5 ms·

The sports betting craze is really interesting to me. I'm from upstate NY and I remember when it got legalized I didn't think much about it. Let people do what

by jjice 3y ago

The sports betting craze is really interesting to me. I'm from upstate NY and I remember when it got legalized I didn't think much about it. Let people do what they want. I won't play because I don't gamble. Then when I was hope for the holidays and every man I knew from my home town that was near my age was doing it. They'd watch a basketball game only to see if their 8 leg parlay would hit. Whatever app they were using even listed your all time wins/loses (probably legally required) and _all_ of them had all time loses over $500 and it had only been legalized a few months prior. It's just a drain on the average person, the same was cigarettes are. I struggle with the freedom for personal choice to do what you want vs the collective better situation we get to form for ourselves as a society by banning these things, but I think I'm just leaning more towards the latter now. On the other hand, I think weed and alcohol should be legal, despite it affecting people's lives in negative ways, but the majority if their users are completely normal people. This is such a tricky subject to me and I guess I'll just stop rambling now, but I am interested in what other people thing about societal restriction for a better group vs personal freedoms.

lend000 3y ago
The difference is that cigarettes directly affect people around you via secondhand smoke, which is a clear externality. The real problem with sports betting is the immoral anticompetitive behavior of the gambling companies, which kick any "smart" money with too high of win rates off of their platforms. And that means that the gambling platforms aren't just platforms allowing the spreads to be set by users, but also active participants trying to use their own predictions to gamble against their users or tweak the spread, essentially double dipping.
- ecshafer 3y ago
  If someone is addicted to gambling, they make some bets and lose losing their rent money leading to eviction. And that person has a children. Are those children not affected by gambling?
  - jonfw 3y ago
    If we take impact on your own family has an externality, then all behaviors have externalities. I could easily spend enough of my time and money playing golf to negatively impact my loved ones. An externality generally refers to the general public
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    I think the difference being pointed out is that the externalities from smoking are far more visible and public. The harm from gambling is very localized to the families affected and happens at the end of the month - when it's time to pay the rent. You don't see it except in rising rates of poverty and dysfunctional families.
    - voxic11 3y ago
      maybe also the state has to spend more money subsidizing these dysfunctional families to ensure their children are fed and housed. But the state also usually taxes gambling pretty heavily so maybe its still an overall gain for the state's bottom line.
- paganel 3y ago
  Lots and lots of innocent people that are affected by the externalities of sports betting, i.e. lots of families who have seen their brothers, sons and husbands go down this perilous route to never come out again, in many cases taking the entire family down with them in a financial downhole.
dzader 3y ago
[dead]
InitialLastName 3y ago
As a counterpoint, I know plenty of people who willingly spend more than $500 on entertainment over a few months. I think the comparison to alcohol is an apt one: we've seen from previous ban attempts that rather than deter people from an activity the ban risks driving people to the black market, empowering those willing to operate illegally, removing the capacity for regulation or legal recourse (exposing partakers to grievous downside risks from product perspectives, such as contaminated liquor and loan sharks) and, ultimately, requiring more intrusion of law enforcement processes on the lives of every-day people.
- julianeon 3y ago
  It does seem like legalization made it qualitatively worse. To quote the parent comment: > Then when I was home for the holidays every man I knew from my home town that was near my age was doing it. From how he's describing it, this sounds like a big change. I'm also getting the sense that maybe 1 in 100 guys did it before, and it's dropping to like 1 in 10. I think the reason is that drugs can be bought in cash, but bettors depend on credit cards, and when that rail was legalized, the floodgates opened.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  Then you keep it legal but regulate the shit out of it. As the OP suggested, one step might be to force the betting houses to take all comers — also force them to indicate bettor losses compared to bettor gains, etc.
  - lstodd 3y ago
    > but regulate the shit out of it. So like a ban, but just a bit less so? This will bring the same ill effects, but a bit less so. What it the win then?
    - Consultant32452 3y ago
      It's important to protect the r̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶u̶m̶b̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ public from c̶o̶m̶p̶e̶t̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ predators.
thfuran 3y ago
>On the other hand, I think weed and alcohol should be legal, despite it affecting people's lives in negative ways, but the majority if their users are completely normal people. Are you sure you aren't just too used to alcohol being normal? It's probably significantly more destructive than sports betting: https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/ https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/ On the other hand, would banning sports betting change much, or would many of those people lose similar amounts of money on day trading or something if it weren't available? Is spending about a hundred bucks a month on some hobby really even that bad in the first place?
