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The older I get the more I hate gambling. When i was younger I tended to think "hey it's their choice" but i've realized how unfair our society is in terms of t

The older I get the more I hate gambling. When i was younger I tended to think "hey it's their choice" but i've realized how unfair our society is in terms of things like this. Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant well paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they make money. On the other side is just regular people like us stressed out trying to survive. This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge power asymmetry and I think "we the people" need protection from these forces

tdb7893 2y ago
Yeah, the issue with "it's their choice" is that through addictive behaviors they are trying to take away that sort of agency from people. I don't have an issue with gambling in general but I have a huge issue with people trying to trigger and profit from addicting behaviors. It's a phenomenally cruel thing to do to people.
- tootie 2y ago
  It's very analogous to drug use. The libertarian point of view that people should be free to do what they want with their own bodies makes sense at first blush. But addiction is such an absolute blight on society that ending it will only improve the world.
  - dcow 2y ago
    Yeah. I think there must be a balance between let the cyber hippies watch trees grow and needle service for addicts. I don’t even think legalizing weed is aging well.
    - card_zero 2y ago
      Wait, which of those is libertarians?
  - tastyfreeze 2y ago
    Drug abuse is lower where people have a strong sense of community. Drug overuse is a symptom of a larger issue of disconnection and disillusionment. Legislating drug use is like saying "the beatings will continue until morale improves."
    - snapcaster 2y ago
      No it isn't, it's very straightforward in every single civilization that has experienced it. humans + opiates = misery. it's not like we're some kind of paragons of logic and rationality we're animals and these are exploits
      - tastyfreeze 2y ago
        I wouldn't use opiates as an example of causing misery. The opium poppy, for thousands of years, was a miracle plant to every society that knew of it. It allows anybody to have access to pain relief. Yes it can be misused. However, ALL opiates are still derived from the opium poppy. The ability for personal or commercial production of opium was removed from everybody by the US influenced UN policy. The UN now declares that three countries in the world are allowed to grow opium poppies to produce opium. That legal opium supposedly is used to create all of the worlds needed supply of pharmaceutical opiates. Every other country that grows Papaver Somniferum and processes it to opium is a target for military action to reduce the supply of illegal opiates. You see, the recent history of opium is a bit like an opium dream itself. A small number of people decided opium is evil and who gets to produce opiates and if you aren't on the list you are their enemy. This policy has done nothing to stop "illegal" production and use of opiates and has made a small number of people unimaginably wealthy while also creating the environment for "illegal" cartels, AKA competition, to flourish. Bayer first sold heroin as a less addictive morphine after all. In the name of enforcing the "allowed producers" list an innumerable amount of people trying to make a living by producing opium were killed. If it looks like a cartel and behaves like a cartel it might be a cartel. I don't even want to go into the proven CIA and FBI complicity in drug trafficking in the name of stopping "illegal" opiates or all the people in jail for using "illegal" opiates. Sure, opiates cause suffering. Its just mostly at the hands of a supranational cartel that we are part of. We aren't even allowed to grow the same plant in the US for seeds that many nations eat as a staple food. However, the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to grow or buy opium from India, Turkey, and Australia and sell millions of derivative opiate pills around the world. But, me being able to grow a handful of plants to produce my own pain medicine or domestic commercial production is the height of evil. If we were all allowed to produce opium personally or commercially we would effectively end the reasons for illegal opiate importers to exist, create jobs for our own people, and remove an immense amount of power from the UN and pharmaceutical companies. We would also remove the need for military adventurism in places like Afghanistan and Myanmar. As an aside, opium production in Afghanistan increased from 82,000ha to 233,000ha during US occupation, which I choose to believe was, mostly because we didn't care and the Taliban had been destroying opium crops. https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1950-01-01_3_page003.html https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bu...
  - achenatx 2y ago
    when you punish drug use with prison, it is better for it to be legal.
  - FlyingAvatar 2y ago
    I mean, I understand your sentiment on addiction but in the US, we have not been terribly successful in ending addiction despite most drugs being illegal for decades. In places like Portugal, legalization with an emphasis on treatment has not really been more successful either.
- anthonypasq 2y ago
  everything worth doing in life is addicting. you cant just ban/regulate dopamine producing activities
  - tomtheelder 2y ago
    Of course, but I think it's worth seriously evaluating the subset of those activities that have an especially large propensity for harm.
  - midiguy 2y ago
    Most dopamine producing activities are in some way beneficial in moderation to outweigh the negatives (sex, eating, exercise, even many recreational drugs). I don't know whether pointlessly bleeding money away to some greasy corporation counts there. That said I don't like telling people how they should waste their money but it seems there needs to be some form of a plan for problem gambling.
chankstein38 2y ago
Agreed it feels like nothing more than taking advantaged of underprivileged people. There are likely people who have better means doing sports betting too but the way the ads are everywhere, I get mail from DraftKings even though I've never used it. Predatory is a good word for it. I feel similarly about state lotteries. The ads always manipulate people by making it seem like high-octane fun where people are just winning massive sums of money when the reality is you click a couple buttons and then allow random chance to decide whether or not your money disappears.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  I thought online sports gambling was predatory and then I heard about this little fact: If you win a lot, they'll effectively kick you off the platform, or make it non-economical to "play" by reducing your max bet sizes down to $1. Even more diabolical, and clear evidence this shit should be outlawed completely: if you lose a lot, they will increase your maximum bet size
  - currymj 2y ago
    this pattern is a pretty defensible way to run a sports book. obviously you don’t want to accept large bets from someone who is doing arbitrage or consistently has inside information. any business with variable prices works this way, if some mysterious person shows up to your car dealership and seems really excited to unload a bunch of used cars on you, you should feel nervous that you’re overpaying or something is wrong with the cars. in my view the diabolical part is the predatory marketing tactics, and making gambling platforms ubiquitous. i say this as someone who, like you, thinks legalizing sports betting is an ongoing disaster, but wants the strongest arguments against it.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      People conceive of gambling as a game where the house typically has a slight edge through fees, information, or structural advantage in the game itself. I don't think this "ban if winning" behavior fits with people's model of "fairness" even in the intrinsically unfair world of gambling. I think a very good first step legislation would be to require disclosure of this behavior. Public appetite would probably be very strong and it wouldn't run afoul of any of the other "people should be free to play games" arguments. You can play the game, but the owner of the game is required to disclose the rules of it.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
> Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant well paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they make money. On the other side is just regular people like us stressed out trying to survive. Don't forget social media. I mean, we have some of the smartest, best paid people on the planet incentivized to use every bit of data they can to hack your evolutionary biology to keep you scroll, scroll, scrolling. I think one reason I've sadly become quite disillusioned with technology is because I see it less and less as a tool for improving the human condition, and more about creating addiction machines to siphon ever increasing amounts of money from the system.
- soderfoo 2y ago
