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I live in Australia, which has very relaxed gambling laws. I can walk into most pubs/bars in my city and find poker machines for example, as well as a sports/ho
by MRD85 8y ago
I live in Australia, which has very relaxed gambling laws. I can walk into most pubs/bars in my city and find poker machines for example, as well as a sports/horse betting facility.
There are huge social consequences to gambling. If you look at an entire society you have some people that will have problems with it and some people that won't. You may fall into the "won't" pile but surely society benefits if we prevent a large number of our members from falling prey to addiction.
- seibelj 8y agoI live in the USA, which has very relaxed alcohol laws. I can walk into most pubs/bars in my city and find people getting extremely drunk for example, as well as a retail liquor facilities. There are huge social consequences to drinking. If you look at an entire society you have some people that will have problems with it and some people that won't. You may fall into the "won't" pile but surely society benefits if we prevent a large number of our members from falling prey to addiction.
- jamespo 8y agoNot sure if pro or anti
- Phlarp 8y agoExcellent. Do gun laws next!
- gamblor956 8y agoWe have anti-drunkenness laws in the US to deal with people who drink to much. AFAIK, no such laws exist with respect to gambling.
- nikisweeting 8y agoThat's not entirely true, most international gaming businesses follow strict anti-gambling-addiction regulations like using self exclusion databases, implementing daily limits, and doing pre-emptive problem gambling detection. Allowing problem gamblers to blow all their money hurts the whole industry because then they go broke and don't have any more money to gamble with. The industry has started to recognize that in the last 5-10 years and many measures have started to be implemented to catch problem gamblers and restrict them before they lose all their money.
- Broken_Hippo 8y agoUm... not really. Anyone that wants to get drunk and stay drunk buys a large thing of vodka for a cheap price and goes home. Buy 2 on saturday if your state doesn't sell on Sunday. If you restrict it much more than that there is an easy black market. Most of the laws don't really deal with people that drink too much. Bars might need to stop serving if someone is inebriated enough. There might be public intox laws, which occasionally get folks arrested for walking home instead of driving. Drunk driving laws, because it is bad And sometimes there are limits to hours and things. None of these things deter anyone determined and I'm guessing more than one of them catch more folks that don't have a big problem than the ones that do.
- leetcrew 8y ago> surely society benefits if we prevent a large number of our members from falling prey to addiction. how does society benefit from prohibiting people from doing things that only hurt themselves?
- tkxxx7 8y agowhat do you mean by this? those people are a part of society too..
- bjelkeman-again 8y agoBut many people are part of a family or a group of people in some way, and gambling, alcohol, drugs “that only hurt themselves” tend to also hurt other people. If we are going to be liberal, we also need to ensure society as a whole isn’t damaged in the process. War on drugs, as an example, have more or less destroyed other countries. Legalised drugs are probably better, but could be taxed and those with problems should be treated as they have a sickness. Gambling could be state run and be handled the same way.
- jandrese 8y agoThe problem is when they have dependents. As a society we have decided that it is a bridge too far to make people pass a test before they can procreate/own pets/etc... so we have to make sure that most of them will be able to maintain their responsibility via lots of bans and regulations.
- leetcrew 8y agoif dependents are the issue, why not only make it illegal for people who claim dependents on their tax return? or better yet, just make it illegal to neglect your dependents. I don't have any dependents myself. why do you care if I spend all my money?
- jandrese 8y agoThe tax thing doesn't make any sense at all so I'll ignore it. Making it illegal to neglect your dependents is already codified into law in a couple of places, like alimony, but a general purpose law runs into the problem of defining neglect and enforcing it. It's the sort of thing that is a total mess in the courts with an endless parade of he-said she-said cases.