- llbeansandrice 3y ago
  There are at least obvious issues with gambling compared to day trading (which is much more regulated). The main one being that winners are banned from participating. You can become a successful day trader, but any chance at being a successful sports bettor gets you banned from the marketplace. In my anecdotal experience a lot of people would not find the same vice or even to the same degree as sports betting feels like a drain financially.
- elhudy 3y ago
  They would use bovada, which was the solution before sports betting became legalized.
SonicScrub 3y ago
This is always the struggle. In theory, I like the idea of just letting people make their own decisions, and let the consequences fall where they lie. But in practice we know that unrestricted distribution of addictive products (gambling, alcohol, drugs, etc) causes societal harms that are not confined to the individual making the bad choices. Doubly so when the makers of these products go out of their way to target those with addiction issues. The existence of which calls into question just how much of a choice some people really have, and whether we have a moral responsibility to protect these vulnerable people.
fullshark 3y ago
It will inspire some people to learn math, that's the only good thing about it as far as I can tell. It's made actual sports broadcasting unpleasant. For all the crap robinhood got about gamifying "investing" inspiring people with that gambling gene to throw their money at the stock market instead of negative expected value sports bets seems like a good move to me.
jollyllama 3y ago
The ubiquity of the advertisements is striking. It's as though, almost overnight, it grew to take up a double digit percentage.
- omginternets 3y ago
  That’s the part that’s most shocking to me. It seems like the safest approach to legalizing sports betting would be to prohibit advertising, just as we have with e.g. cigarettes.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
donmcronald 3y ago
> I struggle with the freedom for personal choice to do what you want vs the collective better situation we get to form for ourselves as a society by banning these things, but I think I'm just leaning more towards the latter now. I am 100% in favor of banning sports betting. The thing that makes it obvious for me is the "losers only" policy all of the sports betting sites have. If you consistently win by taking advantage of incorrectly priced odds you'll be banned. All it takes is watching a few YouTube videos with sharps (aka winning bettors) or arbitrage bettors and you can see the scam. If you consistently lose, welcome aboard! If you consistently win, GTFO! IMO, that makes it predatory. At a minimum, they should be forced to accept all bets and banning someone for winning should be illegal.
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  Very similar to card-counting at blackjack. You’re literally just using your brain to improve your odds. Even perfect conditions will only net the player a very slim edge against the casino but if the player is suspected of doing it they are no longer allowed to wager.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  We can keep it legal but just make everyone's wins and losses public record. Full accounting. There's your wet blanket, and people get to keep their freedom.
- dev_tty01 3y ago
  You are correct. There is no gambling establishment or app that allows consistent winners to continue playing. Might not be rigged in the play itself, but it doesn't need to be if you are allowed to kick out the winners.
  - costco 3y ago
    They exist, it's just a different business model (high volume, low margin) that's not compatible with massive TV advertising campaigns, large sign up bonuses, etc. See Pinnacle. Alternatively, there's the exchange model a la Betfair where you let the users take the risk and merely collect a fee. You can also squeeze but not ban consistent winners with a "premium charge." Interstate betting outside of horse racing is of questionable legality and I don't think that model was too popular when it was tried in America so it doesn't really exist here. It's not even clear that models in which winners aren't removed are more fair or better for the average person. Winners in betting on horses aren't banned. Yet total horse racing handle in the US has been in decline for almost 2 decades at this point. Most of the volume at this point is just algorithms competing with each other for some infinitesimally small edge. Lots of frustration among the humans with last second odds changes due to automated wagering. Not only that, traditionally under parimutuel betting the track take is 15-20%, but because racetracks want to raise volume they will give rebates of up to around half that to high volume (read: robot) bettors. Any sort of exchange model will eventually devolve into something like this. Given that the supermajority of people will lose money betting and are betting for the thrill of it, should the interests of winners even be considered from a policy perspective?
vhold 3y ago
I think there can be good remedies that can reduce the amount of harm. Like gambling is legal where I live, but only card rooms where players play against each other and not a dealer, the house just takes a cut. This way almost all of the money stays in the community.
- Decabytes 3y ago
