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Comment by hug | Hacker News Reader

As an Australian, living in a society where betting is legal albeit fairly regulated: I sincerely hope not.

The reason for that hope is that gambling and gambling advertising, with the rise of online betting sites and smartphone apps, has started to become a fairly genuine social issue. With advertisements like this one (https://twitter.com/sportsbetcomau/status/863634984682233856) [note: Ben Johnson recently was found to be on PEDs], or advertisements blanketing one of the busiest train stations in the country, like the following (https://twitter.com/Doc_Samantha/status/786665869787078656). These companies are, anecdotally of course, targeting their advertisements to the youngest possible market, in the worst possible way. The pushiness of their advertisements are a 'joke' amongst my friends.

Widespread gambling is generally seen as harmful to a society. It would be nice if the USA didn't voluntarily allow its citizens to be taken advantage of for corporate profits, for once.

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Speaking as an American, the choice in our society isn't between "voluntarily allow its citizens to be taken advantage of" and not that. It's between allowing gambling to be run by organized crime and creating a system that enables at least a modicum of accountability.

It's between allowing gambling to be run by organized crime and creating a system that enables at least a modicum of accountability.

Organized crime would probably a step up from state lotteries.

State lotteries don’t murder people they have disputes with.

Between organized crime and ruthlessly efficient corporate entities seeking endless growth, though, which ultimately results in more exploitation and human misery?

Disagree. This is probably true among your demographic but it's not true of the biggest whales for casinos: really old people. My grandparents wouldn't break the law to gamble but given the chance would blow hundreds of dollars on slots in a single visit to a casino. And they would go as often as possible because they liked the attention casinos gave them and they had nothing better to do.

Sure maybe legal gambling will let young people move from sketchy books to more legitimate operations, but they aren't really the ones that get abused by legalized gambling.

Casinos will find a way to exploit old folks with this, I guarantee it. Old people often have about as much going between their ears as ~11-13 year olds but have a lot more disposable income.

Gambling hasn't always been so difficult. It's a practice with a long social history, often including attempts to stamp it out. Out of all of that, my impression is that it is generally not viewed as characteristically a vice of the old.

How are things different now? Do you think it's just that if you grow up around legal gambling and you're the type to waste everything you have on it, you won't have any money left to gamble away by the time you're old?

Its a nasty addiction that’s been layered with a veneer of legitimacy.

I'm not trying to discuss whether it's a "nasty addiction" or legitimate or anything else. I'm questioning the view that the victims of legal gambling are primarily old people.

I'm sorry but this really isn't true. This isn't tobacco, where people become addicted and then industry lies about the health implications.

Everyone who gambles understands that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, and if the casino lost more than they won, it wouldn't be a casino at all.

No one is told they will always win. True, there is manipulation, but all advertising is based on manipulation, as is most of our media.

Why don't we talk about banning alcohol? From deaths to sickness to loss of quality of life, alcohol is the grand-daddy of vice! But coastal liberals love their Pinot Noir, craft beer and boutique small-batch scotch, so instead we talk about limiting the vices of red-staters (guns, gambling, tobacco)

It is.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-brain-get...

if you're really going to go that route you might as well legalize violent crimes too, after all, it's just us listening to our time-to-reproduce/time-to-fight signals

everywhere in society we are expected to overcome and be responsible for our base urges

We recognize that people can cross a line where their inability to control violent behavior becomes a medical issue.

I'm not sure if you've ever spent any time in an American casino, but the sports book is not where you find 'really old people', except perhaps the handful of older guys betting on horse races. And at the sports book area, chances are that you aren't going to encounter the sort of obvious problem gamblers that you see glued to the video poker and slots.

Right but you can modify sports games to become more like regular games. For example I claim you're making a sports bet but structure the game so that it's identical to slots. That's what they do in Kentucky to basically make legalized slot machines

The phenomenon you're describing is a real conundrum (and it's an emerging issue in my home state of Texas), but at the end of the day can be settled by a more stringent state or federally-enforced definition of what qualifies as a slot machine, especially when it's fairly obvious that using replays of old sport events to determine payout is not at all the same thing as letting the outcome be settled by a random number generator.

