4 ms·

Gambling should not be trivially easy to participate in. That's the real problem. If we're pretending it's entertainment, then it shouldn't matter that winners

by scoofy 1y ago

Gambling should not be trivially easy to participate in. That's the real problem. If we're pretending it's entertainment, then it shouldn't matter that winners get shut down... because it's just supposed to be fun. If we're not pretending it's entertainment, then we need to deal with the fact that it's a huge negative payoff vice we shouldn't be allowing to happen easily (make it legal and rare). The idea that we're trying to create "fairness" in a business that basically wouldn't exist if the operators don't have a guarantee of success is ridiculous. We can either require sports betting agencies to have betting lines that require their bets be balanced or we can basically ban them from becoming a large industry.

kelnos 1y ago
I personally think of gambling as entertainment, but that's a luxury of mine, as I don't have a gambling problem. On the (infrequent) occasions I gamble, I pre-set a limit and never spend/lose more than that. If it's gone, I'm done. Every now and then I lose that money so quickly that it's not fun, but that happens so rarely that I generally feel like I've enjoyed myself and have paid an appropriate amount for that enjoyment. Paying for entertainment is a normal activity. People do it every day. But gambling feels different: you can pay a nearly unlimited amount for it. There are usually limits in other forms of entertainment. I can only see so many movies in a theater in a day. I can only go to so many concerts. The number of board games I can buy is limited by the storage space in my house. I'm sure there are exceptions in some types of entertainment I haven't thought of, though.
- incangold 1y ago
  Another example of “entertainment” with scope for unconstrained spending: digital goods in the less scrupulous kinds of video games
  - danillonunes 1y ago
    Which coincidentally often contains gambling mechanics such as loot boxes.

by scoofy 1y ago

kelnos 1y ago

I personally think of gambling as entertainment, but that's a luxury of mine, as I don't have a gambling problem. On the (infrequent) occasions I gamble, I pre-set a limit and never spend/lose more than that. If it's gone, I'm done. Every now and then I lose that money so quickly that it's not fun, but that happens so rarely that I generally feel like I've enjoyed myself and have paid an appropriate amount for that enjoyment. Paying for entertainment is a normal activity. People do it every day. But gambling feels different: you can pay a nearly unlimited amount for it. There are usually limits in other forms of entertainment. I can only see so many movies in a theater in a day. I can only go to so many concerts. The number of board games I can buy is limited by the storage space in my house. I'm sure there are exceptions in some types of entertainment I haven't thought of, though.

incangold 1y ago
Another example of “entertainment” with scope for unconstrained spending: digital goods in the less scrupulous kinds of video games
- danillonunes 1y ago
  Which coincidentally often contains gambling mechanics such as loot boxes.