4 ms·

If you win a bet, someone else loses one. Losers lose money to bookies, bookies very rarely lose it on to winners. Many people can enjoy responsible gambling. M

If you win a bet, someone else loses one. Losers lose money to bookies, bookies very rarely lose it on to winners. Many people can enjoy responsible gambling. Many people cannot. Therefore, any time you win a bet, you're winning money from someone who can't stop. In my view it's similar ethically to owning tobacco or alcohol stock.

derefr 7y ago
> Many people can enjoy responsible gambling. Many people cannot. Therefore, any time you win a bet, you're winning money from someone who can't stop. Or, to put it another way: any time you win a bet, you (and the bookie) are helping gambling addicts to take one step closer to "hitting bottom" and thus getting on to the first phase of recovery—acknowledging that you have a problem. (This is the complement to the argument that charity for drug addicts is a bad thing, insofar as it delays the addict longer in the self-harming, not-prioritizing-getting-well phase of addiction. In the gambling addict case, charity would be, in effect, "giving them another pile of chips"—obviously a bad idea, no?)
- jtbayly 7y ago
  Definitely not equivalent. Equivalent would be handing the gambler money to buy food when he's gambled away his house and car.
- chongli 7y ago
  Gambling and drug addicts share another unfortunate tendency: they often end up dead. This is the nastiest but most compelling argument in favour of intervention before people hit rock bottom.
malwrar 7y ago
Is this insinuating that winning victimizes gambling addicts? If so, I don’t understand that connection. Gamblers are making a personal choice to bet their money, other gamblers should not be made to bear responsibility if that gambler’s choice turns out to be a poor one. Gambling addicts obviously exist, but they are playing the same game everyone else is. If you want to protect addicts from harming their finances, change the rules to accommodate that goal (betting limits, credit/finance checks, outright banning of gambling) rather than expect other gamblers to follow undefined rules that may or may not protect other gamblers from themselves.
- warent 7y ago
  The problem is that gambling is a zero-sum game. By your logic, the crypto market being played in 2017-2018 was perfectly ethical even though people's life savings were being drained to fill the pockets of other people who were capitalizing on the ignorance of the layperson.
  - malwrar 7y ago
    Are you referring to the sudden boom of the general public dumping their money into cryptocurrency hoping to get rich? Hell, I’ll bite here and assert the same as my parent comment: the folks who dumped their life savings into crypto made a personal choice. I fail to see how the rest of the market bears responsibility to those who lost their “investment”. So long as everyone is playing by the same rules, there’s no way you should be ethically responsible from benefiting from other’s losses. You signed up for the risk when you chose to play. Do you believe that if I dump my money in a stock and it tanks, investors who benefit from that are now responsible for the money I’ve lost?
  - brigandish 7y ago
    Gambling is not zero sum, there's the enjoyment (which is the most important factor for an addict, unfortunately), the percentage the bookie makes, the investment in facilities (shops, communications, race courses etc) that all occur because of an exchange of money.
  - TimTheTinker 7y ago
    There are good arguments that gambling isn't exactly a zero-sum game. (Non-addictive enjoyment, hobby, relaxation, etc.) But you're right in that the vast majority of players in gambling (including the house) are either (a) being fleeced, or (b) fleecing others. When the majority of users/members of a particular system are either victims (in some sense), or profiting off victims, I question the amorality of that system. So traditional morality called gambling "immoral" for good reason, I think -- if only because of this emergent, victimizational behavior it encourages. It seems to me that economic regulation exists primarily to--and functions ideally when it successfully does--protect the vulnerable and prevent victimization. So it seems right and good to me that gambling is outlawed in most of the US.
curious_fella1 7y ago
This is a flawed argument. If you were to never make your bet in the first place, the "person who can't stop gambling" would still be losing their money to the bookie. You're not enabling the bookie taking their money. In fact, if you're winning more than you're losing, you're decreasing the profit of the bookie. You are therefore making it a less worthy venture for them to hold these ethically-negative gambling events. If you were to win enough, the bookie would lose money from the venture, eventually resulting in them no longer hosting gambling events. So actually, winning money off of bookies is an ethically good behavior, since it's negative feedback for them enabling other gamblers with "uncontrollable behavior" to lose their money.
- chongli 7y ago
  In fact, if you're winning more than you're losing, you're decreasing the profit of the bookie Not if it's a parimutuel betting [1] system, as described in the story. The Hong Kong Jockey Club takes a flat 17% cut. The rest is exchanged between winners and losers. This is no different from playing poker at a casino, where the house collects a rake but otherwise the players only win money off one another. Note how in the story, the Jockey Club contacts Benter and offers assistance rather than blacklisting him. If he were decreasing the profit margin of the bookie, as you call it, they would have ample reason to cut him off. In actuality, he was increasing their profits (but not their margin, which remained a flat 17%) simply by increasing betting activity. This is something poker sites have also hit upon, and as a result they've developed sophisticated rewards programs for their top players. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting
  - curious_fella1 7y ago
    Interesting!