  > we have some of the smartest, best paid people on the planet incentivized to use every bit of data they can to hack your evolutionary biology... It's such a waste of a generation's talent. I think about this from time to time. What problems could we be solving? How much further would the cutting edge of innovation be? It's kind of depressing.
  - chillingeffect 2y ago
    On addition to thinking about "how much better could tech be" I insist we begin thinking abt "how much simpler and more peacefully could we live?" Why extract so many resources to run gambling and adtech servers? Why doom infants abroad to mining? Why invade international boundaries to get their resources?
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    Making tools for the powerful to use while they manipulate the weak is not merely a waste. It's actively harmful. We're summoning monsters today that we'll have to fight tomorrow.
  - bonestamp2 2y ago
    The really sad part is that they could even use that same technology for good AND profit. If it's true that (for example) the facebook algorithm knows if someone is depressed, people would pay real money for the algorithm to shape their behavior and mood for the better.
dec0dedab0de 2y ago
This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge power asymmetry and I think "we the people" need protection from these forces No thank you, I can protect myself.
- stackghost 2y ago
  >No thank you, I can protect myself. In many ways you actually cannot, in any reasonable way: - You cannot escape surveillance unless you completely (and I do mean completely) withdraw from modern society - You cannot protect yourself from subconscious manipulation by advertising and marketing firms that pay billions of dollars to find and exploit subconscious weaknesses that we all possess - You cannot protect yourself from sweeping changes made (e.g. to legislation) made in response to the interests of lobbyists or bad actors, and in consequence from changes in the behaviour of others, in response
  - ghastmaster 2y ago
    > You cannot protect yourself from subconscious manipulation by advertising and marketing firms that pay billions of dollars to find and exploit subconscious weaknesses that we all possess By learning the techniques they employ, a subconscious manipulation by them, becomes a conscious observation by us. Education defeats these methods. An argument could be made that more money will be spent to continually find deeper subconscious manipulations. I would wager, the ROI would diminish quickly. I would rather be manipulated by private industry than controlled by government. I cannot out vote a majority, but I can out wit a billboard.
    - stackghost 2y ago
      >Education defeats these methods. It does not. For example young women and girls, even when knowing that an image of a fashion model is photoshopped, still exhibit drops in their self body image. >I would rather be manipulated by private industry than controlled by government. In many cases these two things are the same, due to the prevalence and efficacy of lobbying >I can out wit a billboard. Lots of people believe this, but it is false.
kqr 2y ago
This reminds me also of the huge difference between gambling and gambling. Some games are at least somewhat beatable (sports betting, poker) even though the house is most consistent winner. Then there is junk like every slot machine ever, 98 % of online casinos, etc. Lotteries would belong to that category if they weren't such a useful way to sell something few people can afford, or to finance projects with an opt-in taxation.
- sleepybrett 2y ago
  you are trying to say that there is a difference between pure random luck and 'skill' based gambling. However the both act in the brain the same way and both lead to bad ends to the vast majority.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Sports was a mistake, a waste of the concern and attention of billions of people, ban sports.
    - snapcaster 2y ago
      Come on, do you see "sports" (completed separated from gambling on them) to be a plague on society? Do you have anyone in your family or social circle that had their lives destroyed by sports? It's not even comparable, your comment seems to be in bad faith
      - card_zero 2y ago
        Except if it involves robots or Starcraft, because I like those. But I also like poker, which Sleepybrett seems opposed to.
    - apitman 2y ago
      Assuming this isn't sarcasm... I would be very careful about banning or even dismissing anything that has been popular for thousands of years.
throw0101d 2y ago
> Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant well paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they make money. On the other side is just regular people like us stressed out trying to survive. A similar argument can be made with healthcare (especially the US insurance system). There is all sorts of information asymmetry, not only from available treatments/procedures, but then also providers Kenneth Arrow wrote about this (in 1963), "Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care" (see §II. generally, and perhaps §II. B. specifically): * https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf Some disagree with the above assessment: * https://archive.is/q1nSN https://archive.is/q1nSN / http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/liberals-are-wrong-free-market-health-care-is-possible/254648/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/liberals...
mattmaroon 2y ago
One might argue that gambling being illegal doesn’t protect anyone from it. As a former professional poker player who started off in illegal games, I can tell you, there’s plenty of gambling both legal and illegal available in most places. The line at the gas station of people buying scratchoffs and lottery tickets is proof. The part we likely need protection from is the marketing.
- Draiken 2y ago
  I have to disagree. Scale does matter. If murder was legal we'd have a lot more of it. We still have them despite it being a crime, but nobody would ever suggest making it legal because some people do it anyway.
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    Vices are very different than murder and the fact that people equate the two is how we get things like prohibition and the war on drugs. Lots of studies have shown that legalizing drug use does not appreciatively increase drug use, for instance. It’s hard to make an argument that making murder illegal was a net harm to society. It’s really easy to make that argument with vices, in fact any history book probably will in the section on prohibition. Sports betting is not any more insidious than any other type of gambling. Even if legalizing it has increased the amount of sports betting, which likely it has, we don’t know that it has increased the overall amount of gambling, and we certainly don’t know that it has increased the overall amount of societal harm from gambling, no matter how many great anecdotes we get from newspaper articles. Perhaps people have simply switched from the lottery or slot machines to sports betting. Perhaps some are better off because sports betting has a much lower house edge than the lottery or a lot of other forms of gambling. I could tell you for sure there is a whole lot of illegal sports betting going on, or at least there was. There is a seedy black market that I would be willing to bet has been largely destroyed by the ability to Gamble from your phone. (I’m far too removed from it these days to have any firsthand knowledge of the current situation.) I can also tell you about the negative impact that gambling laws have on the lives of non-problem gamblers, myself included. People always reflexively follow the train of logic: vice bad, make vice illegal. It failed when we made alcohol illegal, the war on drugs has been disastrous for the poor, far worse than the drugs we were fighting, and there’s not much evidence to believe it even significantly reduced drug use. The idea that any vice being illegal creates an overall harm reduction has pretty much been shown time and time again to be incorrect, and yet everybody just believes it because it seems like common sense.
elif 2y ago
Impossible optimism can be a good thing too. My family and I play the lottery whenever expected reward is over purchase price. Of course we aren't going to win, but spending $20-50 a week to spend a couple hours dreaming about what we'd do with half a billion is such a fun uplifting family activity that makes us realize our true wishes are a lot closer than needing millions of dollars. Also I probably talk to my father more often about fantasy football than for any other reason, despite not caring about football.. the gamification and having stakes can be a compelling social experience.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  > spending $20-50 a week to spend a couple hours dreaming Guessing that is "disposable" income. Sad when you think of people doing the same thing for whom their income is not disposable.
- RunSet 2y ago
  > Of course we aren't going to win, but spending $20-50 a week to spend a couple hours dreaming about what we'd do with half a billion is such a fun uplifting family activity I have heard many people say things like this and I always wonder "Instead of dreaming about buying a winning lottery ticket, why don't they just dream about finding one?"
