Legalizing sports gambling was a mistake | Hacker News Reader

Legalizing sports gambling was a mistake

theatlantic.com

1,371 pointsjimbob451,153 comments

https://web.archive.org/web/20240926163805/https://www.theat...

Sports gambling, like all gambling, ruins lives. It's certainly worth having the discussion about whether people should be able to run a train through their life and the lives of their families via app.

But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it ruins the sports. Players throw. They get good at subtly cheating. The gambling apparatus latches itself to the sport, to the teams and players, the umpires and judges, the sporting organizations. With this much money on the line, it's not a matter of if but when games are thrown, cheated -- the bigger the game, the bigger the incentive. It's even easier now because of the amount of side/parlay betting that is available. It exhausts the spirit of competition.

Sports gambling is diametrically opposed to sport itself.

Best make it legal then, so bookies have the threat of losing their license if they get caught rigging a match. Black market bookies couldn't care less.

It's much easier to collect evidence for gambling itself than to collect evidence that a match was thrown.

Much, much fewer people would gamble if you had to do it by finding some weird person and handing them cash and trusting them to run a fair book, than just clicking some buttons on an app. After all, that’s why they’re apps that are constantly advertised; gambling services don’t have customers they attract with offers on the free market, they have victims who’s better sense they overcome through convenience and manipulation.

Black market bookies also would see consequences from getting caught rigging a sports match, anyway. For one, they would be punished by the law for being black market bookies.

Would gambling do so well without the constant brainwashing (advertising). Almost every advert I get on TV/web is designed to convince me how much fun gambling is. That seems to include every minute of sport, either player clothing, hoardings, or on-screen.

It's soul-destroying.

> But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it ruins the sports.

Is there really that much betting going on in the "little leagues"?

Professional sports are already and have always been ruined as they, by their very nature of existence, have to appeal to what entertains the crowd, not for what is ideal for the sake of sporting. Betting doesn't really change the calculus there; at most changing what makes for the entertainment, but then you're just going into a silly "my entertainment is better than your entertainment".

I don’t really understand the accusation here. Do you really think they rig (say) football games for ratings…? I’m a cynical guy, but that’s too much even for me. And how do you explain boring dynasties like the Warriors or the SF giants had in their sports for 4-8 years?

Either way, I know little about sports so maybe you’re right regarding American sports. But no way is footie rigged. I just don’t accept it; too many people care too much.

Rigged? No, probably not – at least not where driven by gambling, but professional sports leagues aren't shy about adjusting rules to make the game more enjoyable to watch, even if not what is best for the sport for the sake of sport. Such actions undeniably ruin the sport if you, like the previous comment, want to hold sport as having some kind of pure sporting existence (a nonsensical take, in my opinion, but whatever).

And the natural extension of realizing that professional sport is about delivering entertainment value is: Why not rig the sport if it improves the entertainment value? If people are most entertained by gambling and rigging a sport comes as part of that, nothing is ruined other than maybe your arbitrary personal feelings. But "my entertainment is better than your entertainment" is not a logical position.

Huh. What do you mean by “sake of sport”…? Like, to see who’s the strongest?

Regardless, I think you just misunderstood a bit: the concern here is deceptive practices, which when money is involved becomes fraud. No one cares that WWE is rigged; the difference is that the audience knows it’s rigged, and they don’t have money riding on the outcome with the understanding that it’s a fair match.

> Huh. What do you mean by “sake of sport”…? Like, to see who’s the strongest?

Okay, sure, let's say there is a "who's the strongest competition". Let's be more specific and say it is a professional arm wrestling competition. One where we find that the competitors are able to hold position for hours on end, which makes for really boring viewership. To combat that, the league starts allowing tickling in an effort to get a participant to fold sooner, and perhaps adding an additional comedic element that makes it more entertaining in general.

If you hold sport as some kind of purity that needs to be upheld (again, I maintain that is a nonsensical take, but bear with me) then the addition of tickling ruins it. Indeed, tickling is contrived, but professional sports are filled with all kinds of similar adjustments to make watching the sport more entertaining. The sports, from this "purity" point of view, were ruined from the get go as a necessity to get people interested in watching them – and thus a willingness to pay.