derefr 7y ago

> Many people can enjoy responsible gambling. Many people cannot. Therefore, any time you win a bet, you're winning money from someone who can't stop. Or, to put it another way: any time you win a bet, you (and the bookie) are helping gambling addicts to take one step closer to "hitting bottom" and thus getting on to the first phase of recovery—acknowledging that you have a problem. (This is the complement to the argument that charity for drug addicts is a bad thing, insofar as it delays the addict longer in the self-harming, not-prioritizing-getting-well phase of addiction. In the gambling addict case, charity would be, in effect, "giving them another pile of chips"—obviously a bad idea, no?)

jtbayly 7y ago
Definitely not equivalent. Equivalent would be handing the gambler money to buy food when he's gambled away his house and car.
chongli 7y ago
Gambling and drug addicts share another unfortunate tendency: they often end up dead. This is the nastiest but most compelling argument in favour of intervention before people hit rock bottom.

malwrar 7y ago

Is this insinuating that winning victimizes gambling addicts? If so, I don’t understand that connection. Gamblers are making a personal choice to bet their money, other gamblers should not be made to bear responsibility if that gambler’s choice turns out to be a poor one. Gambling addicts obviously exist, but they are playing the same game everyone else is. If you want to protect addicts from harming their finances, change the rules to accommodate that goal (betting limits, credit/finance checks, outright banning of gambling) rather than expect other gamblers to follow undefined rules that may or may not protect other gamblers from themselves.

warent 7y ago
The problem is that gambling is a zero-sum game. By your logic, the crypto market being played in 2017-2018 was perfectly ethical even though people's life savings were being drained to fill the pockets of other people who were capitalizing on the ignorance of the layperson.
- malwrar 7y ago
  Are you referring to the sudden boom of the general public dumping their money into cryptocurrency hoping to get rich? Hell, I’ll bite here and assert the same as my parent comment: the folks who dumped their life savings into crypto made a personal choice. I fail to see how the rest of the market bears responsibility to those who lost their “investment”. So long as everyone is playing by the same rules, there’s no way you should be ethically responsible from benefiting from other’s losses. You signed up for the risk when you chose to play. Do you believe that if I dump my money in a stock and it tanks, investors who benefit from that are now responsible for the money I’ve lost?
- brigandish 7y ago
  Gambling is not zero sum, there's the enjoyment (which is the most important factor for an addict, unfortunately), the percentage the bookie makes, the investment in facilities (shops, communications, race courses etc) that all occur because of an exchange of money.
- TimTheTinker 7y ago
  There are good arguments that gambling isn't exactly a zero-sum game. (Non-addictive enjoyment, hobby, relaxation, etc.) But you're right in that the vast majority of players in gambling (including the house) are either (a) being fleeced, or (b) fleecing others. When the majority of users/members of a particular system are either victims (in some sense), or profiting off victims, I question the amorality of that system. So traditional morality called gambling "immoral" for good reason, I think -- if only because of this emergent, victimizational behavior it encourages. It seems to me that economic regulation exists primarily to--and functions ideally when it successfully does--protect the vulnerable and prevent victimization. So it seems right and good to me that gambling is outlawed in most of the US.

curious_fella1 7y ago

This is a flawed argument. If you were to never make your bet in the first place, the "person who can't stop gambling" would still be losing their money to the bookie. You're not enabling the bookie taking their money. In fact, if you're winning more than you're losing, you're decreasing the profit of the bookie. You are therefore making it a less worthy venture for them to hold these ethically-negative gambling events. If you were to win enough, the bookie would lose money from the venture, eventually resulting in them no longer hosting gambling events. So actually, winning money off of bookies is an ethically good behavior, since it's negative feedback for them enabling other gamblers with "uncontrollable behavior" to lose their money.

chongli 7y ago
In fact, if you're winning more than you're losing, you're decreasing the profit of the bookie Not if it's a parimutuel betting [1] system, as described in the story. The Hong Kong Jockey Club takes a flat 17% cut. The rest is exchanged between winners and losers. This is no different from playing poker at a casino, where the house collects a rake but otherwise the players only win money off one another. Note how in the story, the Jockey Club contacts Benter and offers assistance rather than blacklisting him. If he were decreasing the profit margin of the bookie, as you call it, they would have ample reason to cut him off. In actuality, he was increasing their profits (but not their margin, which remained a flat 17%) simply by increasing betting activity. This is something poker sites have also hit upon, and as a result they've developed sophisticated rewards programs for their top players. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parimutuel_betting
- curious_fella1 7y ago
  Interesting!