45 ms·

> it will continue happening as long as politicians can be bought to keep it legal. It's quite a complex issue. How do politicians regulate games without infri

> it will continue happening as long as politicians can be bought to keep it legal. It's quite a complex issue. How do politicians regulate games without infringing on players' freedom? How do they discern lawful play from illegal play? Treatment, prevention and awareness is the only practical solution.

wpietri 11y ago
> How do politicians regulate games without infringing on players' freedom? You don't seem to understand that addicts aren't free. If, as downandout suggests, the industry can't exist without the addicts, then the choice isn't one of freedom versus tyranny. It's a choice of which infringement on freedom we find worse: a predatory industry ruining people's lives or the state saying, "Sorry, you can only play games for fun, not money."
- eikenberry 11y ago
  > You don't seem to understand that addicts aren't free. Yes they are. Quit trying to overload the term. Are they slaves? No. Are they in prison? No. Freedom means the freedom from the tyranny of others, not from yourself.
  - enraged_camel 11y ago
    >>Freedom means the freedom from the tyranny of others, not from yourself. That's your own completely arbitrary definition of freedom.
    - eikenberry 11y ago
      http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/freedom http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/freedom
  - mapt 11y ago
    I find myself agreeing. Psychological addictions are a real problem, but not one that I am comfortable involuntarily treating, so long as they do not directly harm other people. On the other hand, I am in favor of regulation sufficient to make the worst-case-scenario equal to the worst-case-scenario of unemployment. The real social problem is only externalized beyond individual and dependents when the stereotypical problem gambler starts seeking lines of credit to further their addiction; This is to be avoided at considerable cost, because not only are their incentives compromised in a manner associated with addiction, but also in a manner associated with fear of whatever private sticks their patrons have to get them to repay the debt, and they have no legal means to do so.
    - wpietri 11y ago
      This is a pretty low-empathy position. You're basically saying that exploiting people for profit is ok as long as it only harms those directly exploited plus their dependents. I don't necessarily think we should ban anything that people could get addicted to. But I'm generally in favor of stopping people making money off of addicts. And I'm thoroughly in favor of banning people from trying to create new addicts. As an example, I think the cigarette advertising bans, mandatory on-pack warnings, and high cigarette taxes are swell.
      - mapt 11y ago
        I'm saying that there are desirable limits on how much a free society constrains voluntary behavior. Cigarettes are physiologically addictive on a separate level from psychologically addictive gambling, or psychologically addictive pornography, or psychologically addictive exercise, or psychologically addictive knitting, or psychologically addictive excessive work ethic. You can find people obsessed with any activity on Earth. It's a very rough ride trying to define a pathological level of each of those activities, and then intervene when that level is reached, with the full power of the state, against participants with no desire for an intervention.
        wpietri 11y ago
        I don't disagree that there are desirable limits. I disagree that physiological addiction to nicotine is societally more harmful than gambling addiction. I also think there are things to do other than "intervene [...] against participants with no desire for an intervention", so I think that's a bit of a red herring.
  - killface 11y ago
    You clearly don't understand addiction. That's fine, but don't try to act like you know it.
    - eikenberry 11y ago
      I know it from the inside. You presume to much.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    Oh hey, I didn't notice you had been elected Grand Poobah of English last week. Sorry. Your use of "freedom" is one meaning, but it's not the only one, or even the main one. Note, for example, that the phrase "freedom from addiction" has 129,000 hits, and there are dozens of books with titled related to the phrase. Similarly, people talk of slavery to their addiction: E.g.: http://www.thehopeline.com/17-lows-of-addictions-part-2/ http://www.thehopeline.com/17-lows-of-addictions-part-2/ If you talk to actual recovering addicts, their experience is one of freedom. And they're not misusing the word; Webster's first definition is "the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action". That is distinct, in their view, from your definition, which they have next: "liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another".