> No one cares that WWE is rigged

Exactly. I mean, a lot of people were upset when it came out that the, then WWF, was choreographed, and I'm sure that they lost of a lot of viewers over it, but the league has still managed to entertain a wide audience. Like you suggest, it doesn't really matter if a sport isn't held to some kind of purity of sport standard.

And it is pretty clear that sports gambling has brought out a new audience of people who are entertained by the gambling aspect. "My entertainment is better than your entertainment" is not a logical position. Something not to your personal preference is not a ruining.

There’s a real difference between modifying the rules of a sport and rigging/throwing. When you change the rules, you change the competitions. When you rig a sport, you get rid of competition.

Competition is essential to competitive sports (the only ones we could be talking about), so removing competition ruins the sport, independent of the idea of entertainment

> so removing competition ruins the sport

But now you're back to the original, curiously unanswered, question: Is there really that much gambling going on in the "little leagues"?

If not, for what reason do you think they are going to start rigging it? Hell, not even the WWE's explicit rigging has motivated high school wrestling to move in the same direction. This idea you have that sports are going to lose their competition seems to be completely unfounded.

Professional leagues may choose to rig or otherwise modify their events as they prioritize entertainment over sport, but they've always done that. In that sense, their play has always been "ruined". But that entertainment is not the sport.

I don’t know how much gambling is going on in minor leagues. In major leagues it’s a lot.

Extending the logic, should we ban the derivatives market? Cryptocurrencies/tokens that only seek to be a speculative asset (and not an actual currency). Venture Capital that seeks to use businesses as speculative assets (trying to artificially inflate the short-term share price of the business rather than its long-term health)?

I'm not putting up a straw man - I'm actually in favour of it. I agree that all forms of gambling ruins lives. We would improve society if we agreed that all gambling is bad.

> We would improve society if we agreed that all gambling is bad.

As a professional gambler (aka farmer) I understand I am biased, but I have a hard time squaring that society would improve if we all agreed my gambling habit is bad. Especially if that means going as far as a ban. What would people eat? If you think Mother Nature is going to give up her bookie position, you're wrong.

What is bad for society is zero sum games. They are profitable for individuals but take the same or more from elsewhere so they raise nothing. There are a few zero sum games where we think the side effects are good (i.e. in the pricing of stocks,) but in general they consume societies best minds in return for no progress.

Advertising - one of the largest industries on the planet. It’s not even zero sum, it’s a net loss. The views loses $50 and 100 hours, the winners gain $50

Advertising improves information for consumers though, as long as you get advertised stuff you actually want but didn’t even know existed. I’m not saying it’s a net positive as it’s currently done, but advertising as a concept doesn’t have to be net negative.

If advertising was for my benefit it would be optional. It’s not.

As I said, I’m not claiming that it currently is a net positive for consumers. But even then, I don’t agree with your assertion. There are things that benefit the average person that aren’t optional, and not being optional doesn’t indicate it isn’t for your benefit. It could hypothetically be possible that people benefit from advertisement overall but would irrationally choose to opt out if they could. Just as some people would opt out of social security if they could but would probably regret it once they need it. Just to clarify, I’m not saying this is happening here, but the argument „I can’t opt out so it can’t be for my benefit“ is flawed.

Not ads in general.

Modern social media that makes and sells ads and panopticon datasets.

> society is zero sum games

so do you believe the olympics are good or bad? because they're zero sum.

Not OP, but they're clearly a net loss. I would vote against them being hosted in my country.

The current hyper capitalized form of the Olympics may have been demonstrated to be economically harmful to the city that hosts it, but the Olympics have had huge societal value and impact especially in sociological aspects. I mean it's hard to put a price tag on Jesse Owens spitting directly into the eye of white supremacy but it certainly has value.

Every zero sum game has some side effects people try to focus on.. When I look at the number of children who have been abused for the Olympics, I think there are better ways to have an international convention and to push a healthier level of fitness.

People like to play these games and thus probably good for societies

World would be pretty full without competitive games / sports

To be clear, interest rate derivatives (futures, swaps, [edit] options, etc.) are very important for banks and corps to manage their interest rate risk. By definition, these are zero sum products.

