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Comment by mcherm | Hacker News Reader

Your reasoning seems unsound.

It would [let us assume for the sake of argument] be better for society if proof of work systems did not exist. But if we ban it it will just happen anyway.

It would be better for society if murder did not exist but even though we banned it, murder just happens anyway.

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The difference is that while legalized gambling is bad, illegal gambling is much worse, it's more predatory where games can be outright rigged, and it's also funding organized crime and has a corrupting effect on society. A politician owing money to a bank is bad. The same owing money to a mob-affiliated loan shark is worse.

Banning this type of activity has historically proven difficult, it's basically the lesson we keep re-learning with the prohibition, the war on drugs and so forth.

> A politician owing money to a bank is bad.

Why?

Speaking primarily in the context of being up to your ears in debt, but because it creates a conflict of interest. Such a person is a lot more susceptible to bribes as a means to get out of their predicament, because they can't afford to tell someone waving a bag of money in front of them to piss off.

Debt is also something foreign intelligence looks for when attempting to recruit spies.

A politician is just another mafia in my eyes. There have been mafias that are not worse than politicians in history. Literally.

I mean... That's not a very strong or interesting statement to make. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of mafias that did less bad than <insert your least favourite dictator here>.

I think the difference is that gambling addictions are real and lotteries and other legal gambling is somewhat of a form of harm reduction by minimalizing externalities like organized crime. There is no recognized cryptocurrency addiction.

> There is no recognized cryptocurrency addiction.

Crypto speculation. Like all speculation is ultimately gambling, which people can get addicted to.

No. The difference is that lottery is a legal monopoly of the state to squeeze you. As long as it is them who do it everything is ok. They do not care, they just make ir look better to have the excuse and a monopoly.

If there was a auditable publicly-viewable record of all lotteries, then it would be practical to simply ban them. As it is, banning them does more harm than good by funding organizations which also commit murder.

Legal gambling funds governments who commit murder

Yes, but governments are much less murdery and much more predictable than the sloppy gangs which are funded by lotteries.

Uh, if I'm reading this right, by this logic we should also make murder legal ??

No, because there wouldn't be much benefit to being able to regulate murder. (Also, I don't really think that that'd really work in terms of public approval.)

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