But I believe any kind of advertising of it during a game should be made illegal. It is ruining the broadcast, with updates on the betting line and worthless statistics to non betters.
Is it? Is an alcoholic's decision to drink, or a heroin addict's decision to shoot up? Is it a person with attention issues' decision to spend unreasonable amounts of money on micro-transaction-powered games? Is it anyone who suffers from a neurodivergency that fucks with dopamine's choice to engage in these activities because their brains are just plain more vulnerable to it?
I don't have a moral objection to any of these things in the slightest, like I think most here, I would land at a position of "do what you want, as long as you don't hurt anyone." But that gets tricky if you consider how many people are harmed via addictive products peddled by (often extremely) profitable enterprises, including in this case, the actual government in many places.
Like, I have my vices, and they are all controlled. I don't feel I have any addiction at present. But I have friends and family who have struggled with these things, and this hand-wavey "make better choices" stuff just doesn't cut it for me. Some of these people I'm thinking of right now are blindingly intelligent, absolutely brilliant people, but no matter how smart you are, sometimes all it takes is the right kind of bullshit to turn your brains to mashed potatoes and suddenly you're giving away your life savings for more of it.
Like, genuinely, good for you if you, like me, can just control your vices and not succumb to them like many can. Genuinely, I'm happy for you (and me!) but like... what about everyone else? Is having the wrong kind of brain just damn you to spend your entire life being robbed blind because "freedom"?
Yes. Obviously the choices involved are easier or harder for individuals based on their predilections. But at the end of the day, it is still their choice.
Addiction is a disorder that can't be controlled. The person with the addiction can control it for short periods of time, but it eventually overwhelms them.
If being addicted were a rational choice, we would not be able to addict rats to drugs and behaviors. Are rats making a rational decision? I think not.
Congrats to you.
Yes. I have my own vices, but yes. I do not want to impose religious values on others.
I think sports gambling is clearly less addictive than drugs since underground gambling was never as big an industry as the drug trade, and I think that makes it far easier to deal with like a normal activity with externalities.
I mean, valid point. But many mainstream folk who don't follow this science closely only associate addiction with drugs, hence the comparison.
FWIW, I also oppose the drug war because the only thing it's accomplished reliably is enriching dangerous people, fostering the year over year growth of the authoritarian state, and making the drugs themselves far, far more dangerous than they ever had to be.
> I think sports gambling is clearly less addictive than drugs since underground gambling was never as big an industry as the drug trade, and I think that makes it far easier to deal with like a normal activity with externalities.
I would just park that as being underground gambling is far less required. If you want heroin, you need to go to an underground dealer, there's no "legitimate" source of heroin. If you want to gamble, there are absolutely oodles of sources for that, that are completely legal and above board.
Of that list, the only one that doesn't have commercials is heroin.
Making the behaviors illegal doesn’t actually help people you mention, it just drives them to less safe avenues and jail. Hardly help if you ask me.
People also have a right to discover for themselves that something is dangerous to them personally. It sucks, but not everyone is going to know off the bat that they have alcoholic tendencies.
I don't, FWIW. I just think these questions are important and the answers are more complicated than "everyone can and should do whatever they want" or "everyone has to eat nothing but corn flakes and eschew all temptations in life for Jesus."
Though, I will say that I find it off-putting how many states in my Untied States are apparently totally fine with juicing their budgets with the profits of gambling enterprises. Like... we can definitely have gambling, but it feels exploitative that the state itself is raising money, even if that money is for public services, off the backs of known-to-be-addictive products.
Making it taboo or illegal could actually reduce harm by making it less acceptable and accessible. Prevention beats cleanup any day. Let’s not pretend that counseling alone is enough to solve this.
That funding can include sweeping out illegal gambling operations that prey on vulnerable people. No one would mind taking them out of there are legal options available to them.
I wrote increase
If the gambler is but a slave to their lizard brain, then isn't the murderer too? Surely no-one sits down and performs calculus and determines "I will gamble" or "I will murder", they both come from an impairment of our higher senses of reasoning by our baser instincts of rage or pleasure.
I'm obviously not advocating for murder, to be clear. But maybe if we better understand our position philosophically, maybe we'll end up with less brutal prisons ("they're not in here because they are ontologically evil, but because their hardware predisposes them to harm others and we have to contain them for the good of the many") and more sympathetic/realistic laws that focus on controlling harm and are less caught up in vague notions of "freedom" (the freedom to have your hardware bugs exploited by gambling companies?) that are too shallow in the face of a better philosophical understanding of what free will and agency look like for creatures whose programming is primarily informed by a billion years of evolution to crave orgasms and sugar.