Also, economists would not term the stock market as zero sum game. All boats can and do rise together. Look at the S&P 500 index since the 2008 GFC. Spectacular success that reflects the wider US economy.

Sure, the stock market is clearly grounded in a positive sum game of enabling more investment options. Things like whether to penalize day trading for its zero sum aspects or appreciate it for side effects are an argument in legislation/regulation debates.

I like this take. And yes, you're right, it's not so much speculation as speculation where no value is being generated.

One of the things that's getting confused in this thread is the distinction between games of skill and games of chance. Most outcomes in life are the result of a combination of skill and chance - so there's admittedly a gradient and a big gray area between the two.

But to use farming as an example, you undoubtedly apply skill in your trade to get a better outcome. Sure, your results depend heavily on things like the weather, but someone with zero experience and skill as a farmer will have less success at it than you do. This is a skill intensive game.

On the far other end of the spectrum is the slot machine - you pull a lever and wait. Labor is nonexistent, knowledge or skill is irrelevant. This is entirely a game of chance.

So one place where we run into problems and governments need to apply some regulation is when a game of chance gets misrepresented as a game of skill, or its odds are hidden or misrepresented. When any of those things happen it means we are actually looking at a form of fraud. The operator of the game is claiming you can do really great at his game but the matter is actually out of your hands, he's lying about the probable outcome of your participation. That is fraudulent and most members of our society agree that committing fraud should be discouraged and even punished when it occurs.

> On the far other end of the spectrum is the slot machine - you pull a lever and wait.

In the narrowest view, sure. But, for example, not all casinos, hell not even all machines in the same casino, offer the same odds. What about the work you put into determining which machine offers the best outcome? Is that not a skill? Obviously you can just sit down at any old random machine and see what happens, but that's the same as your "zero skill" farmer throwing some uncertified seeds on the ground and hoping for the best. In both cases there is an opportunity to improve your chances of success if you so choose.

Some aspects of farming lean on skill, but other aspects are pure chance. "Pull the lever and wait" is often all you can do. I'm not sure you are being fair in diminishing slot machine playing down to just one event, while happily considering farming as the sum of all its events.

Slot machines are guaranteed to provide a significant ROI to casinos. They're purely extractive. Comparing them to farming is really silly in my opinion.

Does anyone have a differing opinion? I expect there is good reason they have never been compared. Your opinion is noted, I guess, but what lead you to think it was worth sharing?

    > Some aspects of farming lean on skill, but other aspects are pure chance.

I frequently use this phrase when talking with people about their career path. Replace farming with (office work) career. Mike Bloomberg famously wrote: "Work hard and you might get lucky." I like that phrase because it appreciates the nuance of success.

No skill at all. The farmer is referring to futures contract to derisk the things outside of the skill.

And crop insurance which is usually heavily subsidised. To be clear, the range of agricultural commodities is surprisingly small. Example: There is no coverage for any fruits (except orange juice), not most vegetables.

Crop insurance, even of the subsidized variety, could refer to all kinds of different systems. But, I'll assume that which is under the USDA RMA. You don't consider any of the following to be fruit?

Apples, Apricots (Fresh, Processing), Avocados, Bananas, Blueberries, Caneberries, Cherries, Citrus (Grapefruit, Limes, Oranges), Cranberries, Figs, Grapes, Kiwifruit, Lemons, Mandarins/Tangerines, Nectarines (Fresh), Olives, Papaya, Peaches (Cling Processing, Freestone Fresh, Freestone Processing), Pears, Plums, Pomegranates, Prunes, Raisins, Strawberries, Tangelos, Tangors, Tomatoes (Fresh, Processing).

Maybe you meant Agricorp? None of the following are fruits?

Apples, Grapes, Peaches and nectarines, Pears, Plums, Sour cherries, Sweet cherries.

I don't believe games of chance are misrepresented as games of skill. But anyway, this article is about sports gambling which most certainly is a game of skill.

It isn't gambling if there's no house. You're playing the odds, but so am I when crossing the street.

This is disingenuously stretching the definition.

Gambling, in a colloquial and legal sense, generally refers to putting in money for a game of mostly luck or beyond your control in hopes of getting a payout. The less influence you have over it, the faster the payout (or loss), and the higher the chance is of you coming out at a loss, the more strongly it fits into the understood definition of gambling.