bunderbunder 2y ago
My real wake-up call was the introductory class in my data science master's program. We spent a whole week learning about all the clever tricks Harrah's data scientists found to keep people in the gambling halls. The course's instructor really lionized Harrah's for doing this, and loved to talk about how much profit it made for the company. For my part, I was horrified. I couldn't find a way to see some of these tricks the use as anything but a form of highly evolved confidence artistry. Legal con artistry, sure. But a legal scam is still a scam. Even if the people getting scammed never wise to the scam, it's still a scam. The arguments about tax revenues and suchlike don't make me feel any better about it. All I see in their success is a demonstration that a great many people will happily turn a blind eye to abusive behavior if they believe they can materially benefit from doing so. And, of course, they never do, anyway. The promises of professional con artists that our communities will benefit if we grant them imprimatur for their operations turned out to also be a scam. Con artists pulling a con; quelle surprise!
- supahfly_remix 2y ago
  This class sounds interesting. Where can I learn more about these techniques? (I'm curious, not planning on using them!)
  - bunderbunder 2y ago
    Looks like googling "Harrah's data science" turns up a decent volume of articles. I won't link any in particular here because I haven't read any of them so I don't know which ones are good.
    - supahfly_remix 2y ago
      Thanks! Yes, I was looking for recommended papers/info.
  - schlauerfox 2y ago
    Probably here, but might be dry. https://link.springer.com/journal/10899 https://link.springer.com/journal/10899
pjlegato 2y ago
How shall we as a society decide who is to be denied agency in this way, because someone else determines they are to be infantilized, deemed incapable of exercising full responsibility for their own -- entirely voluntary -- actions? Can you propose a universally acceptable formula or philosophy? Shall we just consult you on a case by case basis to determine when and where a putative power differential exists, and exactly when such a differnetial becomes large enough to verge into "unfair"?
- snapcaster 2y ago
  Why is that the standard? We're in the real world not magic libertarian logic automaton world. We have the ability to judge social harm and weigh it against the benefits and make nuanced decisions edit: like how we've managed to do with literally every single other law?
  - pjlegato 2y ago
    You mean the way we passed the current laws that allow such gambling, which you are now complaining about? By that standard, we're done, the matter has already been concluded in favor of "allow gambling."
    - snapcaster 2y ago
      Yes, and I think that was a huge mistake. What is your point again? edit: things can improve, women can open bank accounts without their husband approving it now! We decided something, re-evaluated and made a better decision
      - pjlegato 2y ago
        This takes us back to the beginning: how shall we determine when the social process has failed, and what constitutes "improvement"? Society has already spoken on this matter. It seems that your criteria amount to nothing more than "when I personally dislike the results of the social process, the social process has failed, and we ought to revisit it." So I ask again the question you've begged: by what formula or philosophy are we to determine when a social decision such as "allow gambling" is bad? Is there anything beyond your personal feelings on a topic that we can turn to as a criterion?
lesuorac 2y ago
Well, it's not really their choice. If you're really good at picking your bets the sites will all limit or kick you off. Sports betters really only allow losers to do it. There's a bit of a different ring to "We only let losers choose to play".
- scotty79 2y ago
  Shouldn't there be a primary school education about this?
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    Yeah it's called math class.
pbreit 2y ago
Is there a viable way to limit the amounts but still make it enjoyable? I guess the issue is that $10, $100, $1,000 or $10,000 would be different for everyone. I myself only need $10 or $100 on something to "make it interesting".
- Mordisquitos 2y ago
  This may sound crazy, but one way to keep it enjoyable but remove all the negatives could be to allow profit-driven betting only using non-liquidisable, non-transferrable tokens which cannot be aquired or topped up for money. Make the betting industry operate on a flat subscription based model in which token top-ups cannot be correlated with customer payment. That way gamblers can continue to bet their betting-coins like crazy, show off their big wins, and maybe even exchange large amounts of "earnings" for non-cash prizes, arcade style, depending on what the betting platforms decide to offer to the market. However, win or lose, there must never be a way to top up or increase token wins by spending more money on said platforms. Edit: Maybe, with effective regulation ensuring gamblers cannot open (and thus spend) more than X simultaneous gambling subscriptions across the market, large betting-token earnings could be allowed to be exchanged for cash prizes, to the extent the gambling platform may consider it profitable. Of course by its very nature this would make top cash winnings orders of magnitude lower than when betting actual money, given the flat income stream. But that would itself be the point, providing no incentive for gambling business to encourage addiction for greater profits.
jnwatson 2y ago
I walked into the local convenience store the other day and it dawned on me that it exists solely to serve addictions. Nicotine addiction? Cigarettes and vapes galore. Sugar/fat addiction? Dozens of options. Gambling addiction? Multiple lotteries, scratch off, and a couple of video machines in the corner. Alcohol? Plenty of options there too.
- psunavy03 2y ago
  It doesn't exist "solely to serve addictions." Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic, but some are. Not everyone who buys a candy bar is on the path to morbid obesity/diabetes, etc., but some are. Not everyone who buys an occasional lottery ticket or burns $100 at a casino is a gambling addict, but some are. The most addictive item on that list by a long shot is almost certainly nicotine, but even then, there are people who maybe have a cigar on special occasions every couple of years, but otherwise don't smoke. Black-and-white thinking is a plague on modern society.
  - misja111 2y ago
    I'm not so sure if nicotine is the most addictive, but if it is, certainly not by a long shot. I would say sugar is equally addictive.
adventured 2y ago
It is a freedom issue. It's exactly that. Why insist on broadening the premise with "regular people like us" and "we the people". If your message is potent you wouldn't need to try to speak for a crowd. I don't need protection from those supposed forces. In a functioning market economy - which essentially all developed nations possess - I can easily control what food I consume and I can easily control whether I gamble or not. That was true for the years when I was poor as an adult and it was true for my parents who were lower middle class / poor while I was growing up. I don't personally like prostitution, and it should absolutely be legal. I don't personally like cocaine or marijuana, and they both should be legal. I don't personally like late-term abortion, and late-term abortion should absolutely be legal. I find it disgusting when people glug glug glug 72 gallons of soda while they sit there 250 pounds overweight. It's grotesque. And they should absolutely be allowed to do it. It is a freedom issue. It's either their body or it isn't. The same goes for abortion as it does what food you get to consume and whether you get to sleep with prostitutes, snort cocaine or gamble (with your brain/body and the money from your labor). Who does your body belong to? The moment you start dictating that the state owns your body and what you can do with it, you have started down the path of authoritarianism (whether fascism or other). You'd have to have an extreme authoritarian society, to follow your premise to its logical conclusion in terms of what it implies about the culture and the restraints to be imposed.
- biorach 2y ago
  > The moment you start dictating that the state owns your body and what you can do with it, No one said that, and it's a very extreme interpretation of the comment you're replying to > you have started down the path of authoritarianism That's an example of the fallacy of infinite progression - that a societal trend will continue forever once started In a complex system like a society, it's perfectly possible for a trend for e.g. regulation of the personal sphere to give rise to countervailing forces that end up in a steady state There are plenty of societies e.g. the Nordic states, that have much higher regulation than the USA, yet have remained stable for decades and show no sign of descending into authoritarianism
Hasz 2y ago
