4 ms·

The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. From you had to know a guy to baseball TV ann

The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. From you had to know a guy to baseball TV announcers giving odds on a home run this inning in less than a decade. I know this is hard to conceive of, but there was a time when there were no gambling ads on TV! The crazy part? The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either!

palmotea 3mo ago
Yeah, it's terrible. One of the things that struck me (in a bad way) when I visited the UK in my 20s was how there were so many bookies everywhere. Now were basically in the same place here. Organized gambling is a net-negative for society, and should be banned, and the bookies are scum that should be driven back under the rocks they crawled out from.
- catlover76 3mo ago
  [dead]
lemoncookiechip 3mo ago
It's not just the USA, it's happening in most of the EU too. Sports betting is especially rampant.
tdeck 3mo ago
Some time around 2015 I remember seeing Powell station in SF completely plastered with DraftKings ads and thinking "wait, I thought that was illegal". It seems to have only snowballed since then. In 2020 I was in downtown Philadelphia before the election and saw a massive screen with a Polymarket ad, and at that time Polymarket wasn't even legal in the US. From nicotine to gambling harmful habits that our society had managed to marginalize have gotten a fresh coat of tech slapped on them and seemingly escaped all constraints.
- giancarlostoro 3mo ago
  Ecigs worry me the most since you really cannot tell what someone truly has in there, it could be nicotine, it could be “legal” THC or other random nonsense, I wouldnt know, it all looks the same. I have a friend who gave up cigarettes for ecigs but he is actually doing it for the nicotine, saves him a fortune, he was smoking a pack a week in NYC. My thing is, how healthy are ecigs compared to real cigarettes really?
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - iwontberude 3mo ago
    Way healthier, it’s not even a comparison. Cigarettes have particulates that are not bioavailable and create the black lung tissue. Here in California we have banned any flavors from nicotine vapes so it’s very straight forward. The best vapes anymore are THC, due to psychoactive effects and flavors, similar level of safety to nicotine.
  - dsabanin 3mo ago
    In a society where government is not participating in helping people with their health care, what moral right does it have to make "unhealthy" things illegal?
    - estearum 3mo ago
      The government does help (to the tune of trillions of dollars per year) with their health care.
    - Whoppertime 3mo ago
      Medicare and Medicaid represent the largest segments of U.S. federal health spending, consuming over a trillion dollars each. Medicare accounts for 21% of national healthcare expenditures. Medicaid constitutes $1 of every $5 spent on healthcare. The US government is helping the poor and the old with their healthcare
  - 3mo ago
grubbs 3mo ago
I've mentioned this on HN before. But it's pretty disgusting that the DC Lottery can advertise here on local TV.
mullingitover 3mo ago
Gambling legalization historically happens in waves following economic downturns because society’s tolerance for exploitation increases. It’s fundamentally a regressive tax that healthy societies won’t tolerate.
- jerf 3mo ago
  There's a number of these problems that end up in a cycle because the solution to some problem is so effective that a later generation forgets what the problem even was. So they remove the solutions. Then they rediscover why they were there in the first place. It's a Chesterton's Oscillating Fence, on a generation time scale.
- autoexec 3mo ago
  Is it tolerance for exploitation or are people just realizing that as poor as their odds are while gambling that's still the best chance they have to make the money they need. A healthy society offers the public better ways to have their needs meet, people gamble when they are desperate.
  - mullingitover 3mo ago
    > or are people just realizing It's a stretch to say that gambling is truly anyone's best option, so 'realizing' isn't the right word here. I'd go with "delusionalizing."
    - autoexec 3mo ago
      As people start to feel that they have no realistic chance to meaningfully improve their economic situation by any other means they'll grasp at whatever hope for a better future they can find. I mean, consider the lottery for example. For most people their odds of ever having $100 million is zero. The lottery gives them a 1 in 300 million chance though. Having any chance at all to get that kind of money is worth a few dollars to a lot of people so the lottery remains popular. The problem we have right now is that people feel so helpless that they feel forced to use gambling to help pay for basic things like rent, medication, and education. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/21/healthcare-students-turn-to-kalshi-betting-platforms-to-pay-for-degrees-survey-shows.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/21/healthcare-students-turn-to-... Gambling rarely pays off for them, but it gives them a chance, and a small number will get some cash. People still have and use more traditional means to get by when they can't get ahead, like shoplifting, maxing out credit cards, and prostitution. Shoplifting is way up from just 10 years ago, American household debt is at record highs, and Onlyfans is pulling in more revenue and more desperate people every year.