Doing anything that takes a risk isn't gambling. Bending over to tie your shoes is a risk. There's a chance you'll strain your back and be immobile for a week. But if you don't take that chance, you won't be able to work. But if you don't do it stupidly, barring the heavens simply being against you that day, you'll be fine.

Farming is the same. If you're not being careless and the heavens don't decide to destroy your crops, and particularly if you're at a point where you can call it a job, you'll be fine. Once a risk is on a long scale, like farming, it's called an investment.

Are you trying to tell us that you think cryptocurrencies and venture capital fit the legal gambling definition, or are you trying to tell us that you didn't bother to understand the context under which the comment was posted?

Either way, you are out to lunch. Your definition is on point, but has nothing do with the discussion taking place.

In gambling a risk is created simply for fun and profit.

This is different from speculation (or bending over to tie shoes) in that a risk is being assumed with an outcome in mind.

The stringent definition of gambling is that it is low effort to make the bet.

I'm not sure sitting in a comfortable air conditioned cab is all that much effort. It is fun! But as we're on the precipice of it going the way of full automation removing even that minimal effort, just how low effort is your bar?

> As a professional gambler (aka farmer)

You guys invented the option so ... yes.

As a farmer, can you tell us about the direct and indirect support you received from your govt to wear the risk of farming? In all highly industrialised countries, there are a huge amount of govt support for farmers.

Crop insurance is partially subsidized, but I am personally not a buyer. What fun is gambling if you’re going to insure the gamble? But I could theoretically benefit from that, to be sure. The farm property tax rate is lower than the commercial rate, so I guess you could say we're subsidized like residential property owners are. I can't think of anything else that is applicable to my farming operation. My country only really likes dairy and poultry producers, of which I am neither.

Hard to say what indirect support is out there. What is and isn't an indirect subsidy is always debatable. The government brings in temporary workers from foreign countries to work at the coffee shop in town, which perhaps, if you believe such action reduces the price of labour, makes life around agricultural areas more affordable. Would you consider that an indirect subsidy to farmers?

The roads are maintained which helps get our product out. Is that a subsidy to farmers? Or is that a subsidy to those on the receiving end? Or is it really a subsidy to the “city folk” driving on those roads to get to their cottage?

The government recently paid a privately-owned ISP to put in a second fibre line in the rural area alongside where the cooperatively-owned ISP already placed one a decade earlier. That is a clear subsidy, but do you consider that a subsidy to the farmer (We theoretically gained some redundancy, although I doubt anyone is making use of it. Internet service to the farm isn't usually that critical, especially when you also have wireless – both mobile and fixed – service available as a backup. Frankly, it was a complete waste of money), or to the ISP?

The derivatives market is useful for hedging and for market efficiency. A lot of the nay-sayers I see tend to talk about how the nominal exposure is bigger than the market itself as if it were a compelling argument against it but it's not (the reason is that there is a counter-party for every "bet").

As for speculation around the "real" economy, in most cases it is widely talked about as the mother of all evil where in fact, the best way to increase the market value of a company is to turn it into a better company. And on the other end, companies go to 0 because they go bankrupt, not the other way around.

My point is that we are denying the entire market structure to punish the < 1% of bad actors, while it is quite useful for the rest.

Crypto is a different beast entirely. I have never believed in it and I still fail to see the value.

I think your comment illustrates that our current society is built on gambling. Most businesses dark. We want people to take the bet and invest into companies, because that's what gives us all these goods and services we use. This system allows people to voluntarily combine their skill and luck to try for a better future. Society benefits as a side-effect.

Oh no. Swype changed the most important word in my post. I meant "Most businesses fail."

same argument can be made about excessive athlete salaries and really any sports related business ventures. Athletes go after specific stats to hit contract goals, get their bonuses and live good lives. Gambling industry is just one of the hundred detractors to the sport itself.

But all of those stats will help a team win in theory. But you can bet against yourself, perform poorly, and then get a payout. That is the antithesis of good sportsmanship.

The problem is that sports gambling introduces conflicting interests. It's one thing to coast and collect paychecks, it's a whole another thing for a player to actively sabotage their own team.

