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Gambling is a negative externality that needs to be taxed. Gambling takes advantage of the poor, under-educated, and addictive personalities and puts them into
by echelon 1mo ago
Gambling is a negative externality that needs to be taxed.
Gambling takes advantage of the poor, under-educated, and addictive personalities and puts them into financial distress. This places burden on families, the state, and local municipalities. It creates strain on the workforce and deflects legitimate economic activity that would otherwise strengthen the economy.
We're a free society. I'm fine with gambling from a personal liberty perspective, but the companies that facilitate and profit need to pay 40-50% of their gross revenue to the government. That's comparable to tobacco.
Companies also need to be restricted in how they are able to advertise their vices. Never to children, and never targeted to at-risk personality types.
They also need to be tightly regulated and kept from using dark patterns and addictive gotcha mechanics to cause even greater harm to those most at risk.
- jareklupinski 1mo ago> companies need to pay 40-50% of their gross revenue to the government. That's comparable to tobacco. taxing a vice is worth it on paper, but the second-order effects (nonstop alcohol ads, pervasive gambling app dark patterns) aren't worth it imo
- combobyte 1mo agoWhen was the last time you saw an ad for cigarettes? Those second-order effects are easy to mitigate with sensible public policy. And it's not like we have to invent the solution from scratch — we've done it before, very effectively.
- ryandrake 1mo agoThis is the correct reply to the constant "but whatabout" replies, that inevitably come up whenever you suggest regulation. "You've regulated bad thing X, but then they'll do Y!" So regulate Y! It's not like legislators only get one crack at a law. We should elect a government willing to move fast and iterate when loopholes are uncovered.
- gopher_space 1mo agoI mean if you're arguing an edge case you've already accepted the central point, so it's not like a response needs to be made. We handle edge cases.
- inigyou 1mo agoThe thing is that US Congress can't make laws. It just can't. It's nonfunctional. When it does that's the rare exception, and it better be perfect the first time because you won't get so lucky twice.
- mlrtime 1mo agohttps://legiscan.com/US/legislation?status=passed https://legiscan.com/US/legislation?status=passed Seems like they can, or you mean they can't 'make laws' that you personally care about?
- inigyou 1mo agoCloudflare block page - I'm a bot. What does it say?
- mepiethree 1mo agoIMO this link proves the poster’s point. We are passing 1-2 laws a week. So far the 119th congress has passed 104 laws 100 years ago, the 69th congress passed over 1500 laws, plus hundreds of continuing resolutions, treaties, etc https://www.loc.gov/collections/united-states-statutes-at-large/articles-and-essays/vol44-48/ https://www.loc.gov/collections/united-states-statutes-at-la...
- esseph 1mo ago> When was the last time you saw an ad for cigarettes? Today at the gas station on the outside of the pump and the store door.
- dghlsakjg 1mo agoI was at a gas station today that sells tobacco. No ads. Its because even displaying tobacco products, let alone advertising them, is not allowed in that jurisdiction. I'll bet you didn't see any cartoon camels or doctors recomending a brand though, because even where tobacco ads are legal, many tobacco ads are no longer legal. Whether you see ads, and what kind of ads you see is highly regulated. That's the whole point,
- esseph 1mo ago> I was at a gas station today that sells tobacco. No ads. Its because even displaying tobacco products, let alone advertising them, is not allowed. We clearly don't live in the same states.
- dghlsakjg 1mo agoSorry for the ninja edit about jurisdictions. I live in a different country since we don't have states here.
- khriss 1mo ago> Those second-order effects are easy to mitigate with sensible public policy. Regrettably, sensible public policy seems to be in remarkably short supply these days.
- Hikikomori 1mo agoDo you watch movies?
- jareklupinski 1mo agoafter the first fifty years? :) biological organisms develop addiction much faster than political processes
- tofuahdude 1mo agoAren't worth what? The tax? Or the vice being legal in the first place?
- jareklupinski 1mo agoaren't worth the tax: no matter how high you set the tax, it won't offset the amount you have to spend on rehabilitating the effects of the vice legality itself never stopped a vice from being indulged :) it's the cost / benefit that brings back repeat customers and encourages addictive behaviors
- dakolli 1mo agoYou can't tax revenue in sports gambling markets, it actually just leads to predatory gambling products with massive vig/house edge. This was attempted in Tennessee. Margins are extermely low sports betting, like 4.5%. Its actually a loss leader typically. So for casinos that only have this type of wagering it taxes like this aren't going to work. A casino might turn over 50 billion yearly but only have a 2.5% edge in sports betting but you're proposing we tax them on the 50 billion. It doesnt work. It will either push them out of business, or they'll find a way to screw the player to increase margin through even more deceptive products. If the legal entity can't operate because of a tax on revenue than illegal offshore entities will gladly take their place and do. The only solution really is sharia law, a complete ban and harsh punsihments for all operators and customers. I say this ironically but it actually is really the only solution, and even this doesnt work entirely.
- matthewdgreen 1mo agoSports betting was, if not prohibited, then highly-proscribed for most of my life. You could do it in a few places like OTB, go to Vegas, or deal with an illegal bookie. People still gambled, but this made the problem orders of magnitude smaller than it is today. We did not need Sharia law or the guillotine, just an existing system of laws that were generally highly workable. It is not helpful to pretend like we need wild solutions just to achieve results we’ve already achieved and maintained for decades.
