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I left my home country over 10 years ago, and ever since I've travelled back once every 1 or 2 years. Since 4-5 years ago I started to notice these betting hou
by angarg12 1y ago
I left my home country over 10 years ago, and ever since I've travelled back once every 1 or 2 years.
Since 4-5 years ago I started to notice these betting houses cropping up where my family and friends live. They are impossible to miss, with big pictures of different sports and no windows.
The most important thing to notice is where these place are and are not. They proliferate in working class and less well off neighborhoods, while they tend to be absent from more affluent ones.
These places get a lot of foot traffic, all the locals barely making ends meet, blowing a few tens of euros here and there, with the eventual payoff. It's not difficult to hear stories of people getting into the deep end and developing a real addiction with devastating consequences.
And it's not only the business itself, but what they attract. All sort of sketchy characters frequent these places, and tend to attract drugs, violence...
Legal or not these places make the communities they inhabit worse, not better. I personally would be very happy if family didn't have to live exposed to them.
- kriops 1y agoGuilt by association: If, e.g., violence is a problem, then one needs to deal with the violence. In general, law-abiding citizens are—and should—be free to congregate and partake in their bad habits wherever they please. And even though gambling is generally immoral, it does not infringe on anyone else's God-given rights and has no business being made illegal. Gambling is emphasized above to emphasize we are talking about individuals who are not sufficiently skilled to argue they are not essentially partaking in pure games of chance.
- Retric 1y agoIt’s not about the Gambling, it’s the fact these businesses are collecting a large number of easy victims in once place. Imagine you’re a loan shark. Which of the following seems like a good place to look for customers: upscale restaurant, movie theater, random bar, theme park, baseball stadium, city park, or a sports betting venue.
- dist-epoch 1y agoImagine you're a luxury watch thief. Which of the following seems like a good place to look for customers: upscale restaurant, ... or a sports betting venue. https://robbreport.com/style/watch-collector/luxury-watch-theft-on-the-rise-1236960557/ https://robbreport.com/style/watch-collector/luxury-watch-th...
- watwut 1y agoBy customers you mean "people to sell stolen watches to"? Cause if that is the question, neither of these is a good place. Affluent people wont buy obviously stolen watches directly in the restaurant, they will go through middleman that makes them look legit. And people being there to bet wont be buying watches that much either.
- Retric 1y agoHanging out at the same restaurant is a terrible idea for a watch thief, you will be caught over time. That’s not an issue for the loan shark.
- kriops 1y agoRight. In other words, no one's God-given, negative rights are being infringed upon.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Retric 1y agoRights are merely a simplification of complex interactions. Societies are more focused on what benefits themselves than such simplification. The minimal effectiveness of enhanced interrogation plus the desire of the population not to risk being so interrogated means people are generally apposed to such. Tracking down a nuclear threat is considered something of an exception to this stance by the average person.
- 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- daymanstep 1y agoSports betting is not a game of pure chance, but bookmaking is arguably ethically quite problematic. Most individuals are going up against these very sophisticated statistical models created by teams of quants working with huge datasets that you have to pay substantial amounts to access. I think most bettors don't know what they're up against. And the bookie business model is intrinsically anti-consumer: if you win too much then the bookies will ban you. Whereas bookies are quite happy to keep taking money from addicts even when said addicts have already lost their life savings.
- RataNova 1y agoThe whole "sports betting is a skill game" angle is technically true in theory, but in practice it's like showing up to a Formula 1 race on a tricycle
- SXX 1y agoAnd any active investment platforms are not different at all. A lot of matketing budget is spent to make people believe they can earn money by trading.
- watwut 1y agoThere are some differences: investment platforms wont kick you out if you manage to earn money. Gambling sites do that. If you are loosing a lot, gaming sites make your limits go up. If you are winning a lot, your limits go down. Investment sites dont do that. They also assign "consigliere" to you if you loose a lot. He is supposed to create a personal relationship with you. If you try to stop playing, that person will try to get you back into gaming. You are not betting against investment platform itself, you are betring against other people on it. That is major difference.