  I like this. It incentivizes the card rooms to provide a good service for the people playing against each other, as opposed to making sure that the house always wins
Garvi 3y ago
> I struggle with the freedom for personal choice to do what you want vs the collective better situation we get to form for ourselves as a society by banning these things I'd say for many things it's no choice at all and it's why we have laws in the first place. You rights to speeding in front of schools are being suppressed everywhere. As is your right to homicide, infanticide. Any -cide really is not within your right to perform. It's what living in a society is all about. "Every man for himself" is natures law; it's what we struggle to overcome and be better. I don't think we would have gotten where we are without rules that govern society.
fpgaminer 3y ago
Everything in moderation, including laws. We should view full legalization of "hazardous" activities in the same light as full prohibition. They are both black and white measures that increase harm. Somewhere in the middle, legalization with strictly enforced regulations, is the path of least harm. It is a healthy recognition that adults are adults and can make their own choices, while at the same time recognizing that there is good in protecting the vulnerable and society as a whole. Make sports betting legal, audit and regulate the businesses offering the services, ban or heavily restrict advertising, tax it, and use the taxes to fund mental health services. This has been and will always be the solution to all addictive activities. But the naive memes of laissez faire and morality are tough viruses to stamp out.
hypersoar 3y ago
A solution that hits the happy middle for me is to ban, or at least restrict, advertising of sports betting. The way they've devoured sports coverage is what I find the most annoying.
- amalcon 3y ago
  The problem with this is that it runs into free speech issues. The right to say most things, including advertising legal things, is more culturally significant than the right to make wagers in many societies. Though oddly, this is a place where we can take some inspiration from tobacco. Restrictions on advertising work, but restrictions on sales mostly don't. The thing that works may be preferable even if it is culturally more difficult to accept.
  - SonicScrub 3y ago
    > The problem with this is that it runs into free speech issues. No it absolutely does not. Rules and regulations on advertising including what can be advertised, how it's advertised, who it can be targeted to, and the medium in which it can be advertised in are already strictly regulated in the US, Canada, and Europe.
    - amalcon 3y ago
      Yes, it absolutely does. That competing interests sometimes prevail does not eliminate this particular interest as an issue. Also worth noting that I was appealing to cultural significance rather than legal significance for a reason.
      - SonicScrub 3y ago
        "Commerical speech" in the US and is subject to much stricter limitations than things like political speech. The government is allowed to restrict advertising to fulfill it's governance aims, provided those aims are narrowly defined and specific. Incidentally, the specific case of barring Casinos from advertising has legal precedent. So no, gambling ads cannot be argued to be under the protection of the first amendment. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/commercial-speech/ https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/commercial-speech/ Edit: sorry, just saw your note about cultural significance. Not legal, so perhaps the legal argument will ring hollow. But to address it from a cultural perspective, note that there is a long history of restricting advertising speech for public good. Doing so is not out of line culturally with what we do across thousands of different industries. It would be an extension of the status quo. Not an upheaval in our relationship to free speech
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
If I place a bet online do I pay a sales tax?
- givemeethekeys 3y ago
  Depending on where you live, your winnings get taxed.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    I'm aware that winnings are taxed buy why aren't bets subject to sales tax? You're buying a bet right?
    - givemeethekeys 3y ago
      Probably the same reason why you don't taxed for the sale when you invest, or gamble in a casino or buy a lottery ticket.
- costco 3y ago
  Gambling operators pay taxes on gross receipts beyond just ordinary corporate taxes that in most states range from 5-10% which also happens to be the typical range for sales tax. As well as a federal excise tax of 0.25% on all dollars wagered.
idopmstuff 3y ago
I believe that sports betting should be legal, and for context I do a little bit but in the few hundreds of dollars a year total range. When I weigh the legality of things in the harms-vs-freedoms sort of way that you're describing, I tend to use alcohol as my point of comparison, since that's probably the most harmful behavior we allow. So is sports betting less harmful than alcoholism? If you look at it from the perspective of the cost to society (which I think it should), it seems pretty clearly to me to be correct. The dollar cost to the consumer is less (remember when comparing numbers that the headline for gambling is the amount wagered, of which only a minority is actually lost, vs. for alcohol it's what's spent, which is all lost). Add to that the amount we have to spend on Medicare/Medicaid treatment for issues caused by alcohol, and in my view it's very tough to say that it's reasonable for alcohol to be legal but sports betting should not. > On the other hand, I think weed and alcohol should be legal, despite it affecting people's lives in negative ways, but the majority if their users are completely normal people. I do want to address this point - I don't think the majority of their users being normal is a good metric. There are an estimated two million people in AA, and those are just the ones for whom drinking has become a problem so serious that they felt the need to seek help. The consequences for those people are absolutely devastating.