ecshafer 3mo ago
I am hard-line on this. Sports betting and prediction markets should be banned. Casinos should be banned. Scratch offs should be banned. Its feeding into the worst tendencies of people and hurts the most disadvantaged families. People playing a poker game with their friends, or buying a super bowl square at their bar isn't great but at least it was off to the side and hidden. We have a large chesterson's fence level experiment in society where all of these good ideas the progressives have had to keep society civil and healthy in the late 1800s and early 1900s, have slowly been removed, to terrible results.
- SubmarineClub 3mo ago
  What blows my mind is how many “progressives” I know who really support this libertarian-style maximum “freedom.” I’ve been the stodgy conservative of my friend group saying “uh, maybe there was a good reason for banning this stuff?” Pretty funny, since I actually was a committed libertarian for a while.
  - ecshafer 3mo ago
    A big difference I think is that Progressivism was based on Christianity and Utopian Socialist ideals in the 1800s and 1900s (at least in the United States). So it was much easier for them to support child labor laws, pensions, banning drinking and gambling, etc. by looking at it from the perspective of protecting the poor and destitute, making the nation strong, etc.. Even the Imperial Germans did progressive programs from a paternalistic conservative approach. People were pointing to the Gospel or Rerum Novarum. Not progressivism is more rooted in anarchism or marxism. Which is why they have a lot more saying to remove property rights. Or they will push for legalizing drugs and abolishing prisons, despite that obviously making society worse, but the state, property, etc are all evil.
  - cwmma 3mo ago
    A lot of libertarian dogma is based on classic homo economicus 'lets pretend people act perfectly rationally' type theories that just really break down when confronted with how humans actually act.
imglorp 3mo ago
For a while, we had tons of alcohol and cigarette ads. At some point they were both deemed catastrophically harmful to society. Maybe prediction markets end up there?
- ratelimitsteve 3mo ago
  unfortunately the dominant ideology right now states that the ability to do catastrophic harm to both yourself and society in general is fundamental to the nature of freedom, and is therefore paramount.
  - imglorp 3mo ago
    That's the argument we heard back then too. Smoker's rights to spray cancer to everyone around them. Drinker's rights to smash innocents on the roadways. In reality, the tobacco and alcohol industries lobbied hard to protect themselves. Alcohol is still lobbying hard to prevent recreational weed.
    - ratelimitsteve 3mo ago
      >Alcohol is still lobbying hard to prevent recreational weed. It's wild how using the drug I make is freedom and using the drug someone else makes is slavery
bigbuppo 3mo ago
I'm not completely anti-gambling, but I'm of the mind that if you're going to gamble away your life savings you should at least be required to put on pants and go to a sketchy betting parlor. Online gambling platforms make it too easy.
- recursivedoubts 3mo ago
  i am now complete anti-gambing and anti-pharma ads
- triceratops 3mo ago
  Couldn't agree more. Allow gambling in casinos or sports betting shops. Strictly ban online gambling and any form of gambling advertising. Ban alcohol advertising too. I love alcohol myself. People who want it can find it without being told.
tiffanyh 3mo ago
Crypto + Betting is a match made in heaven. Both audiences are super speculative.
cogman10 3mo ago
> The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either! Not really true in the US. (I take what you are saying to mean there weren't any/many pharmaceutical commercials a decade ago) Here's one from the 2000s that ended up maming about 10,000 people. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTUoeaQGL1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTUoeaQGL1s
dctoedt 3mo ago
> The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress implicitly predicted this (albeit for Luna, which was obviously modeled on the U.S.). (Heinlein was right about so many things ....) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress

palmotea 3mo ago

Yeah, it's terrible. One of the things that struck me (in a bad way) when I visited the UK in my 20s was how there were so many bookies everywhere. Now were basically in the same place here. Organized gambling is a net-negative for society, and should be banned, and the bookies are scum that should be driven back under the rocks they crawled out from.

