruption meant that some kinds of gambling didn't happen...no
| mention. This was, we now know, hundreds of billions in value
| generated by paying politicians hundreds of millions a year...no
| mention.
|
| 7. The author appears to be unaware that DFS existed after UIGEA,
| not "laughable"...just a basic understanding of the sequence of
| events.
|
| 8. Gambling is not inherently addictive. Many things that are
| legal in the US are not only inherently addictive, but are
| inherently harmful. Liberals care about you losing your money
| when you buy a $5 scratch-off, they don't care about you losing
| your mind with mind-bending psychoactive substances.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| On a somewhat related note, there seems to be a huge interest in
| vice policing on social media. Gambling, sex, drugs, these are
| some of humanity's oldest vices. Why has it become so popular on
| social media to highlight these, along with a narrative of social
| or cultural decline?
| fritzo wrote:
| And the fourth oldest vice is gossip, the original social
| media, talking trash while you pick bugs out of your friend's
| hair
| sakopov wrote:
| > Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rattled off crypto buzzwords at
| the end of the Q3 call, resolving $84K in prediction market bets
| to "yes."
|
| https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1984161085780263322
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