US sports is surprisingly "socialist", with systems like drafting ensuring that a team can't just buy up all the best players, so the league stays interesting. It seems obvious that player wages are kept lower in a system like this ... But I think they do pretty OK anyway.

Amateur sports (college and high school sports) is also much, much bigger in the US than most other places.

Both these trends I would guess have to do with the US's traditional ban on sports gambling.

This is only the annual drafts. Baseball TV revs are not shared between teams, like American football. So baseball teams in large, urban centers have a huge advantage to buy better players from free agency.

Very few political decisions can be said to be carved in stone.

The point is that reversing a popularly acclaimed law, while yes showing to be a mistake, leads to huge losses in political consensus at elections and an easy win to the other parties.

>popularly acclaimed law I have the feeling that gambling is popularly acclaimed in the same way that cigarette smoking is.

People may like it but other than a few even the ones who like it wish it didn't exist.

At any rate every article I see about gambling is about how much it sucks. Probably the gambling industry doesn't have the top level public relations that smoking had once upon a time, otherwise I'd be seeing more ads about how gambling makes you a tough guy. Which, come to think of it, I do see a bit of that in Denmark, but Danes don't do advertising that isn't meant to be funny (laugh with) very well so these ads look ridiculous (laugh at)

Other things that ruin lives: eating, shopping, TV, the Internet, videogames, alcohol, accumulating things in your house, etc.

Being alive ruins lives, guaranteed

I think you mean:

"Whatabout other predatory industries where people fall in a slippery slope to destroy their lives? As long as a solution only addresses some of these industries, should we even consider it?"

More like: <MBA graduate> became CEO of <company>, now <company> is set out to maximize profits at the expense of society.

One could give themselves hyponatremia by overdrinking water, so might as well not have laws preventing children from buying alcohol.

In Australia gambling and poker machines have so deeply parasitised themselves into local sports clubs, that they can now _no longer operate without the poker machines_. They’ve co-opted sport so thoroughly, that gambling is now basically an ingrained part of organised sports from local level up.

It’s heinous.

The local sports clubs need the revenue from the machines, otherwise they'd not make any money at all, and might even cease to exist.

How do you propose to solve this problem? Higher fees from club members? or somehow get more gov't funding via taxing?

I don't see the issue with gambling revenue funding a club.

because the gambling machines mainly fund the people who own these machines, not the club. the club could hold a single bingo evening and raise more money than a month of gambling machines would bring.

If the club holds the license the club owns the machines. Clubs are not for profits and need to return 100% of profits to the club & facility.

In practice this takes the form of Club Board members giving themselves generous contracts to renovate/clean/manage aspects of the club (via services companies that they or a family member own).

There are sports leagues clubs in NSW that rival small Las Vegas casinos in facilities and amenity.

There are no pokies outside the Casino in Western Australia (Perth). And thus no pokies at sports clubs or bars etc. It’s glorious.

I admit to not being entirely sure what "Sports Clubs" are over east though or why they need propping up by gambling. In any case, it works fine here.

You CAN get a permit for a few bits of "gambling" that is mostly only for "sports clubs" but it's very VERY restricted, and mostly like actual games with people like Poker, Two Up, etc. It's not really a problem in nearly the same way, and no machines: https://sportscommunity.com.au/club-member/wa-gambling/

$15 pints are less glorious though!

A few years ago I had a chat with a mate over in QLD, and mentioned our ludicrous prices in WA. The standard line at the time here was "Beer has to be expensive in WA, because we're not allowed to subsidise the cost with pokies". His reply was there are bars in QLD with pokies, and bars without, and none of them charged anything like what we were paying for a pint in WA (nor did the bars with pokies charge significantly less than those without).

Real question: Is the price of a pint high because of operating costs or taxes? Also, can each state set their own alcohol tax rules, and does WA have very strict rules?

Alcohol taxes / excise are controlled at the federal level in Australia. In WA I think the high cost is 1/3 ridiculously high rents, 1/3 high minimum wage and other costs, and 1/3 operators screwing the public because they can.

Higher median wage in WA than other states + higher operating costs to venues (WA liqour licenses used to be the most expensive unsure if this is still the case).

Wouldn't a higher median wage be more profitable for the operators though? They were all paying minimum wage the last time I was involved (which was many years ago), but they'd have been benefiting from the influx of FIFO money since the start of the mining boom?