Or, the government could just butt out and let consenting adults gamble if that's what they want to do with their time and money.

What's your definition of consenting adult? A person with a gambling problem is about as able to give informed consent as a mentally retarded person.

That's a bit patronizing, don't you think? Have you thought about all of the other freedoms you could restrict based on identical reasoning? It's a very long list.

What do you consider addiction to be then? How rationally impaired do you have to be before society throws up their hands and stops you from being taken advantage of?

How rationally impaired do you have to be before society throws up their hands and stops you from being taken advantage of?

OK, you've convinced me. When do we make our move on the gambling halls? Before we shutter the taverns and the churches, or afterward?

We're definitely just trading anecdotes here, but I assume you've never spent any time inside the local TAB in a rural Australian town; It's not exactly filled to the brim with young professional up-and-comers.

My experience in Australia doesn't generalise perfectly to the US, of course. I wonder how much it does at all. That lack of certainty doesn't stop me from worrying what things would look like if it translates well across our societies.

Sports gambling in the US is definitely quite different from what one encounters in the Commonwealths, but it also isn't that the sports books are filled with 'young professional up-and-comers'. It's a range of men, generally between 25-65, that have an interest in sports that borders on unhealthy, but take great pride in making 'smart' and generally conservative bets.

Give your family some credit. They could have sought out a casino somehow and lost their life savings many times over if they were as dim-witted and susceptible as you think they are.

Hard to do that yourself when you're 94, don't know how to use a smartphone, and have Alzheimer's

I never called them dim-witted in a mean sense, I mean that when you are old you aren't able to think with the same mental acuity as you once could. People with Alzheimer's or that are beginning to grow senile really are like children, and they are susceptible

If they have a legit diagnosis for dementia, there are ways to get power-of-attorney as there are many ways people in their condition can act in ways everyone will regret.

> It's between allowing gambling to be run by organized crime and creating a system that enables at least a modicum of accountability.

The government (via the NCAA) has already made it illegal for college athletes to accept money for anything related to sports. IMHO that ban has worked well for college athletes, and the feds should simply extend the ban to the rest of society and make pro sports illegal.

>The government (via the NCAA) has already made it illegal for college athletes to accept money

What? The NCAA has nothing to do with it. The US federal government independently created regulations that make payment of student athletes undesirable regardless of whether the NCAA even exists. Title XI requires that all collegiate athletes receive identical opportunities and benefits, which clearly doesn't make sense for sports that aren't profit centers if cash compensation is added to the mix.

>the feds should simply extend the ban to the rest of society and make pro sports illegal.

Why? This clearly doesn't solve a gambling issue, as you can already place bets on NCAA events. And further, it doesn't really make sense given the economic structure and social mores of the contemporary United States. Aside from the fact that a ban on pro sports would fly in the face of centuries of case law prohibiting arbitrary government interference with private enterprises, I'm fairly certain that any representative sample of the contemporary US population would find your proposition both strange and unnecessary.

Title IX was only created in the 70s, the government created the NCAA as a self-regulatory organization in the early 1900s so that they wouldn't have to get involved and regulate sports directly themselves.

> Aside from the fact that a ban on pro sports would fly in the face of centuries of case law prohibiting arbitrary government interference with private enterprises

The new research on health outcomes for pro athletes is more than enough to overcome the requirement for non-arbitrariness. And given how many other strange and unnecessary laws there are, this might not be as serious of an issue as it seems.

Uhhh, what?

The illegality of paying college employees fair wages has resulted in for profit companies/universities making hundreds of millions of dollars off of people.

Why should we extend that and allow MORE people to be exploited?

It is crazy to me that people support making it literally illegal to pay workers wages.

>>> between allowing gambling to be run by organized crime and creating a system that enables at least a modicum of accountability.

By that logic nothing should be illegal as making anything illegal simply creates a black market. Some things are bad. Some things are just evil and need to be banned. Laws are meant to prevent people from doing things they otherwise would want to do.