dhucerbin 3y ago
Over the years I took part in few similar discussions. Almost every time argument against regulations was “but alcohol prohibition in USA made things worse”. I don’t have knowledge, but intuitively I’m not sure if it’s really that bulletproof argument. Have someone any thoughts? How to approach that critically?
rayiner 3y ago
Personal choice turned out to be less great than promised. You can see it all over the place in the statistics. For example, I recall growing up and and hearing people tell kids to “question authority” and “think for yourself.” The folks saying that assumed that kids would hear it and stop going to church. I don’t think they realized it would also cause kids to become anti-vaxxers and holocaust deniers. (A recent YouGov poll shows that 20% of people 18-29 think the “Holocaust is a myth,” versus 2% of people 49-64, and 0% of people above 65.) When I was young I chaffed at my “oppressive Asian parents.” But in retrospect, I’ve seen my family members who have stuck to the path set forth by their parents do better in life and avoid a lot of mistakes. Maybe some people were “meant for something greater” that they didn’t pursue. But let’s face it—most weren’t, and avoiding drugs, going to college, and getting married left them in a pretty solid situation.
rpgbr 3y ago
The majority of people that consume alcohol and/or weed are pretty fine. Is there any gambler that moved on sports betting with more money than they entered? I guess this answers your dilemma.
- achates 3y ago
  James Holzhauer I guess, he did well in sports betting and then became a Jeopardy champion. Not that I'd recommend it for most people lol. It's a negative sum game once the house takes their cut, so for every winner there's more than one loser.
Terr_ 3y ago
> the freedom for personal choice to do what you want vs the collective better situation we get In this case I prefer to think of it as the freedom of personal choice versus a nasty blurry-zone of not-quite-voluntarily choice where the fallible human meat brain gets hacked.
Salgat 3y ago
My biggest issue is the exposure to kids. If your kids are into professional sports they're going to be bombarded with gambling ads the entire time they watch.
faeriechangling 3y ago
Sports betting is a harder drug than marijuana.
Yizahi 3y ago
Both gambling and drugs (alcohol is a drug too) need one small but utterly crippling regulation everywhere in the world. Ban advertising. No advertising of any kind, electronic or physical. No logos, no brands, no specific color patterns if they happen to do gambling or drugs. No advertisement via product placement - so no products on visible market shelves. But otherwise leave them legal. I'm guessing that as soon as overaggressive advertisement is banned they will immediately lose a majority of fresh marks and victims. During BigTobacco trials those companies showed stats that the overwhelming majority of new smokers are teenagers. As soon as they can't be easily influenced the abuse usage will go down.
- heyitsguay 3y ago
  Completely agreed. Legalizing drugs and gambling is important for cutting off the flow of money and social legitimacy to criminal operations, but the "nice" thing (from a marketing perspective) about addictive substances and activities is you don't need to try hard to sell them. For users, even addicts, the bar set by having to deal with black markets is so low that we can get them out of the streets with the truly blandest, unenticing solutions -- plain black and white boxes, black and white screens, beige halls. Just cheap enough to undercut illegal alternatives, with all color and marketing effort placed on the offramps: addiction treatment information and guidance framed in a friendly, empathetic, medical manner.
stcroixx 3y ago
Lots of things people do for entertainment cost money that they would be better off saving. Why pick on this one thing? A lot of people blow their money shopping or travelling or on luxury goods. They may be affected negatively by these pursuits. It’s not my business. All I ask is that these folks don’t come for my money when they run out of theirs.
snapplebobapple 3y ago
I don't think you're looking at the losses the right way. It's not right to say 500 dollars of losses over six months is a drain on the average person, there may be unpriced benefit to them you don't see. For example, I buy 20 dollars of lotto tickets whenever the prize is over 50 million. This has certainly translated into 10k+ of losses for myself over the last 20 years but I am pretty happy with the transaction because fantasizing about what I would do if I won is worth way more than 20 dollars in just enjoyment each week I play. That being said, I don't know if your conclusion is wrong, and I especially don't like that these sites can ban winners. If they are showing a line they should be forced to honor it for everyone and go out of business if they suck bad enough that a gambler with skill can wipe them out.
hardware2win 3y ago
>and _all_ of them had all time loses over $500 and it had only been legalized a few months prior. So what, whats wrong with 150usd/month on harmless fun (unlike smoking)? Whats the diff if you spend it on netflix, video games, etc?

