4 ms·
Sports gambling is a cancer, as are prediction markets. None of it should've been legalized and all of it should be banned.
by cdrnsf 1mo ago
Sports gambling is a cancer, as are prediction markets. None of it should've been legalized and all of it should be banned.
- add-sub-mul-div 1mo agoAt a minimum, if it was going to be legal why could they not have restricted the advertising like we do with tobacco ads? At this point the sports broadcasts themselves are advertisements.
- burningChrome 1mo agoIts not just the broadcasts are advertisements. Its completely engrained in every professional sports league now. They now all have some kind of multi-year contracts with casino's, betting platforms and prediction markets. This is way beyond advertising now. Our local sports talk show has an hour long show that precedes the pre-game that is 100% all about NFL gambling for Sunday's games. Not only are you seeing the advertisements for these platforms and their betting apps, you're having a coordinated focus on actively pushing it in a myriad of other ways as well.
- palmotea 1mo ago[flagged]
- altmanaltman 1mo agoHow is it unjust? A company is not owed any profits, if it gets rekt by an union then it gets rekt. It cannot say "oh its not fair you guys are fighting me, only I can fight you in a just fight!" Ridiculous logic.
- fsckboy 1mo agowhoosh GP is in favor of unions and thinks they perform beneficial public services. They don't. addendum: people who like unions because they balance the power relationship between employee and employer (i.e. the idiots downvoting me, idiots not because they like unions, but idiots because they are downvoting me) might see that as a public service, but it's not, that is a private relationship between employer and employee. it confers no direct benefit to other parties, that's why I said it does not provide a public service. You can't analyze economic relationships without qui bono
- nozzlegear 1mo ago"Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it." – Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, describing how he stopped using sarcasm in his essays because it provokes hostility. He goes on describe the ironic person as a "pest to society."
- palmotea 1mo ago[flagged]
- jdndnfnhm 1mo agoyou need things explained to you step by step yeah
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- porkpieshoe 1mo ago[dead]
- Zigurd 1mo agopalmotea really wants to torque hN's literal mindednes, don't they? This is one place where the joke gets funnier as it gets explained.
- baggy_trough 1mo ago[flagged]
- palmotea 1mo ago> Both unions (as legally constructed in the US) and sports gambling are cancers. What's wrong with sports gambling? No one's forcing anyone to play, and it's a highly lucrative business with lots of customers. Unions, on the other hand, involuntarily infringe on the freedoms of business owners to wield their economic power for their own benefit as they see fit.
- baggy_trough 1mo agoI appreciate the libertarian take on this, which works well for high IQ people and people with good self control. It doesn't work for many without those attributes. Unrestrained gambling can ruin lives and families.
- altmanaltman 1mo agoI would say prediction markets are more dangerous since they don't claim its gambling while sports gambling is much more explicit (not that the industry is a saint by any means)
- swozey 1mo agoPredication markets are literally causing people to start wildfires across the globe, I thought it was just a USA thing going on, but it's global.
- nightpool 1mo agoDo you have any sources for this? My understanding is that all of the discussion about prediction market wildfires are completely speculative, nobody has actually started a wildfire for a prediction market payout yet.
- dylan604 1mo agoIf you win this bet, does the payout come delivered to your door by the police and fire chief?
- swozey 1mo agoI've been in the desert fighting fires for the last 4 months. The news isn't going rampant with the arson stories for reasons (who knows, scaring the public, informing the public, etc). Open the watchduty app and start looking into how many fires are currently arson suspected/apprehended and how this is the largest national wildfire year we've ever had. The Dick and Cleetus methheads doing this stuff aren't the brightest and most well informed tech risk takers out there. Most of them will get caught and never get a dime, who the hell knows how why or else they're causing fires, the FBI isn't investigating anyone. They don't tell us WHY an arson occurred. Who knows how many of these apps exist in other markets, etc. The last global wildfire article I saw said either 86 or 96 arsons were arrested. I can't remember if it was France or in Africa. This is THE strangest wildfire year anyone has had and the news is nowhere. I'm not the only ex-tech wildland person, plenty of laid off firefighters right now back to their old lives. https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/17/climate/betting-wildfires-polymarket-prediction-market-platforms https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/17/climate/betting-wildfires-pol... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/arrested-suspicion-starting-wildfires-europe-france https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/arrested-suspi...
- gadders 1mo agoYou do realise that countries other than the USA exist, right? The UK has had various forms of sports gambling legal for nearly 100 years and society hasn't crumbled and neither did sport.