- daymanstep 1y agoYeah, the incentives are completely different between exchanges and bookmakers. Exchanges make money regardless of who wins or loses. Bookmakers make money from their users losing.
- bawolff 1y ago> And even though gambling is generally immoral, it does not infringe on anyone else's God-given rights and has no business being made illegal. Neither does smoking, but we still limit the types of advertisements cigarette companies can make. Gambling is ultimately a predatory business that serves to separate people susceptible to addiction from their money.
- happymellon 1y ago> Neither does smoking It absolutely does, and the number of people that died from second hand smoke is awful. It doesn't make sport gambling adverts right, but it wasn't a great example.
- 331c8c71 1y agoIn a similar vein, many people close to gamblers suffer serious consequences from the addiction.
- happymellon 1y agoIndeed. Gambling impacts the family when they spend other people's money. We have every right to ban things that are abusive to society.
- kriops 1y agoTwo word refutation: Passive smoking. I’m sure there is an argument there somewhere, and I’d love to address that if you would care to give it another go.
- watwut 1y agoBeing somewhat skilled does not make it not hazard. And practices of books are purely predatory.
- darth_avocado 1y agoBooks most definitely won’t let you win long term. They only want you as long as you’re losing and can ban you once you win too much. This sounds illegal and isn’t. Discussion 4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45432627 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45432627
- rkomorn 1y agoDo you mean hazard as danger or hazard as luck/random?
- kriops 1y agoIrrelevant. I only bring up the stochastic element because of the implicit argument that people are being victimized by gambling against their will. Since you would be extremely off-topic if you tried to extend this argument to, e.g., Daniel Negreanu engaging in a game of poker, I wanted to explicitly preclude individuals competently engaging in whatever activity is being deemed 'problematic.' It was mostly to help the 'other side' stay on topic; otherwise, I could trivially refute their arguments by counterexamples, e.g., Daniel Negreanu.
- Kudos 1y ago> it does not infringe on anyone else's God-given rights Gamblers have lost their homes as a result of their addiction, I think that impact on their families counts for something.
- keanb 1y ago[flagged]
- nosianu 1y agoYes, they chose their genes and the structure of their brain after all, how irresponsible of them! /s In general, something that happens at scale and consistently is not an individual problem. You have whole armies of very well funded designers of things like processed food, or games, working to deliberate find the faults in human brains, and to make politicians make the laws that lets them do it legally, and you say it's the fault of the individual that falls for it?
- keanb 1y ago[flagged]
- frereubu 1y agoDo you think people with a gambling addiction are enjoying it and making an informed choice to continue, and could therefore just choose not to do it instead?
- psychoslave 1y agoSure. Also blaming individual for consequences for societal constructe they fall into is typical of those who lake any sense of social responsibility. I hope you can see how this kind of argument on themselves don't make anyone extend their perspective if no one challenge its own preconceptions.
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- soulofmischief 1y agoThis argument doesn't account for the inherent, drastic power imbalance between the average participant of gambling and the average owner of a gambling center. Gambling between people, a basement poker game, that's fine, that's no one's business. Handing your money over to rich people operating black boxes that are designed from ground up to mesmerize and mind control you into emptying your wallet is a totally other story. On the individual level, it ruins the lives of anyone who is unable to resist or understand the psychological tricks employed on them. Zooming out, it destroys families, communities and in effect, societies. If we are going to base the legality of gambling on consent and human rights, we have to recognize the limit where consent is no longer valid, due to sickening engagement tactics. Someone's freedom to make money off of my ignorance or weakness does not supersede my right to self-determination and well-being, neither of which are possible when being hoodwinked by exploitative capitalists. If we are to continue allowing corporate gambling operations and 24/7 mobile sports betting, we need to place serious restrictions on how these companies are allowed to operate.
- dist-epoch 1y agoI'm curious how do you feel about drug legalization.
- XorNot 1y agoI'm fairly okay with legalizing everything but absolutely banning advertising it. Which is what we should be doing with gambling: no advertising, as opposed to now where everybody ad break has a celebrity endorsing the intelligence you clearly have when you choose (betting platform).