by jjice 3y ago

lend000 3y ago

The difference is that cigarettes directly affect people around you via secondhand smoke, which is a clear externality. The real problem with sports betting is the immoral anticompetitive behavior of the gambling companies, which kick any "smart" money with too high of win rates off of their platforms. And that means that the gambling platforms aren't just platforms allowing the spreads to be set by users, but also active participants trying to use their own predictions to gamble against their users or tweak the spread, essentially double dipping.

ecshafer 3y ago
If someone is addicted to gambling, they make some bets and lose losing their rent money leading to eviction. And that person has a children. Are those children not affected by gambling?
- jonfw 3y ago
  If we take impact on your own family has an externality, then all behaviors have externalities. I could easily spend enough of my time and money playing golf to negatively impact my loved ones. An externality generally refers to the general public
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  I think the difference being pointed out is that the externalities from smoking are far more visible and public. The harm from gambling is very localized to the families affected and happens at the end of the month - when it's time to pay the rent. You don't see it except in rising rates of poverty and dysfunctional families.
  - voxic11 3y ago
    maybe also the state has to spend more money subsidizing these dysfunctional families to ensure their children are fed and housed. But the state also usually taxes gambling pretty heavily so maybe its still an overall gain for the state's bottom line.
paganel 3y ago
Lots and lots of innocent people that are affected by the externalities of sports betting, i.e. lots of families who have seen their brothers, sons and husbands go down this perilous route to never come out again, in many cases taking the entire family down with them in a financial downhole.

dzader 3y ago

[dead]

InitialLastName 3y ago

As a counterpoint, I know plenty of people who willingly spend more than $500 on entertainment over a few months. I think the comparison to alcohol is an apt one: we've seen from previous ban attempts that rather than deter people from an activity the ban risks driving people to the black market, empowering those willing to operate illegally, removing the capacity for regulation or legal recourse (exposing partakers to grievous downside risks from product perspectives, such as contaminated liquor and loan sharks) and, ultimately, requiring more intrusion of law enforcement processes on the lives of every-day people.

julianeon 3y ago
It does seem like legalization made it qualitatively worse. To quote the parent comment: > Then when I was home for the holidays every man I knew from my home town that was near my age was doing it. From how he's describing it, this sounds like a big change. I'm also getting the sense that maybe 1 in 100 guys did it before, and it's dropping to like 1 in 10. I think the reason is that drugs can be bought in cash, but bettors depend on credit cards, and when that rail was legalized, the floodgates opened.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
Then you keep it legal but regulate the shit out of it. As the OP suggested, one step might be to force the betting houses to take all comers — also force them to indicate bettor losses compared to bettor gains, etc.
- lstodd 3y ago
  > but regulate the shit out of it. So like a ban, but just a bit less so? This will bring the same ill effects, but a bit less so. What it the win then?
  - Consultant32452 3y ago
    It's important to protect the r̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶u̶m̶b̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ public from c̶o̶m̶p̶e̶t̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ predators.

thfuran 3y ago

>On the other hand, I think weed and alcohol should be legal, despite it affecting people's lives in negative ways, but the majority if their users are completely normal people. Are you sure you aren't just too used to alcohol being normal? It's probably significantly more destructive than sports betting: https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/ https://drugabusestatistics.org/alcohol-related-deaths/ On the other hand, would banning sports betting change much, or would many of those people lose similar amounts of money on day trading or something if it weren't available? Is spending about a hundred bucks a month on some hobby really even that bad in the first place?

llbeansandrice 3y ago
There are at least obvious issues with gambling compared to day trading (which is much more regulated). The main one being that winners are banned from participating. You can become a successful day trader, but any chance at being a successful sports bettor gets you banned from the marketplace. In my anecdotal experience a lot of people would not find the same vice or even to the same degree as sports betting feels like a drain financially.
elhudy 3y ago
They would use bovada, which was the solution before sports betting became legalized.