I hate gambling, so I don't gamble. However, if you want to gamble, more power to you. However, I don't want protection enforced by the government here. I want the government to protect the air, water, military, forces of nature, etc. I do not want them regulating and optimizing every facet of my life. Drinking is objectively a drain on society, but you can see how well banning that in America went.
- boesboes 2y ago
  There is a big difference between regulating advertising for something and banning it.
acomjean 2y ago
Someone in the research offices at IBM had a bumper sticker that said “the lottery, a tax on people that don’t understand math” Also the local conscience store I frequented at one job in newton, the owner put up a sign saying “people here have won $500,000 in the lottery last year”. I noted that seemed like a lot, she looked at me and said, I know what they spend, it’s not a lot, then proceeded to go on a little talk about gambling being bad. When another customer came in that ended. I bought my snack and moved on. That said, I’ll loose 100$ every couple years gambling in person. I do enjoy it as entertainment. I can’t see how it’s enjoyable online though.. When you win something, it’s a little thrill. I can see how it can overwhelm you. Also people only tell stories of “winning”. It rare to hear the loosing stories.
- RandallBrown 2y ago
  > I can’t see how it’s enjoyable online though.. With Sports gambling the entertainment doesn't come from actually placing the bet, it comes from watching the game that now has higher stakes.
kryogen1c 2y ago
> The older I get the more I hate gambling > This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge power asymmetry ive been fiercely libertarian most of my life but, like you, im starting to realize its just not practical. libertarianism made sense 100 years ago; you still needed a limited but powerful government to monopoly bust, but the consumer was close enough to the source of all information. smart people could invent products and whole industries from the ground up. you could know whats going on. this is no longer the case. god help me for the pseudomarxist thing im about to say (and believe), but individual people are helplessly separated from the source; everything is insulated by layers of abstraction. the gift of reduced margin via capitalism and globalisation has cursed us with powerlessness. how many information wars are you prepared to fight? teflon, ddt, pfoas, bpa, bpb, bps, bpf, bpaf, lead, asbestos, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, psychedelics, birth control, opioids, hormones, climate change, plastic waste, electronic waste, landfilling, recycling, antibiotics, urban planning, housing development, GMO food, monocropping, wastewater, topsoil, algae blooms, overfishing, deforestation, AGI, LLM, ad tech, social media, diet (sugar, cholesterol, fat), msg, processed foods, radiation (cellular, microwave, electromagnetic power lines), conflict minerals, 3rd world labor and global supply chains, slavery (theres 10s of millions of literal slaves in the world, remember?), human trafficking, israel and palestine, north korea, china, Uyghurs, russia and ukraine, ongoing gender apartheid in parts of the middle east, war torn africa, local state and federal politics. plus the hundreds i didnt think of and the thousands i dont know i need to care about.
- jeremyjh 2y ago
  100 years ago there were literally people selling snake oil as medicine. There have always been soft rubes to fleece. What changed is our society decided there should be limits to that, and could afford to do something about it so now we have things like the FDA. A society has the ethics it can afford.
- snapcaster 2y ago
  Yeah well said. I've gone through a similar journey in terms of my thinking on these topics
kerkeslager 2y ago
I think at a fundamental level it is a freedom issue. There is one and only one limit on freedom which I believe in: when one individual (or group) begins to infringe the freedoms of others. The problem which I see in a lot of ideologies which purport to value freedom, is a naive idea that government is the only organization which can infringe on individual freedoms, and this is blatantly and obviously false. Corporations and religious organizations can and do infringe individual freedoms all the time, and a society which fails to address this problem becomes less and less free as these organizations become the de-facto oligarchy. We don't need to set aside our belief in freedom to fight against these organizations, and I think when we do that, we're making a huge concession we don't need to make. Casinos and advertisers manipulating people to take their money and provide little value in return absolutely is a freedom issue: casinos and advertisers are manipulating us to give up the freedoms money allows us. When we make concessions like, > This isn't some "freedom" issue I think we lose a lot of the people who care about freedom, when we could be explaining to those people how these companies infringe their freedoms.
czhu12 2y ago
I'm kind of the in "hey its their choice" camp but would love to hear an alternative perspective. My main gripe is that it seems like a strangely weird place to decide where we need protection. I would think a similar article could be written about, just off the top of my head: * Junk food * Participating in dangerous sports (Football, Boxing, etc) * All forms of gambling * Alcohol, cigarettes * Pornography All of which are also dangerous, potentially addictive, and probably has a larger net negative impact than sports gambling. What principles could be adopted to not turn this into a larger and larger bureaucracy that decides which of these industries gets preferential treatment over another?
- throwup238 2y ago
  > What principles could be adopted to not turn this into a larger and larger bureaucracy that decides which of these industries gets preferential treatment over another? How about evidence based policy? We've seen what happens with drug prohibition and we've seen what happens with gambling prohibition. The former leads to an extensive underworld and tons of negative consequences but the latter wasn't nearly as bad. What were the downsides of the prohibition on sports gambling? How many fewer people lost their savings to a blackmarket bookie versus the number of people who lose money now on the easily accessible mobile apps? I struggle to think of any net-negative effects of the prohibition on gambling - all the negative effects of gambling get worse when it's legalized.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    What happened to the numbers racket(s), and why do I want to consign that to the past and the era of prohibition? Did it decline along with the mafia? Was it diluted by state lotteries? Was it never so bad in the first place?
  - czhu12 2y ago
    Well, I'd argue the net negative effects are people who enjoy responsible sports gambling aren't able to do it anymore. The state can of course, claim that no one should be gambling on sports anyways, so its not a problem that people lose access, just as it can with any other vice. People who have no interest in sports gambling would of course, not care either way. If there is no value assigned to having the freedom, in and of itself, then of course, banning anything becomes trivial. I think under this criteria, as long as we can have an "effective" ban (ie: no black markets are created) on anything that is not healthy for people to participate in, it would be worth banning. So basically, anything that is unhealthy, but not yet banned, is only allowed because the state cannot yet find an effective way to ban it.
JamesSwift 2y ago
I have no problem with gambling. I used to frequent gambling boats that would go to international waters to do their thing. I have a huge problem with how sports gambling has been marketed lately (at least here in Florida). Its basically the same as smoking/vaping for me. Allow people their choice. It should be illegal to market it in 'cool' / 'sexy' ways, which is what I am seeing in todays advertising.
sfg 2y ago
I find the power asymmetry is in my favour. I give money to the bookmaker or I don't. If I don't, then the bookmaker is powerless as regards my money. If I do, then I also gain some power over the bookmaker's money. I don't expect many to see it the same way. Most people are more concerned than I am with the problems suffered by those whose decision making does not interact well with the existence of the gambling industry. Given their concerns, it is understandable that they wouldn't share my perspective.
- snapcaster 2y ago
  Do you tend to believe the weak should be protected at all from the strong? I mean just as an overall belief, not specific to this issue
  - sfg 2y ago
    Yes.
noveltyaccount 2y ago
Add social media to that list
llm_trw 2y ago
>When i was younger I tended to think "hey it's their choice" but i've realized how unfair our society is in terms of things like this. Where do we stop? Drugs? Medication? News? Elections? People choose bad things all the time. Thinking you know better is how you end up banning alcohol because it's obviously a terrible vice.
39896880 2y ago
Just wait 'til you read the case against free will...