- soulofmischief 1y agoThe emotional manipulation of paid celebrity endorsement of harmful, engagement-hacking products and services is downright sickening, just the thought of how normalized it's become makes me sick to the stomach. I'm very pro gun, pro freedom of consumption, pro crypto, etc. but once emotional manipulation comes into play, self-determinism goes out the window and people are no longer making free choices.
- darth_avocado 1y ago> while they tend to be absent from more affluent ones. It’s not that they don’t want to be, it’s that affluent neighborhoods tend to keep things that are considered “low class” out of them. The only Safeway in my city that doesn’t sell lottery tickets is the one in the most affluent neighborhood.
- 331c8c71 1y agoI bet the better off do gamble on the financial markets though
- kelseyfrog 1y agoWhen they do it, it's gambling. When we do it, it's investing.
- nine_k 1y agoInvesting is putting money into (hopefully) productive use, like a company with revenue, in an expectation of a return. Gambling is basically redistributing money according to a random numbers generator, It's a negative sum game (because the house takes its fee), but a surprise positive spike game. That spike forms an addiction in the less fortunate.
- ryandrake 1y agoWhen you buy a stock, you're not contributing it to the company's productive use. If I buy $1000 of MSFT, Microsoft doesn't get an extra $1000 in their bank account to invest in their business. That $1000 is going to another bettor to settle his previous bet, and at some point in the future, I'll sell and get an unknown amount of money to settle my bet. Just because historically betting on the stock market has been +EV doesn't mean it's not still gambling.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> When you buy a stock, you're not contributing it to the company's productive use You are marginally reducing their cost of capital.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- RataNova 1y agoIt's frustrating because technically it's all "legal" and marketed as harmless entertainment, but in practice it’s just another way to extract money from people who have the least to spare
- nine_k 1y agoMaybe their having the least to spare is a consequence, and poor impulse control is the cause. Anyway, it's like making money off other human deficiencies, say, poor vision or dyslexia, and mistakes made due to those. It feels unfair, it does not feel like a conscious choice. Hence the understandable backlash.
- Dusseldorf 1y agoThat doesn't feel like a very apt analogy. Poor vision or dyslexia can't easily be hijacked into a cycle of addiction the way poor impulse control can. Making a bit of money helping someone with poor vision is very different than blasting advertisements on every single medium and using predatory practices to draw in those with poor impulse control. Not to mention the continued exploitation afterwards until the victim has nothing left.
- nine_k 1y agoMaking money helping people with poor vision (selling glasses) is fine, of course. I mean exploiting their weaknesses, like using a tiny typeface to write important price information while showing a big price-like number prominently. Doing something formally correct which turns into a trap because of the customer's disability.
- MandieD 1y agoWell over a decade ago, when we were initially looking for a place to rent in Bavaria's second-largest city, which is otherwise one of the safest cities in the country and the world, the quickest way to screen neighborhoods was the presence (or absence) of those little casinos/sports betting offices.
- mrisoli 1y agoI also left my home country about a decade ago. I was already expecting a lot of gambling site ads, they took over the soccer tournament sponsorships almost completely anyway. But what I found out when I came back in the last 3-4 years 100% shocked me. It wasn't just TV and soccer teams, I saw gambling ads in napkin holders at some restaurants, bus stops. I went to get a haircut and the barbershop had TV with gambling ads adorning their frames.
- mns 1y agoI also left my country years ago and come back once or twice a year. This year the city hall introduced a new parking app that can't be installed on a phone with an app store registered outside Romania, because the freaking parking app has a gambling section and they decided to go with gambling instead of supporting a universal parking app (like the previous one that they had) available also for tourists from outside the country. I called them out on that and said that they can't make it available outside the country because of legal issues with the gambling section....
- xnx 1y agoAren't betting houses antiquated now? I assumed even senior citizen would be betting through their phones. Being able to gamble privately, 24/7, with all the psychological/engagement "optimizations" is even more insidious.
- GalaxyNova 1y agoRomania?