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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 y

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.
  - Draiken 2y ago
    That's a lot of assumptions you're making there. We don't know if these people were playing the lottery/slots before? I doesn't matter. They didn't go bankrupt before. Sports betting is way too easy to use and thanks to the "skill" part it tricks people into thinking they have even more chances. Turns out those are chances to lose even more money. Unlike your example of drug use, AFAIK there are no studies saying the same effect happens for sports betting, or even betting in general. This for me is all pointless. We're arguing about something that does not improve society in any shape or form. The typical argument "we've been gambling since forever" doesn't cut it. We've also been murdering since forever, and both are still a net negative in society. If we really need this silly vice, then lock it down. We can't allow this free-for-all where everything is sponsored by betting with money straight from the pockets of addicts, kids are getting addicted with loot boxes and the only ones that profit are the few middlemen that are morally corrupt enough to go into this business.
digging 2y ago
Well banning it would also remove the marketing. Just because some illegal gambling will still happen doesn't mean banning it wouldn't help a lot of people.
- mattmaroon 2y ago
  Overall harm minimization is more than just helping a lot of people. Prohibition of alcohol helped a lot of people but hurt even more. Same with the war on drugs. Combatting vices with prohibition fails over and over, badly, and yet people can’t get past the “common sense” idea that it’s an overall harm reduction no matter how many times they see proof that it isn’t. A much more surgical approach is called for.
  - digging 2y ago
    You are arguing that reversing the very recent legalization of sports gambling would be a net harm to society and that there would be greater suffering than there is today because of that ban. Are you making that argument by accident, because you felt compelled to nitpick some word choices, or do you seriously believe that?
    - mattmaroon 2y ago
      No, I really believe that making vices illegal causes more harm than the vices they’re trying to prevent, and that we see it over and over every time we do it. I think nobody would disagree with me that that’s what happened with alcohol. I’ve been saying that’s the case with drugs for decades and public opinion is turning that way too. It’s true with gambling too. You just likely haven’t seen the harm that happens because of it being illegal. Ever had a gun pointed at you over a game of poker? I have. Doesn’t happen online or in a casino. Ever met people who’ve been violently hurt because they couldn’t pay their gambling debts? I have. Draftkings or your bank aren’t out breaking knees. Making it illegal does not make it go away. If you had been born into a world where alcohol was illegal for a long time, and then it were legal, you’d probably have the same opinion of that, but you know (because you were lucky to be born with the benefit of decades of hindsight) the world is less good that way. This is not different. The harms of gambling can be mitigated much more effectively in ways other than prohibition. Regulation is always better than outright bans. Look at what we’ve done with cigarettes. Making online betting legal was the right thing to do, it being illegal at all was the mistake, we just need to work on harm mitigation. I just don’t even understand people who think vices should be illegal. I mean I do, their thought process is just overly simplistic and they don’t know what they don’t know, but there’s just so much evidence it is the worst possible solution and yet so many people can’t think past “it’s bad so it should be illegal”. Even intelligent people.
ipsento606 2y ago
If your argument is that legalized sports betting doesn't increase the total amount of sports betting, in the absence of extraordinary evidence, that seems implausible on its face.

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.
- Draiken 2y ago
  That's a lot of assumptions you're making there. We don't know if these people were playing the lottery/slots before? I doesn't matter. They didn't go bankrupt before. Sports betting is way too easy to use and thanks to the "skill" part it tricks people into thinking they have even more chances. Turns out those are chances to lose even more money. Unlike your example of drug use, AFAIK there are no studies saying the same effect happens for sports betting, or even betting in general. This for me is all pointless. We're arguing about something that does not improve society in any shape or form. The typical argument "we've been gambling since forever" doesn't cut it. We've also been murdering since forever, and both are still a net negative in society. If we really need this silly vice, then lock it down. We can't allow this free-for-all where everything is sponsored by betting with money straight from the pockets of addicts, kids are getting addicted with loot boxes and the only ones that profit are the few middlemen that are morally corrupt enough to go into this business.

digging 2y ago

Well banning it would also remove the marketing. Just because some illegal gambling will still happen doesn't mean banning it wouldn't help a lot of people.

mattmaroon 2y ago
Overall harm minimization is more than just helping a lot of people. Prohibition of alcohol helped a lot of people but hurt even more. Same with the war on drugs. Combatting vices with prohibition fails over and over, badly, and yet people can’t get past the “common sense” idea that it’s an overall harm reduction no matter how many times they see proof that it isn’t. A much more surgical approach is called for.
- digging 2y ago
  You are arguing that reversing the very recent legalization of sports gambling would be a net harm to society and that there would be greater suffering than there is today because of that ban. Are you making that argument by accident, because you felt compelled to nitpick some word choices, or do you seriously believe that?
  - mattmaroon 2y ago
    No, I really believe that making vices illegal causes more harm than the vices they’re trying to prevent, and that we see it over and over every time we do it. I think nobody would disagree with me that that’s what happened with alcohol. I’ve been saying that’s the case with drugs for decades and public opinion is turning that way too. It’s true with gambling too. You just likely haven’t seen the harm that happens because of it being illegal. Ever had a gun pointed at you over a game of poker? I have. Doesn’t happen online or in a casino. Ever met people who’ve been violently hurt because they couldn’t pay their gambling debts? I have. Draftkings or your bank aren’t out breaking knees. Making it illegal does not make it go away. If you had been born into a world where alcohol was illegal for a long time, and then it were legal, you’d probably have the same opinion of that, but you know (because you were lucky to be born with the benefit of decades of hindsight) the world is less good that way. This is not different. The harms of gambling can be mitigated much more effectively in ways other than prohibition. Regulation is always better than outright bans. Look at what we’ve done with cigarettes. Making online betting legal was the right thing to do, it being illegal at all was the mistake, we just need to work on harm mitigation. I just don’t even understand people who think vices should be illegal. I mean I do, their thought process is just overly simplistic and they don’t know what they don’t know, but there’s just so much evidence it is the worst possible solution and yet so many people can’t think past “it’s bad so it should be illegal”. Even intelligent people.

ipsento606 2y ago

If your argument is that legalized sports betting doesn't increase the total amount of sports betting, in the absence of extraordinary evidence, that seems implausible on its face.