Gambling is a classic vice. If people want it banned then they should be able, through government, to ban it. That has happened at the federal level already. Rather than attempt to lawyer their way out from under the ban, states should lobby their people to elect reps that will change the federal law.

It's true - no prohibition is ever perfect. And gambling, along with prostitution and drinking, are the classic vices. You're right on all those points.

Gambling is something that already exists a number of places in the US in many forms. Lotteries, casinos, poker games, office betting pools, and more are cultural mainstays. You're not going to be able to get rid of it quickly or easily, nor make it stay gone. People really like their games of chance.

Even if I did agree with you that gambling is just evil and needs to be banned.

> If people want it banned then they should be able, through government, to ban it

If this was put to a national referendum today, no more than 10% of the votes would be to ban gambling. People enjoy it and are overwhelmingly capable of grasping the risks. For those that can't, stay away or phone that number on the sign in the casino that puts you in touch with a gambling addiction counselor.

Silicon Valley has such a myopic worldview...Facebook and Twitter are much more harmful to the fabric of society than a one-armed bandit in Vegas.

Facebook and Twitter hit the exact same addictive pleasure center of the brain as that one-armed bandit

Why not just ban gratuitous advertising? I believe we do it with cigarette companies.

My opinion is that Australia should ban gambling advertising. I also believe that Australia should also remove the electronic poker machine licenses from the Returned Services Leagues, and I also think that Australia should toughen up the mandatory anti-problem-gambling information at venues licensed for gambling, and in applications designed for gambling. I also think that the laws around ATM withdrawals at gambling venues should be tightened.

These are my opinions. They're not objective fact, and they're honestly not well-researched enough that they'll all provide measurable benefit, but I also don't think there's any way these things could make things worse for our country.

As another Australia, I strongly agree.

Gambling/bettings have put a lot of work into getting their slimy tentacles into sports clubs and RSL's and perpetuating this idea that gambling/betting is inherently part of sport, which it's not, but they're happy to lure people and profit off them all the same.

If we reigned them in, I really don't think anything of value would be lost.

Americans have a better solution. Instead of banning pleasure nationally, we just ban it in one region we call "Utah" that you can choose to live in or not.

A lot of the venues seem to only exist for the poker machines, not that it would be a bad thing for them to go away.

Where I previously lived we would occasionally go for meals at our local pub and the dining area was pretty much always quiet, I doubt that they would exist if they were relying on dining income.

Australia also has the Melbourne Cup horse race/ public holiday, where there is a culture of having a bet. People who otherwise would never look into gambling bet on that race, I think it acts as a gateway to further gambling and normalises gambling even further.

The venues existing just for the poker machines is essentially incontestable.

In this article (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/north/news-story/535a0090...) about the shadiness of the Preston RSL, they admit that the bar and bistro lose money, and the only thing keeping them in the black is gambling.

(Don't get me started on cup/derby day. That whole situation is a mess.)

Note that if your gambling laws are too restrictive/expansive you lose the social benefit of prediction markets, which enable society to have a well calibrated understanding of the likelihood of various events.

http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/ideafutures.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market

I think regulation concerning gambling advertising will come in Australia but it will take some time. There are limitations on alcohol advertising - particularly at sporting events, on public transport and at events relating to minors.

Because of this, it is not a stretch for me to imagine that gambling advertising will be restricted in some ways. The fact that mobile games (and mobile and internet advertising) are such a big part of the culture and technology will certainly complicate things.

It dismays me when I see large sporting teams sponsored primarily by a gambling company. Sport is a wonderful active activity for young people in a world increasingly struggling with obesity - and the companies into their heads early worries me.

The industrialisation of gambling is shocking. I just recent moved from New Zealand, where I thought we had a bit of a problem, but it's a completely different scale here.

It helps that the TAB has a monopoly in sports betting, so there's less incentive for them to advertise, due to a lack of competition. I don't think I've ever seen an ad for the TAB.

Gambling addiction is just as much a real thing as tobacco or alcohol addiction, yet there are limits on the advertising for alcohol, and advertising tobacco is forbidden.