tdb7893 2y ago

Yeah, the issue with "it's their choice" is that through addictive behaviors they are trying to take away that sort of agency from people. I don't have an issue with gambling in general but I have a huge issue with people trying to trigger and profit from addicting behaviors. It's a phenomenally cruel thing to do to people.

tootie 2y ago
It's very analogous to drug use. The libertarian point of view that people should be free to do what they want with their own bodies makes sense at first blush. But addiction is such an absolute blight on society that ending it will only improve the world.
- dcow 2y ago
  Yeah. I think there must be a balance between let the cyber hippies watch trees grow and needle service for addicts. I don’t even think legalizing weed is aging well.
  - card_zero 2y ago
    Wait, which of those is libertarians?
- tastyfreeze 2y ago
  Drug abuse is lower where people have a strong sense of community. Drug overuse is a symptom of a larger issue of disconnection and disillusionment. Legislating drug use is like saying "the beatings will continue until morale improves."
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    No it isn't, it's very straightforward in every single civilization that has experienced it. humans + opiates = misery. it's not like we're some kind of paragons of logic and rationality we're animals and these are exploits
    - tastyfreeze 2y ago
      I wouldn't use opiates as an example of causing misery. The opium poppy, for thousands of years, was a miracle plant to every society that knew of it. It allows anybody to have access to pain relief. Yes it can be misused. However, ALL opiates are still derived from the opium poppy. The ability for personal or commercial production of opium was removed from everybody by the US influenced UN policy. The UN now declares that three countries in the world are allowed to grow opium poppies to produce opium. That legal opium supposedly is used to create all of the worlds needed supply of pharmaceutical opiates. Every other country that grows Papaver Somniferum and processes it to opium is a target for military action to reduce the supply of illegal opiates. You see, the recent history of opium is a bit like an opium dream itself. A small number of people decided opium is evil and who gets to produce opiates and if you aren't on the list you are their enemy. This policy has done nothing to stop "illegal" production and use of opiates and has made a small number of people unimaginably wealthy while also creating the environment for "illegal" cartels, AKA competition, to flourish. Bayer first sold heroin as a less addictive morphine after all. In the name of enforcing the "allowed producers" list an innumerable amount of people trying to make a living by producing opium were killed. If it looks like a cartel and behaves like a cartel it might be a cartel. I don't even want to go into the proven CIA and FBI complicity in drug trafficking in the name of stopping "illegal" opiates or all the people in jail for using "illegal" opiates. Sure, opiates cause suffering. Its just mostly at the hands of a supranational cartel that we are part of. We aren't even allowed to grow the same plant in the US for seeds that many nations eat as a staple food. However, the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to grow or buy opium from India, Turkey, and Australia and sell millions of derivative opiate pills around the world. But, me being able to grow a handful of plants to produce my own pain medicine or domestic commercial production is the height of evil. If we were all allowed to produce opium personally or commercially we would effectively end the reasons for illegal opiate importers to exist, create jobs for our own people, and remove an immense amount of power from the UN and pharmaceutical companies. We would also remove the need for military adventurism in places like Afghanistan and Myanmar. As an aside, opium production in Afghanistan increased from 82,000ha to 233,000ha during US occupation, which I choose to believe was, mostly because we didn't care and the Taliban had been destroying opium crops. https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bulletin_1950-01-01_3_page003.html https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bu...
- achenatx 2y ago
  when you punish drug use with prison, it is better for it to be legal.
- FlyingAvatar 2y ago
  I mean, I understand your sentiment on addiction but in the US, we have not been terribly successful in ending addiction despite most drugs being illegal for decades. In places like Portugal, legalization with an emphasis on treatment has not really been more successful either.
anthonypasq 2y ago
everything worth doing in life is addicting. you cant just ban/regulate dopamine producing activities
- tomtheelder 2y ago
  Of course, but I think it's worth seriously evaluating the subset of those activities that have an especially large propensity for harm.
- midiguy 2y ago
  Most dopamine producing activities are in some way beneficial in moderation to outweigh the negatives (sex, eating, exercise, even many recreational drugs). I don't know whether pointlessly bleeding money away to some greasy corporation counts there. That said I don't like telling people how they should waste their money but it seems there needs to be some form of a plan for problem gambling.

chankstein38 2y ago

Agreed it feels like nothing more than taking advantaged of underprivileged people. There are likely people who have better means doing sports betting too but the way the ads are everywhere, I get mail from DraftKings even though I've never used it. Predatory is a good word for it. I feel similarly about state lotteries. The ads always manipulate people by making it seem like high-octane fun where people are just winning massive sums of money when the reality is you click a couple buttons and then allow random chance to decide whether or not your money disappears.

llamaimperative 2y ago
I thought online sports gambling was predatory and then I heard about this little fact: If you win a lot, they'll effectively kick you off the platform, or make it non-economical to "play" by reducing your max bet sizes down to $1. Even more diabolical, and clear evidence this shit should be outlawed completely: if you lose a lot, they will increase your maximum bet size
- currymj 2y ago
  this pattern is a pretty defensible way to run a sports book. obviously you don’t want to accept large bets from someone who is doing arbitrage or consistently has inside information. any business with variable prices works this way, if some mysterious person shows up to your car dealership and seems really excited to unload a bunch of used cars on you, you should feel nervous that you’re overpaying or something is wrong with the cars. in my view the diabolical part is the predatory marketing tactics, and making gambling platforms ubiquitous. i say this as someone who, like you, thinks legalizing sports betting is an ongoing disaster, but wants the strongest arguments against it.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    People conceive of gambling as a game where the house typically has a slight edge through fees, information, or structural advantage in the game itself. I don't think this "ban if winning" behavior fits with people's model of "fairness" even in the intrinsically unfair world of gambling. I think a very good first step legislation would be to require disclosure of this behavior. Public appetite would probably be very strong and it wouldn't run afoul of any of the other "people should be free to play games" arguments. You can play the game, but the owner of the game is required to disclose the rules of it.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

> Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant well paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they make money. On the other side is just regular people like us stressed out trying to survive. Don't forget social media. I mean, we have some of the smartest, best paid people on the planet incentivized to use every bit of data they can to hack your evolutionary biology to keep you scroll, scroll, scrolling. I think one reason I've sadly become quite disillusioned with technology is because I see it less and less as a tool for improving the human condition, and more about creating addiction machines to siphon ever increasing amounts of money from the system.