    - vegedor 11y ago
      Psychological addiction leaves individuals physically free to not be addicted, which is important to note, with the exception of their internal barrier, or credit that they could only possibly secure with an unlikely win. The risk can be calculated, it's only an irrational decision if you want to believe in unreasonable chances, bordering on negligence. The rational conclusion drawn from calculated odds contrasts the emotional, gamified desire to win, as the power of another internal motivation. Freedom from both is impossible, but one implies potentially more liability and hence less freedom.
- joesmo 11y ago
  Considering that the state saying, "Sorry, you can only play games for fun, not money." will lead to the creation of a black market and a whole lot of actual crime in addition to the victimless crime of gambling, I think it's pretty clear what the only reasonable and sane option is here and history has proven it over and over again.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    Could you give some examples of the historical horrors of black market slot machines? I'm not familiar. Also, I don't know that we have to ban gambling. I don't think people having the occasional poker game is a big problem. It's industrial-scale exploitation of addicts that I take issue with. I think it would be sufficient to ban profiting from gambling.
    - jamornh 11y ago
      There isn't examples of black market slot machines but there are a lot of examples of black market gambling which ruins lives worse than legal gambling does. My experience is with 3rd world countries, specifically Thailand, where gambling is illegal. I know you're not advocating for a ban on gambling but I think it's worth a mention that due to its illegality, there are widespread issues that stem from it: corruption, cops being in on illegal gambling dens, and mafia / gangs that sprung up to run these under ground dens. Aside from the more organized underground gambling, there are also smaller village style gambling where within a village / town / city, there are bookies that will collect your bet (and people bet on anything: soccer being the main one.) Basically addicts will find a way to gamble whether it's banned, discouraged, organized, or legalized. In the case where it's illegal, the creditor who the addicts borrow money from are usually loan sharks or gang members that take extreme means to recover any money they can. Many families lose homes, life-savings, or even get killed. So it gets pretty bad, IMO it's worse than a legalized gambling system. People who wants to gamble prefer to go to the legal means as it pose much lower risk of extreme repercussions... but if it's not legal, some of them would still find a way to gamble. This may mean that the number of people who do gamble reduces... but I'm not sure by how much and whether that ends up tipping the scale in favor of a ban.
- Red_Tarsius 11y ago
  I empathize with your frustration toward the gambling industry. However, It's not only about the slot machines. You can find the underlying model in many other products, like freemium apps. There's much more subtlety than closing down casinos. Illegal businesses – which don't employ workers nor pay taxes – would likely exploit the new prohibition and its victims. > "Sorry, you can only play games for fun, not money." Addiction-prone individuals will still be unable to function normally in day-to-day life. That's why I believe that treatment, prevention and awareness trumps other obvious proposals.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    > Addiction-prone individuals will still be unable to function normally in day-to-day life. [citation needed] > That's why I believe that treatment, prevention and awareness trumps other obvious proposals. That's a couple of different kinds of false dichotomy. Nobody is saying one can't have treatment, prevention, and awareness while also, say, placing such heavy regulation on gambling that the amount of addiction is minimized. As a comparable model, look at cigarettes.
- tomjen3 11y ago
  If you can't legally play for money you are just going to do it illegally, which is what we see with bookings and the war on drugs.