A (local) sports club doesn't need to "make ... money". It can get contribution from its members, and subsidy from the local government. Otherwise, your argument would sanction every behavior, even turning schools into strip clubs.

fantasy land vs the real world.

I am sure most business owners don't want to be casinos, but would rather be clubs. When the bills are due, they have to find a way to pay up.

That absolutely cannot be true. If a business does not want to be a casino, it doesn't have to be.

I run a pub. We'd never have any gambling (machines or otherwise) in it, and we charge less than most pubs for locally sourced beer/cider.

If you're running your business to extract value from people rather than to create community with them, you're a bad person.

> If you're running your business to extract value from people rather than to create community with them, you're a bad person.

I run a restaurant with the same idea - we pay our staff way more than anyone else is outside the Michelin places for example.

Still, you might be a bad person if you're running an exploitative business, but very likely the system will reward that kind of person more than you or I. In fact I find it difficult to compete with those sorts of people because they get away with it and make more money so can do more marketing, expand more aggressively etc. The classic annoyance I face is other restaurants in the area giving away free french fries for a 5 star review on Google maps.

Now there are customers who spot the fraudulent review restaurants and come to ours instead, and the discerning customer is our market segment anyway (we do many other things that normies would miss but discerning customers notice and reward with their loyalty) but a restaurant lives and dies on the whims of hordes of normie customers that are delighted to get free fries and don't mind creating a Google account for the first time in their lives to get'm.

>we do many other things that normies would miss but discerning customers notice and reward with their loyalty

this sounds interesting, can you share any other examples?

We import our flour because taiwanese flour can't achieve authentic biscuit taste, at least in our hundreds of tests. But most wouldn't really notice that especially without a direct comparison - but for people that care a lot about biscuits, they can tell.

Our restaurant is almost certainly the cleanest in the neighborhood, which in Taiwan only a discerning customer would notice or care about. Other restaurants aren't filthy but they don't achieve the level of sterility we do.

We remember the names of most people who come in and call them by it when they return.

Hm what else. The fact that we let you choose between American "cheese" (what basically all taiwanese people think cheese is) and actual cheddar cheese if you order a bacon egg and cheese. We make our BEC on a pan with bacon grease and swap to the vegetarian pan sans bacon for vegetarians (non vegetarian restaurants in Taiwan wouldn't bother mostly). Etc.

I think you confuse the real world for Ayn-Randistan. Local sports clubs don't need to make someone $5M/yr. They just need to provide sporting facilities, such as fields and tracks, to local sporters. They can be run by volunteers.

Likewise, running a business for a profit doesn't mean exploiting people to their ruin. If you can't make money ethically, you should do something else.

Um, what good are schools if you can't make a profit from them? /s

That's why UK Conservatives turned most of English education into for-profit businesses.

People here are always harping on about how the only reason for coordinating people (companies) is to make profit for the owners/bosses.

What pains me is that people are saying "the local club couldn't survive without {an external party taking a proportion of the gross income}". The maths means that without that external entity there would be more money.

Of course without addiction ruining lives people wouldn't give so much of their money away to these particular sports clubs. But, that just means the sports club is running off the destruction of people's lives in the local community. I mean, that's perfect capitalism, but absolutely inhumane.

The sports clubs that depend on pokies also cease to exist - they become pokies venues that also have a sporting arm. They begin to drain the community instead of contributing back to them.

They’re able to use pokies profits to subsidise cheaper food and alcohol to bring in customers, and in turn get them to pump a money into the pokies, while starving other venues of those customers who can’t compete on price.

Should we take from the most vulnerable in society in order to prop up these clubs? Its not rich people dumping all their money into the pokies, its retirees and people who are broke from gambling addictions getting into debt

Drug dealers need revenue to be drug dealers, otherwise they might cease to exist.

Sounds ridiculous, but client's neurotransmitters are the same.

and i agree - why shouldn't these drugs be legalized? Regulate their sale, just like alcohol. Stop the drug cartels from making profit, and they will disappear.

After all, client's neurotransmitters are the same.

recommend googling 'opioid epidemic' in which people got addicted to perfectly legal painkillers they were prescribed. yeah cartels didn't profit (at first, anyway). neither did society.