soderfoo 2y ago
> we have some of the smartest, best paid people on the planet incentivized to use every bit of data they can to hack your evolutionary biology... It's such a waste of a generation's talent. I think about this from time to time. What problems could we be solving? How much further would the cutting edge of innovation be? It's kind of depressing.
- chillingeffect 2y ago
  On addition to thinking about "how much better could tech be" I insist we begin thinking abt "how much simpler and more peacefully could we live?" Why extract so many resources to run gambling and adtech servers? Why doom infants abroad to mining? Why invade international boundaries to get their resources?
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Making tools for the powerful to use while they manipulate the weak is not merely a waste. It's actively harmful. We're summoning monsters today that we'll have to fight tomorrow.
- bonestamp2 2y ago
  The really sad part is that they could even use that same technology for good AND profit. If it's true that (for example) the facebook algorithm knows if someone is depressed, people would pay real money for the algorithm to shape their behavior and mood for the better.

dec0dedab0de 2y ago

This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge power asymmetry and I think "we the people" need protection from these forces No thank you, I can protect myself.

stackghost 2y ago
>No thank you, I can protect myself. In many ways you actually cannot, in any reasonable way: - You cannot escape surveillance unless you completely (and I do mean completely) withdraw from modern society - You cannot protect yourself from subconscious manipulation by advertising and marketing firms that pay billions of dollars to find and exploit subconscious weaknesses that we all possess - You cannot protect yourself from sweeping changes made (e.g. to legislation) made in response to the interests of lobbyists or bad actors, and in consequence from changes in the behaviour of others, in response
- ghastmaster 2y ago
  > You cannot protect yourself from subconscious manipulation by advertising and marketing firms that pay billions of dollars to find and exploit subconscious weaknesses that we all possess By learning the techniques they employ, a subconscious manipulation by them, becomes a conscious observation by us. Education defeats these methods. An argument could be made that more money will be spent to continually find deeper subconscious manipulations. I would wager, the ROI would diminish quickly. I would rather be manipulated by private industry than controlled by government. I cannot out vote a majority, but I can out wit a billboard.
  - stackghost 2y ago
    >Education defeats these methods. It does not. For example young women and girls, even when knowing that an image of a fashion model is photoshopped, still exhibit drops in their self body image. >I would rather be manipulated by private industry than controlled by government. In many cases these two things are the same, due to the prevalence and efficacy of lobbying >I can out wit a billboard. Lots of people believe this, but it is false.

kqr 2y ago

This reminds me also of the huge difference between gambling and gambling. Some games are at least somewhat beatable (sports betting, poker) even though the house is most consistent winner. Then there is junk like every slot machine ever, 98 % of online casinos, etc. Lotteries would belong to that category if they weren't such a useful way to sell something few people can afford, or to finance projects with an opt-in taxation.

sleepybrett 2y ago
you are trying to say that there is a difference between pure random luck and 'skill' based gambling. However the both act in the brain the same way and both lead to bad ends to the vast majority.
- card_zero 2y ago
  Sports was a mistake, a waste of the concern and attention of billions of people, ban sports.
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    Come on, do you see "sports" (completed separated from gambling on them) to be a plague on society? Do you have anyone in your family or social circle that had their lives destroyed by sports? It's not even comparable, your comment seems to be in bad faith
    - card_zero 2y ago
      Except if it involves robots or Starcraft, because I like those. But I also like poker, which Sleepybrett seems opposed to.
  - apitman 2y ago
    Assuming this isn't sarcasm... I would be very careful about banning or even dismissing anything that has been popular for thousands of years.

throw0101d 2y ago

> Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant well paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they make money. On the other side is just regular people like us stressed out trying to survive. A similar argument can be made with healthcare (especially the US insurance system). There is all sorts of information asymmetry, not only from available treatments/procedures, but then also providers Kenneth Arrow wrote about this (in 1963), "Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care" (see §II. generally, and perhaps §II. B. specifically): * https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf Some disagree with the above assessment: * https://archive.is/q1nSN https://archive.is/q1nSN / http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/liberals-are-wrong-free-market-health-care-is-possible/254648/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/liberals...

mattmaroon 2y ago

One might argue that gambling being illegal doesn’t protect anyone from it. As a former professional poker player who started off in illegal games, I can tell you, there’s plenty of gambling both legal and illegal available in most places. The line at the gas station of people buying scratchoffs and lottery tickets is proof. The part we likely need protection from is the marketing.

Draiken 2y ago
I have to disagree. Scale does matter. If murder was legal we'd have a lot more of it. We still have them despite it being a crime, but nobody would ever suggest making it legal because some people do it anyway.
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  Vices are very different than murder and the fact that people equate the two is how we get things like prohibition and the war on drugs. Lots of studies have shown that legalizing drug use does not appreciatively increase drug use, for instance. It’s hard to make an argument that making murder illegal was a net harm to society. It’s really easy to make that argument with vices, in fact any history book probably will in the section on prohibition. Sports betting is not any more insidious than any other type of gambling. Even if legalizing it has increased the amount of sports betting, which likely it has, we don’t know that it has increased the overall amount of gambling, and we certainly don’t know that it has increased the overall amount of societal harm from gambling, no matter how many great anecdotes we get from newspaper articles. Perhaps people have simply switched from the lottery or slot machines to sports betting. Perhaps some are better off because sports betting has a much lower house edge than the lottery or a lot of other forms of gambling. I could tell you for sure there is a whole lot of illegal sports betting going on, or at least there was. There is a seedy black market that I would be willing to bet has been largely destroyed by the ability to Gamble from your phone. (I’m far too removed from it these days to have any firsthand knowledge of the current situation.) I can also tell you about the negative impact that gambling laws have on the lives of non-problem gamblers, myself included. People always reflexively follow the train of logic: vice bad, make vice illegal. It failed when we made alcohol illegal, the war on drugs has been disastrous for the poor, far worse than the drugs we were fighting, and there’s not much evidence to believe it even significantly reduced drug use. The idea that any vice being illegal creates an overall harm reduction has pretty much been shown time and time again to be incorrect, and yet everybody just believes it because it seems like common sense.

elif 2y ago

Impossible optimism can be a good thing too. My family and I play the lottery whenever expected reward is over purchase price. Of course we aren't going to win, but spending $20-50 a week to spend a couple hours dreaming about what we'd do with half a billion is such a fun uplifting family activity that makes us realize our true wishes are a lot closer than needing millions of dollars. Also I probably talk to my father more often about fantasy football than for any other reason, despite not caring about football.. the gamification and having stakes can be a compelling social experience.