catlover76 3mo ago
[dead]

lemoncookiechip 3mo ago

It's not just the USA, it's happening in most of the EU too. Sports betting is especially rampant.

tdeck 3mo ago

Some time around 2015 I remember seeing Powell station in SF completely plastered with DraftKings ads and thinking "wait, I thought that was illegal". It seems to have only snowballed since then. In 2020 I was in downtown Philadelphia before the election and saw a massive screen with a Polymarket ad, and at that time Polymarket wasn't even legal in the US. From nicotine to gambling harmful habits that our society had managed to marginalize have gotten a fresh coat of tech slapped on them and seemingly escaped all constraints.

giancarlostoro 3mo ago
Ecigs worry me the most since you really cannot tell what someone truly has in there, it could be nicotine, it could be “legal” THC or other random nonsense, I wouldnt know, it all looks the same. I have a friend who gave up cigarettes for ecigs but he is actually doing it for the nicotine, saves him a fortune, he was smoking a pack a week in NYC. My thing is, how healthy are ecigs compared to real cigarettes really?
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- iwontberude 3mo ago
  Way healthier, it’s not even a comparison. Cigarettes have particulates that are not bioavailable and create the black lung tissue. Here in California we have banned any flavors from nicotine vapes so it’s very straight forward. The best vapes anymore are THC, due to psychoactive effects and flavors, similar level of safety to nicotine.
- dsabanin 3mo ago
  In a society where government is not participating in helping people with their health care, what moral right does it have to make "unhealthy" things illegal?
  - estearum 3mo ago
    The government does help (to the tune of trillions of dollars per year) with their health care.
  - Whoppertime 3mo ago
    Medicare and Medicaid represent the largest segments of U.S. federal health spending, consuming over a trillion dollars each. Medicare accounts for 21% of national healthcare expenditures. Medicaid constitutes $1 of every $5 spent on healthcare. The US government is helping the poor and the old with their healthcare
- 3mo ago

grubbs 3mo ago

I've mentioned this on HN before. But it's pretty disgusting that the DC Lottery can advertise here on local TV.

mullingitover 3mo ago

Gambling legalization historically happens in waves following economic downturns because society’s tolerance for exploitation increases. It’s fundamentally a regressive tax that healthy societies won’t tolerate.

jerf 3mo ago
There's a number of these problems that end up in a cycle because the solution to some problem is so effective that a later generation forgets what the problem even was. So they remove the solutions. Then they rediscover why they were there in the first place. It's a Chesterton's Oscillating Fence, on a generation time scale.
autoexec 3mo ago
Is it tolerance for exploitation or are people just realizing that as poor as their odds are while gambling that's still the best chance they have to make the money they need. A healthy society offers the public better ways to have their needs meet, people gamble when they are desperate.
- mullingitover 3mo ago
  > or are people just realizing It's a stretch to say that gambling is truly anyone's best option, so 'realizing' isn't the right word here. I'd go with "delusionalizing."
  - autoexec 3mo ago
    As people start to feel that they have no realistic chance to meaningfully improve their economic situation by any other means they'll grasp at whatever hope for a better future they can find. I mean, consider the lottery for example. For most people their odds of ever having $100 million is zero. The lottery gives them a 1 in 300 million chance though. Having any chance at all to get that kind of money is worth a few dollars to a lot of people so the lottery remains popular. The problem we have right now is that people feel so helpless that they feel forced to use gambling to help pay for basic things like rent, medication, and education. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/21/healthcare-students-turn-to-kalshi-betting-platforms-to-pay-for-degrees-survey-shows.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/21/healthcare-students-turn-to-... Gambling rarely pays off for them, but it gives them a chance, and a small number will get some cash. People still have and use more traditional means to get by when they can't get ahead, like shoplifting, maxing out credit cards, and prostitution. Shoplifting is way up from just 10 years ago, American household debt is at record highs, and Onlyfans is pulling in more revenue and more desperate people every year.