Regardless of the particular issue, the point is that the sovereign state of New Jersey should be allowed to make whatever laws it wants, other than those it explicitly agreed not to by signing the U.S. Constitution.

Self-determination of peoples, and all that...

I get the general point, but as far as I know that purist interpenetration is not actually applied in courts or used in legislatures, other than in a very general sense. I'd love it if someone could inform us about what the laws really are (not the 10th Amendment, but the body of Congressional and state laws) and how they are applied by courts.

> Self-determination of peoples

People in Newark have self-determination in Washington; they elected those government officials too.

> as far as I know that purist interpenetration is not actually applied in courts

Well, you're right about that. In practice New Jersey can be forced to commit to go further than what they've agreed to. That doesn't make it right.

> People in Newark have self-determination in Washington; they elected those government officials too.

This is a bit of a distortion of the concept. If the UN started telling your country whether it could legalize gambling or not (totally unjustified by anything in the UN charter) and had a military to back this up, would you still feel like you had "self-determination" because you get one vote in the General Assembly?

> If the UN ...

I don't see how the UN is anything like the U.S. government, in terms of the self-determination of people in NJ. (And of course the UN and U.S. government are unalike in many other ways too, beginning with the fact that one is a sovereign, democratically legitimate government and the other is a multilateral international organization. The UN is more like ISO than it is like the U.S. government.)

We allow daytrading, how is that different?

We allow daytrading while you drink! Impaired daytrading!

Soon in California you will be able to be under the influence of marijuana while you daytrade!

If anything, I would like to see gambling completely in the open across the entire US. Prohibitions against it are a silly throwback.

If you are an adult and want to spend your life savings on craps, go for it. If you lose all of your money, sorry but you are an ADULT.

I love going to Vegas. Most times I don't gamble at all. My wife knows to stop when she is down $1k. She KNOWS that with almost 100% certainty, she will hit this limit. She even enjoys a drink while gambling. If this experience is beyond the discipline of other people, they should stay away and let the ADULTS enjoy themselves.

Our notions of legislating away all risk is inane. Just this weekend my friend was threatened with a $650 fine for riding his mountain bike on a Santa Clara County trail without a helmet. What? What next, will I be put in a police car if I go jogging without elbow pads?

Social safety nets mean that society bears some of the risk for your behavior, and thus has a strong incentive to restrict your freedom.

what social safety net? Bill Clinton's welfare reforms put a limit on the welfare you can receive and you do not get a pass for gambling away your house...or day trading it away either

> Ben Johnson recently was found to be on PEDs

Recently? Wasn't he caught in 1988?

I mean, on a universal timeline that's pretty recent.

(I have no idea who Ben Johnson is or was. You are probably correct, and I probably look silly.)

Canadian olympic sprinter who was using drugs like everyone else but got caught.

Well I do recall that as soon as he was caught, some in the Canadian media cynically referred to him as Jamaican.

We already have widespread gambling. Betting on horse races is an American tradition, is legal in virtually every state both live and online. Lotteries are also legal in virtually every state and heavily promoted by the state on every medium. You can't watch a tv show or listen to the radio for more then a few minutes before hearing a jingle or an ad to get someone to "gamble" on the lotto (which has far, far lowers odds of winning than a sports bet). Much like the "debate" about legalizing online poker, the "debate" over sports gambling has far more to do with the already legal entrenched gambling interests trying to prevent any competition.

In the USA advertising cigarettes through certain mediums is illegal. I wonder if the same could be done for sports betting.

It's banned in Australia, too. Our cigarette packets also can't have any branding, must be a drab olive colour, and must have a graphic warning about the medical dangers of smoking. (Think "picture of a gangrenous foot" on the front 3/4 of your cigarette packet.)

Something similar, minus the gangrene, should be done for gambling.

Note that we pretty much have widespread, legal gambling in the US.

Lotteries, and then there are tons of casinos.

I recently moved to Chicago and the amount of people blowing large amounts of money on scratch off tickets is insane.

This is true nationwide. People making < ~$13,000 spend 9% of their income on lottery tickets on the average.

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