JKCalhoun 2y ago
> spending $20-50 a week to spend a couple hours dreaming Guessing that is "disposable" income. Sad when you think of people doing the same thing for whom their income is not disposable.
RunSet 2y ago
> Of course we aren't going to win, but spending $20-50 a week to spend a couple hours dreaming about what we'd do with half a billion is such a fun uplifting family activity I have heard many people say things like this and I always wonder "Instead of dreaming about buying a winning lottery ticket, why don't they just dream about finding one?"

bunderbunder 2y ago

My real wake-up call was the introductory class in my data science master's program. We spent a whole week learning about all the clever tricks Harrah's data scientists found to keep people in the gambling halls. The course's instructor really lionized Harrah's for doing this, and loved to talk about how much profit it made for the company. For my part, I was horrified. I couldn't find a way to see some of these tricks the use as anything but a form of highly evolved confidence artistry. Legal con artistry, sure. But a legal scam is still a scam. Even if the people getting scammed never wise to the scam, it's still a scam. The arguments about tax revenues and suchlike don't make me feel any better about it. All I see in their success is a demonstration that a great many people will happily turn a blind eye to abusive behavior if they believe they can materially benefit from doing so. And, of course, they never do, anyway. The promises of professional con artists that our communities will benefit if we grant them imprimatur for their operations turned out to also be a scam. Con artists pulling a con; quelle surprise!

supahfly_remix 2y ago
This class sounds interesting. Where can I learn more about these techniques? (I'm curious, not planning on using them!)
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  Looks like googling "Harrah's data science" turns up a decent volume of articles. I won't link any in particular here because I haven't read any of them so I don't know which ones are good.
  - supahfly_remix 2y ago
    Thanks! Yes, I was looking for recommended papers/info.
- schlauerfox 2y ago
  Probably here, but might be dry. https://link.springer.com/journal/10899 https://link.springer.com/journal/10899

pjlegato 2y ago

How shall we as a society decide who is to be denied agency in this way, because someone else determines they are to be infantilized, deemed incapable of exercising full responsibility for their own -- entirely voluntary -- actions? Can you propose a universally acceptable formula or philosophy? Shall we just consult you on a case by case basis to determine when and where a putative power differential exists, and exactly when such a differnetial becomes large enough to verge into "unfair"?

snapcaster 2y ago
Why is that the standard? We're in the real world not magic libertarian logic automaton world. We have the ability to judge social harm and weigh it against the benefits and make nuanced decisions edit: like how we've managed to do with literally every single other law?
- pjlegato 2y ago
  You mean the way we passed the current laws that allow such gambling, which you are now complaining about? By that standard, we're done, the matter has already been concluded in favor of "allow gambling."
  - snapcaster 2y ago
    Yes, and I think that was a huge mistake. What is your point again? edit: things can improve, women can open bank accounts without their husband approving it now! We decided something, re-evaluated and made a better decision
    - pjlegato 2y ago
      This takes us back to the beginning: how shall we determine when the social process has failed, and what constitutes "improvement"? Society has already spoken on this matter. It seems that your criteria amount to nothing more than "when I personally dislike the results of the social process, the social process has failed, and we ought to revisit it." So I ask again the question you've begged: by what formula or philosophy are we to determine when a social decision such as "allow gambling" is bad? Is there anything beyond your personal feelings on a topic that we can turn to as a criterion?

lesuorac 2y ago

Well, it's not really their choice. If you're really good at picking your bets the sites will all limit or kick you off. Sports betters really only allow losers to do it. There's a bit of a different ring to "We only let losers choose to play".

scotty79 2y ago
Shouldn't there be a primary school education about this?
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Yeah it's called math class.

pbreit 2y ago

Is there a viable way to limit the amounts but still make it enjoyable? I guess the issue is that $10, $100, $1,000 or $10,000 would be different for everyone. I myself only need $10 or $100 on something to "make it interesting".

Mordisquitos 2y ago
This may sound crazy, but one way to keep it enjoyable but remove all the negatives could be to allow profit-driven betting only using non-liquidisable, non-transferrable tokens which cannot be aquired or topped up for money. Make the betting industry operate on a flat subscription based model in which token top-ups cannot be correlated with customer payment. That way gamblers can continue to bet their betting-coins like crazy, show off their big wins, and maybe even exchange large amounts of "earnings" for non-cash prizes, arcade style, depending on what the betting platforms decide to offer to the market. However, win or lose, there must never be a way to top up or increase token wins by spending more money on said platforms. Edit: Maybe, with effective regulation ensuring gamblers cannot open (and thus spend) more than X simultaneous gambling subscriptions across the market, large betting-token earnings could be allowed to be exchanged for cash prizes, to the extent the gambling platform may consider it profitable. Of course by its very nature this would make top cash winnings orders of magnitude lower than when betting actual money, given the flat income stream. But that would itself be the point, providing no incentive for gambling business to encourage addiction for greater profits.

jnwatson 2y ago

I walked into the local convenience store the other day and it dawned on me that it exists solely to serve addictions. Nicotine addiction? Cigarettes and vapes galore. Sugar/fat addiction? Dozens of options. Gambling addiction? Multiple lotteries, scratch off, and a couple of video machines in the corner. Alcohol? Plenty of options there too.

psunavy03 2y ago
It doesn't exist "solely to serve addictions." Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic, but some are. Not everyone who buys a candy bar is on the path to morbid obesity/diabetes, etc., but some are. Not everyone who buys an occasional lottery ticket or burns $100 at a casino is a gambling addict, but some are. The most addictive item on that list by a long shot is almost certainly nicotine, but even then, there are people who maybe have a cigar on special occasions every couple of years, but otherwise don't smoke. Black-and-white thinking is a plague on modern society.
- misja111 2y ago
  I'm not so sure if nicotine is the most addictive, but if it is, certainly not by a long shot. I would say sugar is equally addictive.

adventured 2y ago

It is a freedom issue. It's exactly that. Why insist on broadening the premise with "regular people like us" and "we the people". If your message is potent you wouldn't need to try to speak for a crowd. I don't need protection from those supposed forces. In a functioning market economy - which essentially all developed nations possess - I can easily control what food I consume and I can easily control whether I gamble or not. That was true for the years when I was poor as an adult and it was true for my parents who were lower middle class / poor while I was growing up. I don't personally like prostitution, and it should absolutely be legal. I don't personally like cocaine or marijuana, and they both should be legal. I don't personally like late-term abortion, and late-term abortion should absolutely be legal. I find it disgusting when people glug glug glug 72 gallons of soda while they sit there 250 pounds overweight. It's grotesque. And they should absolutely be allowed to do it. It is a freedom issue. It's either their body or it isn't. The same goes for abortion as it does what food you get to consume and whether you get to sleep with prostitutes, snort cocaine or gamble (with your brain/body and the money from your labor). Who does your body belong to? The moment you start dictating that the state owns your body and what you can do with it, you have started down the path of authoritarianism (whether fascism or other). You'd have to have an extreme authoritarian society, to follow your premise to its logical conclusion in terms of what it implies about the culture and the restraints to be imposed.

biorach 2y ago
> The moment you start dictating that the state owns your body and what you can do with it, No one said that, and it's a very extreme interpretation of the comment you're replying to > you have started down the path of authoritarianism That's an example of the fallacy of infinite progression - that a societal trend will continue forever once started In a complex system like a society, it's perfectly possible for a trend for e.g. regulation of the personal sphere to give rise to countervailing forces that end up in a steady state There are plenty of societies e.g. the Nordic states, that have much higher regulation than the USA, yet have remained stable for decades and show no sign of descending into authoritarianism

Hasz 2y ago

I hate gambling, so I don't gamble. However, if you want to gamble, more power to you. However, I don't want protection enforced by the government here. I want the government to protect the air, water, military, forces of nature, etc. I do not want them regulating and optimizing every facet of my life. Drinking is objectively a drain on society, but you can see how well banning that in America went.

boesboes 2y ago
There is a big difference between regulating advertising for something and banning it.

acomjean 2y ago

Someone in the research offices at IBM had a bumper sticker that said “the lottery, a tax on people that don’t understand math” Also the local conscience store I frequented at one job in newton, the owner put up a sign saying “people here have won $500,000 in the lottery last year”. I noted that seemed like a lot, she looked at me and said, I know what they spend, it’s not a lot, then proceeded to go on a little talk about gambling being bad. When another customer came in that ended. I bought my snack and moved on. That said, I’ll loose 100$ every couple years gambling in person. I do enjoy it as entertainment. I can’t see how it’s enjoyable online though.. When you win something, it’s a little thrill. I can see how it can overwhelm you. Also people only tell stories of “winning”. It rare to hear the loosing stories.