wpietri 11y ago

> How do politicians regulate games without infringing on players' freedom? You don't seem to understand that addicts aren't free. If, as downandout suggests, the industry can't exist without the addicts, then the choice isn't one of freedom versus tyranny. It's a choice of which infringement on freedom we find worse: a predatory industry ruining people's lives or the state saying, "Sorry, you can only play games for fun, not money."

eikenberry 11y ago
> You don't seem to understand that addicts aren't free. Yes they are. Quit trying to overload the term. Are they slaves? No. Are they in prison? No. Freedom means the freedom from the tyranny of others, not from yourself.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  >>Freedom means the freedom from the tyranny of others, not from yourself. That's your own completely arbitrary definition of freedom.
  - eikenberry 11y ago
    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/freedom http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/freedom
- mapt 11y ago
  I find myself agreeing. Psychological addictions are a real problem, but not one that I am comfortable involuntarily treating, so long as they do not directly harm other people. On the other hand, I am in favor of regulation sufficient to make the worst-case-scenario equal to the worst-case-scenario of unemployment. The real social problem is only externalized beyond individual and dependents when the stereotypical problem gambler starts seeking lines of credit to further their addiction; This is to be avoided at considerable cost, because not only are their incentives compromised in a manner associated with addiction, but also in a manner associated with fear of whatever private sticks their patrons have to get them to repay the debt, and they have no legal means to do so.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    This is a pretty low-empathy position. You're basically saying that exploiting people for profit is ok as long as it only harms those directly exploited plus their dependents. I don't necessarily think we should ban anything that people could get addicted to. But I'm generally in favor of stopping people making money off of addicts. And I'm thoroughly in favor of banning people from trying to create new addicts. As an example, I think the cigarette advertising bans, mandatory on-pack warnings, and high cigarette taxes are swell.
    - mapt 11y ago
      I'm saying that there are desirable limits on how much a free society constrains voluntary behavior. Cigarettes are physiologically addictive on a separate level from psychologically addictive gambling, or psychologically addictive pornography, or psychologically addictive exercise, or psychologically addictive knitting, or psychologically addictive excessive work ethic. You can find people obsessed with any activity on Earth. It's a very rough ride trying to define a pathological level of each of those activities, and then intervene when that level is reached, with the full power of the state, against participants with no desire for an intervention.
      - wpietri 11y ago
        I don't disagree that there are desirable limits. I disagree that physiological addiction to nicotine is societally more harmful than gambling addiction. I also think there are things to do other than "intervene [...] against participants with no desire for an intervention", so I think that's a bit of a red herring.
- killface 11y ago
  You clearly don't understand addiction. That's fine, but don't try to act like you know it.
  - eikenberry 11y ago
    I know it from the inside. You presume to much.
- wpietri 11y ago
  Oh hey, I didn't notice you had been elected Grand Poobah of English last week. Sorry. Your use of "freedom" is one meaning, but it's not the only one, or even the main one. Note, for example, that the phrase "freedom from addiction" has 129,000 hits, and there are dozens of books with titled related to the phrase. Similarly, people talk of slavery to their addiction: E.g.: http://www.thehopeline.com/17-lows-of-addictions-part-2/ http://www.thehopeline.com/17-lows-of-addictions-part-2/ If you talk to actual recovering addicts, their experience is one of freedom. And they're not misusing the word; Webster's first definition is "the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action". That is distinct, in their view, from your definition, which they have next: "liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another".
  - vegedor 11y ago
    Psychological addiction leaves individuals physically free to not be addicted, which is important to note, with the exception of their internal barrier, or credit that they could only possibly secure with an unlikely win. The risk can be calculated, it's only an irrational decision if you want to believe in unreasonable chances, bordering on negligence. The rational conclusion drawn from calculated odds contrasts the emotional, gamified desire to win, as the power of another internal motivation. Freedom from both is impossible, but one implies potentially more liability and hence less freedom.
joesmo 11y ago
Considering that the state saying, "Sorry, you can only play games for fun, not money." will lead to the creation of a black market and a whole lot of actual crime in addition to the victimless crime of gambling, I think it's pretty clear what the only reasonable and sane option is here and history has proven it over and over again.
- wpietri 11y ago
  Could you give some examples of the historical horrors of black market slot machines? I'm not familiar. Also, I don't know that we have to ban gambling. I don't think people having the occasional poker game is a big problem. It's industrial-scale exploitation of addicts that I take issue with. I think it would be sufficient to ban profiting from gambling.
  - jamornh 11y ago
    There isn't examples of black market slot machines but there are a lot of examples of black market gambling which ruins lives worse than legal gambling does. My experience is with 3rd world countries, specifically Thailand, where gambling is illegal. I know you're not advocating for a ban on gambling but I think it's worth a mention that due to its illegality, there are widespread issues that stem from it: corruption, cops being in on illegal gambling dens, and mafia / gangs that sprung up to run these under ground dens. Aside from the more organized underground gambling, there are also smaller village style gambling where within a village / town / city, there are bookies that will collect your bet (and people bet on anything: soccer being the main one.) Basically addicts will find a way to gamble whether it's banned, discouraged, organized, or legalized. In the case where it's illegal, the creditor who the addicts borrow money from are usually loan sharks or gang members that take extreme means to recover any money they can. Many families lose homes, life-savings, or even get killed. So it gets pretty bad, IMO it's worse than a legalized gambling system. People who wants to gamble prefer to go to the legal means as it pose much lower risk of extreme repercussions... but if it's not legal, some of them would still find a way to gamble. This may mean that the number of people who do gamble reduces... but I'm not sure by how much and whether that ends up tipping the scale in favor of a ban.
Red_Tarsius 11y ago
I empathize with your frustration toward the gambling industry. However, It's not only about the slot machines. You can find the underlying model in many other products, like freemium apps. There's much more subtlety than closing down casinos. Illegal businesses – which don't employ workers nor pay taxes – would likely exploit the new prohibition and its victims. > "Sorry, you can only play games for fun, not money." Addiction-prone individuals will still be unable to function normally in day-to-day life. That's why I believe that treatment, prevention and awareness trumps other obvious proposals.
- wpietri 11y ago
  > Addiction-prone individuals will still be unable to function normally in day-to-day life. [citation needed] > That's why I believe that treatment, prevention and awareness trumps other obvious proposals. That's a couple of different kinds of false dichotomy. Nobody is saying one can't have treatment, prevention, and awareness while also, say, placing such heavy regulation on gambling that the amount of addiction is minimized. As a comparable model, look at cigarettes.
tomjen3 11y ago
If you can't legally play for money you are just going to do it illegally, which is what we see with bookings and the war on drugs.