The pharmaceutical cartels profited - and hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies as well, if not quite as dramatically.

Honestly it should really be equalized the other way around: alcohol really shouldn’t be as easily available as it is today, perhaps even illegal.

Of course that won’t happen, it’s too ingrained in society. But it really is a scourge.

And I say this as someone who enjoys my beverages responsibly.

Legalizing heroin or the like will destroy parts of our society of nothing else changes.

It was already tried in the US. The agreed upon results were that humans want alcohol and the downstream effects made society worse e.g. increase in alcohol consumption, empowering organized crime and corrupting the police.

I know. That’s why I’m not arguing that we actually try again. Plus I do enjoy drinking beer and other alcohol. But not all drugs are equal.

Many people can responsibly enjoy alcohol. Some can’t. But there are some drugs that are so effective it would be difficult for any human to responsibly use for any extended period of time. It becomes less about philosophy and more about physiology.

Yeah opium was also easily available in China once and it played a large part in their lost century.

What value does a "local sport club" provide exactly, to warrant a revenue?

It might surprise you that groups of people can and do organise things even without the promise of minmaxing monetary value.

> Higher fees from club members?

Sounds good to me.

> Higher fees from club members?

Yep. Solved. Next question please.

There exists a deeper question here regarding “why do these clubs require so much money that they need to bleed it out of the community in the form of poker machines?” I’d posit a good number of them probably don’t need that much cash, and most of it is just profit.

>I don't see the issue with gambling revenue funding a club.

Gambling revenue hurts society more than it profits the club. The answer is that if we absolutely need these clubs, we should more explicitly subsidize them with govt money. It'd be stupid, but less stupid than what we're already doing right now.

Could they ever operate without the gambling?

Yes, but as long as there’s money to be made people will try and maximize it.

What? No they aren't. It's a cancer affecting the balance books of some specific clubs, but of the local aussie rules footy clubs my friends have played at, none have owned venues with pokie machines. There was one club in my brother's under 17s league that was attached to a pokies pub and everyone used to complain about them because their ones got paid too well.

If we ripped out pokies machines then some clubs would be screwed, but I would be seriously surprised if it was more than a handful per league. It would arguably be beneficial for the average team.

This is not true in Western Australia, where Poker machines are illegal everywhere other than the one casino.

That's fair, West Australia represents 3 million of Australias 26 million people.

The comment above tragically is true for most of the country.

I’m tired of seeing quips like, “I was for legalizing gambling until it impacted my friend…”.

What kept Western Australia free from the gambling legalization mistake?

Religious lobbying + labor protections. This is a state that prior to 2012 had no sunday retail trading (with some exceptions).

Also the WA state has alternate revenue sources (mining royalties) that the other Australian states do not.

There is gambling in WA, just not physical slot machines/TABs/keno in every licensed venue.

>> _no longer operate without the poker machines

Horse racing. All over the world there are tracks where horses run, and people bet on the horses, but that isn't why they exist. The track's gambling license, something first granted back when the track was built, is now used to facilitate an attached "casino". The horses are cover for the casino and the casino is just cover for the real money makers of the enterprise: an arcade of slot machines. Corruption for sure, but the "sport" of horse racing probably wouldn't have survived absent that corruption.

That and an excuse for people to get drunk. /s

I don’t know how HN views horse riding, but “no more horse racing” probably would have resulted in a lot less dead and injured horses, so maybe horse-racing should have died out.

Fewer dead horses on the track, but if the sport went away then there would be horses all over the country out of work, which generally doesn't end well for horses, and likely an overall reduction in the number of horses kept as pets.

A reduction in the total number of horses bred or kept is not a problem. It's probably a good thing.

I like when horses die on the racetrack. A symbolic sacrifice.

Betting on a game makes watching the game 10x more fun though.

> But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it ruins the sports. Players throw. They get good at subtly cheating. The gambling apparatus latches itself to the sport, to the teams and players, the umpires and judges, the sporting organizations. With this much money on the line, it's not a matter of if but when games are thrown, cheated -- the bigger the game, the bigger the incentive. It's even easier now because of the amount of side/parlay betting that is available. It exhausts the spirit of competition.