- dakolli 1mo agoI really dont think the problem has gotten worse, its just more visible. The previous status quo didnt work either, you just didnt hear as much about it because there weren't commercials. In all reality, the NASDAQ does the entire yearly turnover Klashi and Polymarket combined in a few minutes. It hasnt become as big of a problem as people make it out, but its still a problem. But there's no going back to the status quo with 1990s methods of enforcement. Everyone knows how to use crypto and VPNs, you'd just be pushing people into shady offshore.
- 1mo ago
- karlgkk 1mo agoOr, at least treat it like a public health issue. Used to be that if you wanted to gamble, you had to physically to a dedicated gambling zone.
- consensus1 1mo agoWhich we called the "stock market"
- xoa 1mo agoNo, the stock market is not gambling (or at least hasn't been, need not, and should not be). The stock market is a positive sum game, linked to the growth of the economy as a whole. Humanity is very, very far from the maximum possible utilization (and maximum efficiency) of matter and energy in this solar system or even this world. What decisions we make matters a lot in how well/how fast/whether we continue to get richer, so we've tried however ineptly and haltingly to make systems that reward short and long term gains balanced against current use priorities. And have failed plenty, and may yet fail completely. But it's perfectly possible for everyone to win, for the whole world to get "richer" (defined as being better able to meet human goals & desires within a given mass/energy budget or have more or both). Investments can yield >1x total returns. And that has indeed been the case, that's the story of modern civilization. Gambling in contrast is strictly zero sum at best and always negative sum in reality. A group of people puts in 1x capital, the house takes a cut of that, and then the <1x gets unevenly redistributed and that's it. Nothing is generated, the collective set of people is strictly worse off after the gamble, with a few making gains off the backs of loss distributed amongst everyone else. All while hacking dopamine reward centers that didn't evolve for that. It appears to be the case that we can't perfectly stop 100% of all IRL gambling without a cost that exceeds the benefit. That's life. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be picking as much low hanging fruit as possible, same as with other negative sum brain hacks.
- consensus1 1mo agoI was joking (mostly). The stock market absolutely is positive sum, but at the same time things like 2x levered short VIX ETF's exist...
- zzgo 1mo ago> gotcha mechanics gacha mechanics
- Cyclone_ 1mo agoYou can always just ban things. The families of those who go into financial ruin from gambling would prefer this.
- charcircuit 1mo agoThe government never needs to tax things. If you think it is negative to society then it can be banned so that money can be spent elsewhere.
- pibaker 1mo agoI don't think you can equate Kalshi style "prediction market" with gambling in Vegas. The worst thing that can happen in Vegas is you the gambler go bankrupt. In the meantime we already have reports of war intelligence in Ukraine being distorted so someone who betted on frontline movements can pocket some cash. Losing a war because some rich degenerate is trying to bet his way towards a second Ferrari is less unlikely than you imagined.
- dghlsakjg 1mo agoThe reports that were altered were public reports at the ISW from open reporting, not government intelligence. If you lose a war because you based your tactics and strategy off of media reports instead of your own intel, you weren't going to win that war anyway. That said, I recognize the broader point. Betting on everything, especially things that betters can directly influence is incredibly dangerous.
- inigyou 1mo agoSomeone blew a hair dryer at a weather station at Paris CdG airport to win a bet.
- quickthrowman 1mo agoFarmers in the US were tampering with official USDA rain gauges used to quantify precipitation for crop insurance payouts, all you need to encourage this sort of behavior is a financial incentive and lax security. https://www.agweb.com/news/business/rain-robbers-how-four-farmers-faked-drought-and-stole-millions-crop-insurance https://www.agweb.com/news/business/rain-robbers-how-four-fa...
- lern_too_spel 1mo agoWhy should it be comparable to tobacco? It should be derived from first principles. Figure out the external cost to society and tax it enough to pay for those costs after money distribution overheads. If there is no tax structure where the revenues exceed the costs, ban it. The difficulty with taxing prediction markets is that encouraging gambling on some events incentivizes gamblers to try to influence those events in a way contrary to how people would want to influence them in the absence of gambling, which typically means gamblers are incentivized to influence events in a way that will increase societal harms. For some events, resolving one way or the other is inconsequential, but this is not true for many of the events I see people gambling on in prediction markets.
- mw888 1mo agoYour argument of course sounds nice and fails under your inability to define "gambling." I view favored house-odds, on arbitrary games or not, as unethical and predatory. This is the classic casino slot machine and related. However, Poker doesn't have house odds, it is a fair game. Move one level up: prediction markets don't have house-odds if implemented plainly. On non-game events, they also have a positive externality, which already contradicts your claim: prediction markets predict quite well. Yet another level up: investing in the stock market. The same authentic gambler who burns money into a slot machine can play the stock market to similarly disastrous ends. But if you define this as gambling and want to outlaw or limit it to 'professionals' then you bar people from capital markets which is absurd.
- aaryawxerctvfgy 1mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- tsimionescu 1mo agoPrediction markets very often have house odds, even if the market runner is not the house. When you bet on events, the people who can influence those events and are also betting alongside you are the house. They know or can even decide later what the outcome will be, and yet you are betting against them. This is often called "insider trading" instead of "house odds", but it is ultimately the same thing, the same moral hazard. And note that this is illegal, both in the stock market and in commodities trading - though enforcement varies, and is not very easy anyway. I'd also note that there are significant problems with random reward games / gambling even when there is no house advantage. Gambling addiction is a real problem that destroys some people's lives, just like alcoholism. And people can become addicted and lose their houses by playing poker just as much as they can by betting on roulette.