SonicScrub 3y ago

This is always the struggle. In theory, I like the idea of just letting people make their own decisions, and let the consequences fall where they lie. But in practice we know that unrestricted distribution of addictive products (gambling, alcohol, drugs, etc) causes societal harms that are not confined to the individual making the bad choices. Doubly so when the makers of these products go out of their way to target those with addiction issues. The existence of which calls into question just how much of a choice some people really have, and whether we have a moral responsibility to protect these vulnerable people.

fullshark 3y ago

It will inspire some people to learn math, that's the only good thing about it as far as I can tell. It's made actual sports broadcasting unpleasant. For all the crap robinhood got about gamifying "investing" inspiring people with that gambling gene to throw their money at the stock market instead of negative expected value sports bets seems like a good move to me.

jollyllama 3y ago

The ubiquity of the advertisements is striking. It's as though, almost overnight, it grew to take up a double digit percentage.

omginternets 3y ago
That’s the part that’s most shocking to me. It seems like the safest approach to legalizing sports betting would be to prohibit advertising, just as we have with e.g. cigarettes.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

donmcronald 3y ago

> I struggle with the freedom for personal choice to do what you want vs the collective better situation we get to form for ourselves as a society by banning these things, but I think I'm just leaning more towards the latter now. I am 100% in favor of banning sports betting. The thing that makes it obvious for me is the "losers only" policy all of the sports betting sites have. If you consistently win by taking advantage of incorrectly priced odds you'll be banned. All it takes is watching a few YouTube videos with sharps (aka winning bettors) or arbitrage bettors and you can see the scam. If you consistently lose, welcome aboard! If you consistently win, GTFO! IMO, that makes it predatory. At a minimum, they should be forced to accept all bets and banning someone for winning should be illegal.

soupfordummies 3y ago
Very similar to card-counting at blackjack. You’re literally just using your brain to improve your odds. Even perfect conditions will only net the player a very slim edge against the casino but if the player is suspected of doing it they are no longer allowed to wager.
datavirtue 3y ago
We can keep it legal but just make everyone's wins and losses public record. Full accounting. There's your wet blanket, and people get to keep their freedom.
dev_tty01 3y ago
You are correct. There is no gambling establishment or app that allows consistent winners to continue playing. Might not be rigged in the play itself, but it doesn't need to be if you are allowed to kick out the winners.
- costco 3y ago
  They exist, it's just a different business model (high volume, low margin) that's not compatible with massive TV advertising campaigns, large sign up bonuses, etc. See Pinnacle. Alternatively, there's the exchange model a la Betfair where you let the users take the risk and merely collect a fee. You can also squeeze but not ban consistent winners with a "premium charge." Interstate betting outside of horse racing is of questionable legality and I don't think that model was too popular when it was tried in America so it doesn't really exist here. It's not even clear that models in which winners aren't removed are more fair or better for the average person. Winners in betting on horses aren't banned. Yet total horse racing handle in the US has been in decline for almost 2 decades at this point. Most of the volume at this point is just algorithms competing with each other for some infinitesimally small edge. Lots of frustration among the humans with last second odds changes due to automated wagering. Not only that, traditionally under parimutuel betting the track take is 15-20%, but because racetracks want to raise volume they will give rebates of up to around half that to high volume (read: robot) bettors. Any sort of exchange model will eventually devolve into something like this. Given that the supermajority of people will lose money betting and are betting for the thrill of it, should the interests of winners even be considered from a policy perspective?

vhold 3y ago

I think there can be good remedies that can reduce the amount of harm. Like gambling is legal where I live, but only card rooms where players play against each other and not a dealer, the house just takes a cut. This way almost all of the money stays in the community.