That aside, there's another dimension that is implicitly getting thrown out as well—and it's one that every well-developed civilization in history respected (including ours, until recently). That's the notion of wisdom as opposed to folly. That is, there are generally commendable and rewarding patterns of attitude and behavior; and there are patterns of attitude and behavior that lead to personal and corporate ruin. Chief among them is the golden rule ("treat others the way you'd want to be treated, and don't treat others the way you wouldn't want to be treated"), which is repeated in just about every ancient civilization's wisdom literature, and which is essential to civilizations and cultures surviving over the long term, not to mention building and keeping personal relationships.
This "do what you will, just don't hurt anyone" contradicts thousands of years of wisdom and forgets that it's possible to live well and be remembered with honor.
What? People do both all the time
It's a personal choice after all.
Fuck those people who are already degenerate suiciders, they should just get some control.
(/s to the last two sentences).
Advertising bright shiny new toys to children.
Advertising big 4wd trucks to adult males who haven't progressed to emotional maturity beyond the level of the children to whom bright shiny new toys are advertised.
Advertising as a whole is a fucking shit show. Swap your hard earned for this thing that might make you feel like your life is slightly more worthwhile for a few seconds. Pbbbt (flapping lips and tongue noise).
For an adhd brain most of the internet is addictive, at least for me. My solution was to delete my social media accounts (still youtube is a problem), but I wouldn't want to be banned from those services just by my pre-condition.
I think it's perfectly a solvable problem to have a social media service that performs all the jobs the users would want, while not pounding dopamine out of their brains continuously to make sure they never want to put their phones down.
Sure it's a problem old as time, but it feels like today it's a lot easier to get caught up in with the massive amounts of money swinging by.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-astros-tanked-their...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Strike_match_fixing_sc...
There are major differences with sports:
- Player salaries are generally independent of the outcome of an individual game. So losing any given game does not have a financial downside for the player. If you lose the election, you get nothing, versus if you win, the benefits are massive.
- A sport player can intentionally miss shots, which has only a small reputational cost, but can drastically alter the outcome of the game. But IME, voters are usually voting against the other party, not for a particular party or candidate. So whatever the candidate does to throw the election has to be so terrible to their own reputation, that voters despise them more than they do the party they typically vote against. So the cost to the candidate is huge. They basically have to compltely ruin their reputation.
- Upside is too small. Total market volume for prediction markets is tiny, hundreds of millions for the entire year. More than $100 billion is wagered every year on sports bets. Hard to see given the immense cost to the candidates, how the incentives could be great enough.
Even in sports, I think players that are open to throwing a game are by far in the minority. Given the much greater cost political candidates would face to do the same
That's not the only way in which election betting can affect the results of an election.
The advertising isn't just a means to convince fans to gamble. It's also the way that the gambling revenues are shared.
If not for buying ads, how else can the gambling companies give any of the money to the league, broadcasters, or media?
And if the league, broadcasters, and media don't get a share of the gambling money by selling advertisements, why would they even allow the gambling in the first place?
Because they're greedy and want any money they can get. They don't "allow" gambling, the law permits gambling. If it was illegal, no one would advertise it and they wouldn't get a dime.
Why is it legal? Taxes. Legal gambling means the government collects taxes.
Addiction hits people hard. Not just people.. FAMILIES. Life is hard enough and people without knowing they can fall in to it unexpectedly, or are peer pressured to try it. You get that dopamine hit. One little win. One win here, one win there. Betting more and more. Then it's all gone. Yeah, it is their decision. It's their decision to quit too, and that's hard.
Internet gambling hits kids with video game skins/trades, I don't agree with that either.. it sets them on the wrong, and I do me very wrong path. It's an epidemic. I live in a small town where indian reservations collect everybody's social security checks. They sit there like zombies and press the button hoping for a return, never getting one. Push. Push. Push. Money gone. Many of my friends lost themselves to betting and gambling addiction, and addiction over all. While I agree, it's their decision, addiction takes the best humans in my opinion.
I believe in things that better people, we may not always know what they are, but a positive influence from somebody can start right here: I believe in you, and if you're out there and have a gambling addiction, there is hope and you can fight it, and you aren't lost. https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/help-by-state/ - https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/treatment-facilit...
And if you want to just talk about it, my e-mails in my profile and we can message from there.
I'm completely anti-gambling, but to each their own if somebody wants to I won't try to persuade them.
This is why IMO in a civilized society it should be banned. But we’re not living in a civilized society so…
People fill a void within themselves with anything but their own self love, I get it.
I don't think you have a good grasp on the psychiatric issues at play here.
Even hands-on statistics and probability education would be a great benefit to gamblers, as they find how wearing their grandmother's lucky ring has no influence on the statistical rewards of slot machines.