ecshafer 3mo ago

I am hard-line on this. Sports betting and prediction markets should be banned. Casinos should be banned. Scratch offs should be banned. Its feeding into the worst tendencies of people and hurts the most disadvantaged families. People playing a poker game with their friends, or buying a super bowl square at their bar isn't great but at least it was off to the side and hidden. We have a large chesterson's fence level experiment in society where all of these good ideas the progressives have had to keep society civil and healthy in the late 1800s and early 1900s, have slowly been removed, to terrible results.

SubmarineClub 3mo ago
What blows my mind is how many “progressives” I know who really support this libertarian-style maximum “freedom.” I’ve been the stodgy conservative of my friend group saying “uh, maybe there was a good reason for banning this stuff?” Pretty funny, since I actually was a committed libertarian for a while.
- ecshafer 3mo ago
  A big difference I think is that Progressivism was based on Christianity and Utopian Socialist ideals in the 1800s and 1900s (at least in the United States). So it was much easier for them to support child labor laws, pensions, banning drinking and gambling, etc. by looking at it from the perspective of protecting the poor and destitute, making the nation strong, etc.. Even the Imperial Germans did progressive programs from a paternalistic conservative approach. People were pointing to the Gospel or Rerum Novarum. Not progressivism is more rooted in anarchism or marxism. Which is why they have a lot more saying to remove property rights. Or they will push for legalizing drugs and abolishing prisons, despite that obviously making society worse, but the state, property, etc are all evil.
- cwmma 3mo ago
  A lot of libertarian dogma is based on classic homo economicus 'lets pretend people act perfectly rationally' type theories that just really break down when confronted with how humans actually act.

imglorp 3mo ago

For a while, we had tons of alcohol and cigarette ads. At some point they were both deemed catastrophically harmful to society. Maybe prediction markets end up there?

ratelimitsteve 3mo ago
unfortunately the dominant ideology right now states that the ability to do catastrophic harm to both yourself and society in general is fundamental to the nature of freedom, and is therefore paramount.
- imglorp 3mo ago
  That's the argument we heard back then too. Smoker's rights to spray cancer to everyone around them. Drinker's rights to smash innocents on the roadways. In reality, the tobacco and alcohol industries lobbied hard to protect themselves. Alcohol is still lobbying hard to prevent recreational weed.
  - ratelimitsteve 3mo ago
    >Alcohol is still lobbying hard to prevent recreational weed. It's wild how using the drug I make is freedom and using the drug someone else makes is slavery

bigbuppo 3mo ago

I'm not completely anti-gambling, but I'm of the mind that if you're going to gamble away your life savings you should at least be required to put on pants and go to a sketchy betting parlor. Online gambling platforms make it too easy.

recursivedoubts 3mo ago
i am now complete anti-gambing and anti-pharma ads
triceratops 3mo ago
Couldn't agree more. Allow gambling in casinos or sports betting shops. Strictly ban online gambling and any form of gambling advertising. Ban alcohol advertising too. I love alcohol myself. People who want it can find it without being told.

tiffanyh 3mo ago

Crypto + Betting is a match made in heaven. Both audiences are super speculative.

cogman10 3mo ago

> The other half of the ads you see on TV (pharmaceuticals) weren't there either! Not really true in the US. (I take what you are saying to mean there weren't any/many pharmaceutical commercials a decade ago) Here's one from the 2000s that ended up maming about 10,000 people. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTUoeaQGL1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTUoeaQGL1s

dctoedt 3mo ago

> The complete transformation and legitimization of betting culture in the United States has been surreal to watch. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress implicitly predicted this (albeit for Luna, which was obviously modeled on the U.S.). (Heinlein was right about so many things ....) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress