When viewed in that light, perhaps even existing gambling regulations don’t go far enough because there are plenty of people who suffer from gambling addiction and even ruin their lives in the process.
As for the people who oppose all of this regulation on the basis of individual freedom (and perhaps don’t care about gambling addicts), here is the issue: externalities. People with severe gambling addiction can do tremendous damage to society as well as enable and enrich organized crime groups. It’s well documented that people with gambling addiction can and do commit thefts and even murders to fuel their addiction.
Now you might also argue that regulation does not prevent gambling addiction but that is only evidence against the current set of regulations, not proof that all regulation is ineffective. Trying to determine the right regulations to minimize the harms of gambling addiction while balancing personal freedoms is the hard part of policy debates.
No, lawmakers are choosing to keep their eyes shut.
Here's your odds for opening a pack of baseball cards: https://www.topps.com/media/pdf/odds/2023ToppsSeries2Odds.pd...
Looks like the rarest insert is 2022 SILVER SLUGGER AWARD WINNERS CARDS PLATINUM at 1 in 1,036,176 packs.
Try to remember this in the future if you ever think, "Why is this thing illegal? That's silly. People should be free to make their own choices!"
Because this kind of reasoning is exactly how that other thing and all its derivatives got banned. Eg drugs and the war on drugs.
Also, those analogies are not half-baked. They're spot on.
The push for legalization isn't about people making their own choices, it's because it's not possible for the government to have this power and not abuse it and harm reduction via regulated production (taking away choices, clearly) and medical supervision.
This argument doesn't apply to video game gambling. Nobody is getting their hit of digital lootboxes from their dealer and the government isn't arresting players for Fortnite possession. You can have all the thrill of random drops without it being tied to your credit card, there are still recovering WoW addicts.
If people en masse suddenly started spending ruinous amounts of money on Yu-Gi-Oh that's a pretty strong case against them. Regulation follows the harm not the principles.
I hope you know that US drug policy has basically been pushed onto the entirety of the rest of the world. Eg the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961. This means that when you talk about drug policy it's not about US racial politics, it's about the entire world. So when you say "as long as you're white" it's meaningless.
>This argument doesn't apply to video game gambling. Nobody is getting their hit of digital lootboxes from their dealer and the government isn't arresting players for Fortnite possession. You can have all the thrill of random drops without it being tied to your credit card, there are still recovering WoW addicts.
And you can have all of this without the government intervening either. That's the whole point - government intervention is what screwed all of it up. It's not intentional, but it's just a side effect that seems to always pop up whenever the government throws around bans that are intended to impact regular people.
For example, your nanny state comment could easily be modified to describe chemical waste dumping.
"What's insane is that some want to replace the irresponsible CEO's and C-suite execs of those workers with a nanny state."
Well fucking hell yes I do, I want the government to have to power to ruin companies if they negligently damaged or destroyed the environment we all share, for profit, stupidity or laziness.
Government regulations are the only reason we the workers have it as good as we do today. 5 day work week, EPA restrictions, etc.
Teenagers shouldn't be gambling, their parents should be responsible for that, but some don't want to rear their children.
Do you also think governments forcing schools to teach abstinence is diminishing kids from having sex?
https://www.kunc.org/news/2019-08-14/seven-years-after-legal...
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...
https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance116/figu...
https://news.ohsu.edu/2022/12/07/teen-cannabis-abuse-has-inc....
Win?
Far less damaging to the lungs/liver, especially as the article says much of the increase is via "edible products". Far less addictive than alcohol/tobacco. Far less impairing than alcohol for driving. etc.
You can't claim you're not harming people while giving money to people who will use it to cause harm.
A casino advertising, highlighting wins, etc. doesn't change the rational's prior on the odds of winning. I am fully against regulating people's freedom to engage in commerce when that commerce isn't harming anyone else, and I don't consider advertising a third party externality.
If that "solution" sounds sketchy to you, note that that's how you sound to everyone else here.
When people start moving away from the nanny state in sufficient numbers, the nanny state will also hinder people from escaping. Look at the Soviet Union, China, etc.
Australia did that during the covid pandemic, they literally banned citizens from leaving the country.
Because if you tought like that in a company and putting in practice your careless behaviour and lack of maturity, the boss would fire you in the spot.
Or, well, on regulations, look what happened to these "smart guys" trying to outsmart deep water physics by saving money on proper security policies as if they were that money-grabbing grampa duck from Donald Duck series.
Everything said about this stuff applies to doing drugs way more. And society did something about it - drugs were made illegal and it's getting enforced. But are we actually better off now as a result of the war on drugs or prohibition?
Chemical waste dumping is a much different matter, because that's polluting a common resource. What resource are games like this polluting?
Like many people, I think the war on drugs was a terrible idea. But preventing huge pharmaceuticals companies from selling drugs isn't.
Even stringent requirements to access these types of games are going to impact the player the most.
Just something as schooling in general, which I consider to be a very negative thing for the majority of children, but then for many children it is a safe haven from an abusive home situation. Nobody is unaware of these issues, so I really fail to see what your comment was trying to achieve.
This is an important question, because the kid doesn't own a credit card to pay for their gacha game purchases. It's the parent's card that authorizes the purchases.
What kind of controls would you like on these applications? Should everyone have to provide photoid and a running camera feed to prove that they're 18+ and it's actually them playing and not their kid? Pretty much every scenario to stop kids from playing, that isn't extremely invasive, is going to be weaker than a credit card requirement. And apparently a credit card requirement isn't a barrier.
If you make tobacco products in child-friendly forms, you get in trouble. Gacha games are gambling targeted directly at children; in any other context they’d be clearly and obviously forbidden.
We regulate these things a lot, and fairly effectively.
And how do you prove this? Just think logically about this - who's going to have more money to whale: an adult or somebody that has to beg money from an adult?
>If you make tobacco products in child-friendly forms, you get in trouble
Yes, but you also get in trouble when you make any tobacco products as evidenced by the numerous bans of tobacco. You can't even have flavored smokes anymore despite them having been available for decades. Governments can basically propose any policy regarding tobacco and people would happily agree with it due to decades of public marketing campaigns (on kids btw).
>We regulate these things a lot, and fairly effectively.
No we don't. That CPS comment shows exactly the point - it's the parent that gets in trouble. That's not what people against gacha games are trying to do, they're trying to get the company in trouble and not the person actually doing the poor parenting.
Anything that requires a credit card to purchase needs authorization from a parent.
TBH, I can't help but partially blame consumers here. Piracy in the early 10's were rampant, especially on Android. So no surprise that for these always online cell phones that they adapt and keep the valuable data server side. And make sure there's no barrier to entry, because mobile users have also shown they don't like paying an upfront cost for their apps.