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Comment by veave | Hacker News Reader

You opt into gambling, you don't opt into having your water polluted

Teenagers shouldn't be gambling, their parents should be responsible for that, but some don't want to rear their children.

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Sure but when teenagers shouldn't be actually gambling we have age restrictions in casinos and levy fines/revoke licenses if they violate those restrictions. Meanwhile, we allow this thing that pretty much everyone agrees is gambling, right down to being able to cash out winnings at a profit and we want to say "only your parents can stop you". How about putting loot boxes behind an 18+ restriction, and requiring id checks like casinos do? Is that not nanny state for actually gambling but is nanny state for thing almost identical to gambling?

How well is that working with underage drinking and smoking?

Not as well as it could be but certainly better than doing nothing at all. It does create a barrier that otherwise doesn't exist and that barrier does reduce underage drinking and smoking compared to what it otherwise would be even if it doesn't zero it the way we'd ideally hope it would.

I can’t say how easy it is for an underage person to get cigarettes. But I do know how easy it is for them to get weed. I can’t imagine any teenager who wants to smoke or drink being stymied by the law

Do you also think governments forcing schools to teach abstinence is diminishing kids from having sex?

Teaching abstinence doesn't create an actual barrier/obstacle to sex so it's not a fair comparison. I think abstinence only education is stupid and we should teach what's needed to prevent pregnancy rather than doing some sort of moral grandstanding that ruins lives.

Weed is still illegal in my state. I have never known anyone who struggled to get weed who wanted it at any age.

Ironically, it would probably be harder for minors to get weed if weed were legal. The fact that it's already illegal leads to people not caring if they sell to minors. They don't give drug dealers additional time in jail for selling to minors for example. If weed were legal for 18+ and you had a strong ID requirement for sale it would be harder for minors to get weed. You have a far smaller illegal market when you have a regulated legal market.

Is that really true though?

https://www.kunc.org/news/2019-08-14/seven-years-after-legal...

Both underage drinking and smoking rates have gone down precipitously over the past few decades, so quite well?

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...

https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance116/figu...

And now they are smoking more weed…

https://news.ohsu.edu/2022/12/07/teen-cannabis-abuse-has-inc....

Win?

That tradeoff is very much a win, yes.

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.

Smoking and drinking have been illegal for minors that entire time; this data does not show that prohibition itself has been effective (or ineffective).

Children don't have the luxury of choosing their parents. Having guardrails to increase the odds of success for a child with imperfect parents? I'd say that's a good idea.

But the guardrails disallow everyone else from engaging in voluntary transactions with no third party harm. That's the real issue. Reduce everyone's freedoms to save a few from themselves.

There is definitely third party harm here. Why do casinos put slot machines in groups and make big wins flashy events? To make big wins appear more likely than they are. The whales are walking adverts for the games, and so are enticing other people to whale themselves to keep up.

But everyone that plays those games is voluntarily doing so. Every single person can do the same research you and I have about the psycologocial impacts of their design. Not a single person other than me is harmed by my decision to gamble.

I'll break it down even further since apparently I wasn't explicit enough: If you gamble, either you win or you lose. You will most likely lose. If you win however, the casino will promote said win, therefore creating the impression that winning is more likely than it actually is, meaning that you're promoting gambling, which is harming people. If you lose, you generate profits for the casino, who will funnel some of said profits into advertising and lobbying, which will promote gambling, which is harming people.

You can't claim you're not harming people while giving money to people who will use it to cause harm.

The exception I take with your assertion is that every single person that engages in gambling does so voluntarily. The casino isn't forcing them in. The casino isn't stealing money from them. All these folks are playing a game with odds easily researched.

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.

You're free to move somewhere else with clean water, why do you want to get a nanny state involved?

If that "solution" sounds sketchy to you, note that that's how you sound to everyone else here.

No one is "free" to move anywhere. Moving is not free in any sense or term. There are enormous costs to moving anywhere. There is no cost to "not" gambling however. This is a poor analogy regardless

If you're not willing to pay the transaction costs of moving to a different place with clean water, then you clearly don't actually value it very much. Why should the government get involved?

You're probably not speaking for anybody else than yourself here, none of us are.

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.

That's a pandemic, not comparable to a dictatorship. If you don't understand this, I hope you don't ever get some place where accountability is required.

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.

I think you mostly managed to insult yourself when trying to insult me. The boss would fire me? Well, I have no doubt that you are a reliable worker that no boss would fire, and I'm happy to leave it at that.

The pandemic showed that in a lot of countries government could just suspend basic human rights handing out house arrest to innocent people and get away with it. Didn't murder or rob nobody and was serving a a bigger "prison sentence" for free. The pandemic wasn't prevented and the goverement didn't get guillotined for locking up people and failing to achieve a justifiable goal.

The pandemic showed that the countries with harsh restrictions on travelling such as Spain and Italy had a percentual death count far lower than the so-called "advanced" Northern European countries.

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.

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