Decabytes 3y ago
I like this. It incentivizes the card rooms to provide a good service for the people playing against each other, as opposed to making sure that the house always wins

Garvi 3y ago

> I struggle with the freedom for personal choice to do what you want vs the collective better situation we get to form for ourselves as a society by banning these things I'd say for many things it's no choice at all and it's why we have laws in the first place. You rights to speeding in front of schools are being suppressed everywhere. As is your right to homicide, infanticide. Any -cide really is not within your right to perform. It's what living in a society is all about. "Every man for himself" is natures law; it's what we struggle to overcome and be better. I don't think we would have gotten where we are without rules that govern society.

fpgaminer 3y ago

Everything in moderation, including laws. We should view full legalization of "hazardous" activities in the same light as full prohibition. They are both black and white measures that increase harm. Somewhere in the middle, legalization with strictly enforced regulations, is the path of least harm. It is a healthy recognition that adults are adults and can make their own choices, while at the same time recognizing that there is good in protecting the vulnerable and society as a whole. Make sports betting legal, audit and regulate the businesses offering the services, ban or heavily restrict advertising, tax it, and use the taxes to fund mental health services. This has been and will always be the solution to all addictive activities. But the naive memes of laissez faire and morality are tough viruses to stamp out.

hypersoar 3y ago

A solution that hits the happy middle for me is to ban, or at least restrict, advertising of sports betting. The way they've devoured sports coverage is what I find the most annoying.

amalcon 3y ago
The problem with this is that it runs into free speech issues. The right to say most things, including advertising legal things, is more culturally significant than the right to make wagers in many societies. Though oddly, this is a place where we can take some inspiration from tobacco. Restrictions on advertising work, but restrictions on sales mostly don't. The thing that works may be preferable even if it is culturally more difficult to accept.
- SonicScrub 3y ago
  > The problem with this is that it runs into free speech issues. No it absolutely does not. Rules and regulations on advertising including what can be advertised, how it's advertised, who it can be targeted to, and the medium in which it can be advertised in are already strictly regulated in the US, Canada, and Europe.
  - amalcon 3y ago
    Yes, it absolutely does. That competing interests sometimes prevail does not eliminate this particular interest as an issue. Also worth noting that I was appealing to cultural significance rather than legal significance for a reason.
    - SonicScrub 3y ago
      "Commerical speech" in the US and is subject to much stricter limitations than things like political speech. The government is allowed to restrict advertising to fulfill it's governance aims, provided those aims are narrowly defined and specific. Incidentally, the specific case of barring Casinos from advertising has legal precedent. So no, gambling ads cannot be argued to be under the protection of the first amendment. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/commercial-speech/ https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/commercial-speech/ Edit: sorry, just saw your note about cultural significance. Not legal, so perhaps the legal argument will ring hollow. But to address it from a cultural perspective, note that there is a long history of restricting advertising speech for public good. Doing so is not out of line culturally with what we do across thousands of different industries. It would be an extension of the status quo. Not an upheaval in our relationship to free speech

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

If I place a bet online do I pay a sales tax?

givemeethekeys 3y ago
Depending on where you live, your winnings get taxed.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  I'm aware that winnings are taxed buy why aren't bets subject to sales tax? You're buying a bet right?
  - givemeethekeys 3y ago
    Probably the same reason why you don't taxed for the sale when you invest, or gamble in a casino or buy a lottery ticket.
costco 3y ago
Gambling operators pay taxes on gross receipts beyond just ordinary corporate taxes that in most states range from 5-10% which also happens to be the typical range for sales tax. As well as a federal excise tax of 0.25% on all dollars wagered.

idopmstuff 3y ago

I believe that sports betting should be legal, and for context I do a little bit but in the few hundreds of dollars a year total range. When I weigh the legality of things in the harms-vs-freedoms sort of way that you're describing, I tend to use alcohol as my point of comparison, since that's probably the most harmful behavior we allow. So is sports betting less harmful than alcoholism? If you look at it from the perspective of the cost to society (which I think it should), it seems pretty clearly to me to be correct. The dollar cost to the consumer is less (remember when comparing numbers that the headline for gambling is the amount wagered, of which only a minority is actually lost, vs. for alcohol it's what's spent, which is all lost). Add to that the amount we have to spend on Medicare/Medicaid treatment for issues caused by alcohol, and in my view it's very tough to say that it's reasonable for alcohol to be legal but sports betting should not. > On the other hand, I think weed and alcohol should be legal, despite it affecting people's lives in negative ways, but the majority if their users are completely normal people. I do want to address this point - I don't think the majority of their users being normal is a good metric. There are an estimated two million people in AA, and those are just the ones for whom drinking has become a problem so serious that they felt the need to seek help. The consequences for those people are absolutely devastating.