RandallBrown 2y ago
> I can’t see how it’s enjoyable online though.. With Sports gambling the entertainment doesn't come from actually placing the bet, it comes from watching the game that now has higher stakes.

kryogen1c 2y ago

> The older I get the more I hate gambling > This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge power asymmetry ive been fiercely libertarian most of my life but, like you, im starting to realize its just not practical. libertarianism made sense 100 years ago; you still needed a limited but powerful government to monopoly bust, but the consumer was close enough to the source of all information. smart people could invent products and whole industries from the ground up. you could know whats going on. this is no longer the case. god help me for the pseudomarxist thing im about to say (and believe), but individual people are helplessly separated from the source; everything is insulated by layers of abstraction. the gift of reduced margin via capitalism and globalisation has cursed us with powerlessness. how many information wars are you prepared to fight? teflon, ddt, pfoas, bpa, bpb, bps, bpf, bpaf, lead, asbestos, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, psychedelics, birth control, opioids, hormones, climate change, plastic waste, electronic waste, landfilling, recycling, antibiotics, urban planning, housing development, GMO food, monocropping, wastewater, topsoil, algae blooms, overfishing, deforestation, AGI, LLM, ad tech, social media, diet (sugar, cholesterol, fat), msg, processed foods, radiation (cellular, microwave, electromagnetic power lines), conflict minerals, 3rd world labor and global supply chains, slavery (theres 10s of millions of literal slaves in the world, remember?), human trafficking, israel and palestine, north korea, china, Uyghurs, russia and ukraine, ongoing gender apartheid in parts of the middle east, war torn africa, local state and federal politics. plus the hundreds i didnt think of and the thousands i dont know i need to care about.

jeremyjh 2y ago
100 years ago there were literally people selling snake oil as medicine. There have always been soft rubes to fleece. What changed is our society decided there should be limits to that, and could afford to do something about it so now we have things like the FDA. A society has the ethics it can afford.
snapcaster 2y ago
Yeah well said. I've gone through a similar journey in terms of my thinking on these topics

kerkeslager 2y ago

I think at a fundamental level it is a freedom issue. There is one and only one limit on freedom which I believe in: when one individual (or group) begins to infringe the freedoms of others. The problem which I see in a lot of ideologies which purport to value freedom, is a naive idea that government is the only organization which can infringe on individual freedoms, and this is blatantly and obviously false. Corporations and religious organizations can and do infringe individual freedoms all the time, and a society which fails to address this problem becomes less and less free as these organizations become the de-facto oligarchy. We don't need to set aside our belief in freedom to fight against these organizations, and I think when we do that, we're making a huge concession we don't need to make. Casinos and advertisers manipulating people to take their money and provide little value in return absolutely is a freedom issue: casinos and advertisers are manipulating us to give up the freedoms money allows us. When we make concessions like, > This isn't some "freedom" issue I think we lose a lot of the people who care about freedom, when we could be explaining to those people how these companies infringe their freedoms.

czhu12 2y ago

I'm kind of the in "hey its their choice" camp but would love to hear an alternative perspective. My main gripe is that it seems like a strangely weird place to decide where we need protection. I would think a similar article could be written about, just off the top of my head: * Junk food * Participating in dangerous sports (Football, Boxing, etc) * All forms of gambling * Alcohol, cigarettes * Pornography All of which are also dangerous, potentially addictive, and probably has a larger net negative impact than sports gambling. What principles could be adopted to not turn this into a larger and larger bureaucracy that decides which of these industries gets preferential treatment over another?

throwup238 2y ago
> What principles could be adopted to not turn this into a larger and larger bureaucracy that decides which of these industries gets preferential treatment over another? How about evidence based policy? We've seen what happens with drug prohibition and we've seen what happens with gambling prohibition. The former leads to an extensive underworld and tons of negative consequences but the latter wasn't nearly as bad. What were the downsides of the prohibition on sports gambling? How many fewer people lost their savings to a blackmarket bookie versus the number of people who lose money now on the easily accessible mobile apps? I struggle to think of any net-negative effects of the prohibition on gambling - all the negative effects of gambling get worse when it's legalized.
- card_zero 2y ago
  What happened to the numbers racket(s), and why do I want to consign that to the past and the era of prohibition? Did it decline along with the mafia? Was it diluted by state lotteries? Was it never so bad in the first place?
- czhu12 2y ago
  Well, I'd argue the net negative effects are people who enjoy responsible sports gambling aren't able to do it anymore. The state can of course, claim that no one should be gambling on sports anyways, so its not a problem that people lose access, just as it can with any other vice. People who have no interest in sports gambling would of course, not care either way. If there is no value assigned to having the freedom, in and of itself, then of course, banning anything becomes trivial. I think under this criteria, as long as we can have an "effective" ban (ie: no black markets are created) on anything that is not healthy for people to participate in, it would be worth banning. So basically, anything that is unhealthy, but not yet banned, is only allowed because the state cannot yet find an effective way to ban it.

JamesSwift 2y ago

I have no problem with gambling. I used to frequent gambling boats that would go to international waters to do their thing. I have a huge problem with how sports gambling has been marketed lately (at least here in Florida). Its basically the same as smoking/vaping for me. Allow people their choice. It should be illegal to market it in 'cool' / 'sexy' ways, which is what I am seeing in todays advertising.

sfg 2y ago

I find the power asymmetry is in my favour. I give money to the bookmaker or I don't. If I don't, then the bookmaker is powerless as regards my money. If I do, then I also gain some power over the bookmaker's money. I don't expect many to see it the same way. Most people are more concerned than I am with the problems suffered by those whose decision making does not interact well with the existence of the gambling industry. Given their concerns, it is understandable that they wouldn't share my perspective.

snapcaster 2y ago
Do you tend to believe the weak should be protected at all from the strong? I mean just as an overall belief, not specific to this issue
- sfg 2y ago
  Yes.

noveltyaccount 2y ago

Add social media to that list

llm_trw 2y ago

>When i was younger I tended to think "hey it's their choice" but i've realized how unfair our society is in terms of things like this. Where do we stop? Drugs? Medication? News? Elections? People choose bad things all the time. Thinking you know better is how you end up banning alcohol because it's obviously a terrible vice.

39896880 2y ago

Just wait 'til you read the case against free will...