- gdulli 1mo agoImagine two siblings, one who can handle the freedom of choosing their own bedtime and one who cannot.
- gadders 1mo agoI don't see any country limitation in the original comment.
- gdulli 1mo agoLikely an Amerocentric comment, yes, that assumes gambling can only be as destructive and predatory as it is in the US. I don't know anything about how it works in the UK but it's plausible to me that it's not as harmful a force there, as you say.
- gadders 1mo agoIf it had never happened, maybe sport would be some platonic ideal but if you look at the premier league, it seems to function OK as a sports league comparable to the NFL, despite people loading up on accas for fun.
- SideburnsOfDoom 1mo agogambling in the UK "as destructive and predatory as it is in the US" is not something that I have a measure for, and anyway it is the wrong measure. Even if that is true, UK gambling really is not a force for good, quite the opposite. And becoming worse as it moves from a betting shop on the high street into a betting app in a persons pocket.
- Gattopardo 1mo ago
- dominotw 1mo agohave you seen stock market these days?
- cdrnsf 1mo agoYes. It feels more and more like a casino as time goes by.
- dominotw 1mo agowould love to see if there is any data if stocks are more volatile now for ai related stocks
- Avicebron 1mo agoIs the stock market able to distinguish cancerous vs non-cancerous growth?
- amelius 1mo agoWell, long term trading is what we should stimulate because it corresponds to investments based on insights in the underlying companies. Short term trading, however ... Maybe we should just put limits on how short one can own a stock (?)
- bluecalm 1mo agoYou want short term trading because you want the prices to be as close to efficient as possible. You may never trade short term but at some point you are going to buy and at some point you are going to sell. Market being far from efficient one would hurt you there. So let them trade and discover price. You don't have to play that game but you still benefit.
- ambicapter 1mo agoLong-term traders don't need the price to be as "efficient" as possible by definition.
- vovavili 1mo ago[flagged]
- pyrale 1mo ago> Prediction markets are a wonderful idea Yeah, it's just like being able to take an insurance policy on other people's lives. It's a wonderful idea for all of 15 minutes until people start getting murdered. > bare minimum of regulation No amount of regulation will solve the issue when what you can take insurance on is not regulated. Prediction markets are to insurance the same as crypto is to banking: a speedrun of all the frauds that happened in the past until the perpetrators are sent to jail or regulated so heavily that they are virtually identical to what they were supposed to disrupt.
- vovavili 1mo agoWhat an enormously tendentious and underinformed take.
- FireBeyond 1mo agoWe literally have political appointees betting on the contents of speeches they're about to make, military members betting on the likelihood of classified missions they're about to undertake, people vandalizing/manipulating weather stations. I don't think it's quite that tendentious. You can say "well, but that's not the majority of the marketplace" and you're right. But it's not an inconsequential one, either.
- par 1mo ago"a wonderful idea" -- some hyperbole there.
- vovavili 1mo agoThe theory behind it certainly is unreasonably strong - https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-market-faq https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-market-faq
- fHr 1mo agoTrue absolute cancer on society
- mc32 1mo agoIt should have stopped at Vegas. No reservations exception. Vegas only. No online. No OTB. Vegas only.
- redsocksfan45 1mo ago[dead]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- logicchains 1mo ago[flagged]
- giwook 1mo agoWhere is that "less than 1%" figure coming from or did you just pull that out from you-know-where? And alcohol has always been highly accessible. I have 5 stores within a 5 minute walk of me that I can get it from, and that's not to mention all of the restaurants and bars within that same radius. Addiction is addiction. Alcohol is one object of that addiction. Sports betting can be another. Porn, food, drugs, etc. What's to say sports betting addiction won't become as severe as alcohol now that it's becoming more accessible to the public?
- logicchains 1mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gambling_in_the_United_Kingdom#Problem_gambling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_gambling_in_the_Uni... >What's to say sports betting addiction won't become as severe as alcohol now that it's becoming more accessible to the public? Because it's been accessible for over a hundred years in many countries, from 1861 in the case of Australian horse race betting.
- seizethecheese 1mo agoUnder 1% of the population is not the same as under 1% of people exposed, and if we dramatically increase exposure, we probably will proportionally increase problem gambling. Regardless, this is a good point, this isn’t nearly as high as alcoholism or even drug addiction, I suspect.
- giwook 1mo agoIt's not nearly as available as alcohol or drugs. Of course the percentage will be lower.
- seizethecheese 1mo ago
- cft 1mo agoThe cancerous Wikileaks which also leaked news just like prediction markets has also been eliminated. I hope you celebrated.