dhucerbin 3y ago

Over the years I took part in few similar discussions. Almost every time argument against regulations was “but alcohol prohibition in USA made things worse”. I don’t have knowledge, but intuitively I’m not sure if it’s really that bulletproof argument. Have someone any thoughts? How to approach that critically?

rayiner 3y ago

Personal choice turned out to be less great than promised. You can see it all over the place in the statistics. For example, I recall growing up and and hearing people tell kids to “question authority” and “think for yourself.” The folks saying that assumed that kids would hear it and stop going to church. I don’t think they realized it would also cause kids to become anti-vaxxers and holocaust deniers. (A recent YouGov poll shows that 20% of people 18-29 think the “Holocaust is a myth,” versus 2% of people 49-64, and 0% of people above 65.) When I was young I chaffed at my “oppressive Asian parents.” But in retrospect, I’ve seen my family members who have stuck to the path set forth by their parents do better in life and avoid a lot of mistakes. Maybe some people were “meant for something greater” that they didn’t pursue. But let’s face it—most weren’t, and avoiding drugs, going to college, and getting married left them in a pretty solid situation.

rpgbr 3y ago

The majority of people that consume alcohol and/or weed are pretty fine. Is there any gambler that moved on sports betting with more money than they entered? I guess this answers your dilemma.

achates 3y ago
James Holzhauer I guess, he did well in sports betting and then became a Jeopardy champion. Not that I'd recommend it for most people lol. It's a negative sum game once the house takes their cut, so for every winner there's more than one loser.

Terr_ 3y ago

> the freedom for personal choice to do what you want vs the collective better situation we get In this case I prefer to think of it as the freedom of personal choice versus a nasty blurry-zone of not-quite-voluntarily choice where the fallible human meat brain gets hacked.

Salgat 3y ago

My biggest issue is the exposure to kids. If your kids are into professional sports they're going to be bombarded with gambling ads the entire time they watch.

faeriechangling 3y ago

Sports betting is a harder drug than marijuana.

Yizahi 3y ago

Both gambling and drugs (alcohol is a drug too) need one small but utterly crippling regulation everywhere in the world. Ban advertising. No advertising of any kind, electronic or physical. No logos, no brands, no specific color patterns if they happen to do gambling or drugs. No advertisement via product placement - so no products on visible market shelves. But otherwise leave them legal. I'm guessing that as soon as overaggressive advertisement is banned they will immediately lose a majority of fresh marks and victims. During BigTobacco trials those companies showed stats that the overwhelming majority of new smokers are teenagers. As soon as they can't be easily influenced the abuse usage will go down.

heyitsguay 3y ago
Completely agreed. Legalizing drugs and gambling is important for cutting off the flow of money and social legitimacy to criminal operations, but the "nice" thing (from a marketing perspective) about addictive substances and activities is you don't need to try hard to sell them. For users, even addicts, the bar set by having to deal with black markets is so low that we can get them out of the streets with the truly blandest, unenticing solutions -- plain black and white boxes, black and white screens, beige halls. Just cheap enough to undercut illegal alternatives, with all color and marketing effort placed on the offramps: addiction treatment information and guidance framed in a friendly, empathetic, medical manner.

stcroixx 3y ago

Lots of things people do for entertainment cost money that they would be better off saving. Why pick on this one thing? A lot of people blow their money shopping or travelling or on luxury goods. They may be affected negatively by these pursuits. It’s not my business. All I ask is that these folks don’t come for my money when they run out of theirs.

snapplebobapple 3y ago

I don't think you're looking at the losses the right way. It's not right to say 500 dollars of losses over six months is a drain on the average person, there may be unpriced benefit to them you don't see. For example, I buy 20 dollars of lotto tickets whenever the prize is over 50 million. This has certainly translated into 10k+ of losses for myself over the last 20 years but I am pretty happy with the transaction because fantasizing about what I would do if I won is worth way more than 20 dollars in just enjoyment each week I play. That being said, I don't know if your conclusion is wrong, and I especially don't like that these sites can ban winners. If they are showing a line they should be forced to honor it for everyone and go out of business if they suck bad enough that a gambler with skill can wipe them out.

hardware2win 3y ago

>and _all_ of them had all time loses over $500 and it had only been legalized a few months prior. So what, whats wrong with 150usd/month on harmless fun (unlike smoking)? Whats the diff if you spend it on netflix, video games, etc?