I don't see how this latest gambling fad ends except for another Black Sox scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal

It's been a hundred years so I guess it's time we learned our lesson the hard way, again.

I vote we ban alcohol next :DDDDD

> it ruins the sports

If that were true, people would stop paying attention of it. What other criterion would you have for the quality of sports?

But the worst is how easily you brush aside that it "ruins lives". Not that that's your fault. It seems that almost nobody cares about it. It has been known for a long time that gambling is detrimental, to individuals and to society, yet a bunch of Wolf-of-Wall-Street-style financiers use it to get richer without the need for as much as a good idea. There's less ingenuity and skill involved in betting than in drugs. It's bottom of the barrel amorality, bribing and corrupting its way into politics.

And nobody cares.

No, I didn't brush it aside.

There is a healthy argument going on with compelling points on both sides about the tradeoff between freedom (spending your own money how you please) and social harm reduction (preventing people from ruining their lives). You can look at another of my comments in the thread above this, I take a pretty clear position on the matter.

My statement wasn't that none of that stuff is important, my statement is that gambling is unequivocally bad for the sports themselves and goes against the spirit of sporting regardless of its broader harm to society. I'm saying, there is no strong argument that gambling is good for the spirit of competition in sporting; there is no such debate. Unlike the broader topic.

Gambling is generally against the law in South Korea, but any esports players or personnel who get caught fixing matches (this doesn't necessarily mean throwing a game, bets get placed on all kinds of things that aren't just the outcome of the game), they get a lifetime ban from the government from participating in esports in any way.

I think we need something like that for all sports here in the US. If you get caught fixing games or coordinating to fix bets in any way, you should be liable, fined, and banned from sports and anything sports related for life. If the entire team was in on it, the entire team gets banned for life. No second chances, no exceptions.

Or we could just make sports betting illegal again.

Pretty much what's happening in the NBA with Jontay Porter

And you start to wonder, he's just one who got caught. How many more. It sure didn't take long!

Of course all of the major leagues would say that they are not at all biased. Most probably have extreme suspension rules for being involved in gambling. But, we shall see. Human beings are fallible creatures; people forget, people slip. And it's hard to prove this. Especially nowadays, when you can do it over your phone in private.

Still, it really doesn't matter,

After all, who wins the flag.

Good clean sport is what we're after,

And we aim to make our brag

To each near or distant nation

Whereon shines the sporting sun

That of all our games gymnastic

Base ball is the cleanest one!

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

I wish people would just realize that sports betting is stupid. If matches can be thrown then they will be thrown no matter the consequences. People shouldn't engage in sports gambling because it can be rigged.

If you want to do it for fun then use fantasy points for it.

There was speculation whether a baseball player was actually behind his interpreters’ gambling scandal.

> Gambling is generally against the law in South Korea, but any esports players or personnel who get caught fixing matches

"Don't get high on your own supply" is a law that covers much of Asia's stance on gambling. Macau has stricter gambling laws for citizens than tourists, for example.

While everything you wrote I agree with, I’m not sure I arrived to the same conclusion. Alcohol, cigarettes, workaholics, social media apps all ruin the lives of the weak and those around them. Should we make them all illegal?

This boils down to a two question "should we as society allow a person to destroy his life." And because there is also a big external pressure from financially interested parties to convince a person to do things that are not beneficial to him, second question is "should we as society let smarter people fool less educated people out of their money/health/ happiness" (second one is more tricky) but low hanging fruits are advertisement for alcohol, gambling, smoking and other obviously non beneficial activities.

that's a good point.

Ban advertising for gambling, tax the hell out of gambling companies... possibly create some sort of regulation for actual gamblers, i.e. check their ID against a national database everytime they bet to ensure they're not over-doing it... seems more likely to fix the issue than outright prohibition, which, at least for other things like drugs and prostitution, doesn't really seem to solve much.

Well, you cannot advertise cigarretes, so yes, why can you plaster the Internet, primetime TV, and player's jerseys with gambling ads?

It is nuanced.

Take alcohol. It is a drug, a poison, addictive, acute severe health problems are rare - although it can kill via the stupor it imposes but long term health and affects on productivity etc. Really bad.

So society may be better off without it. But then mind altering substances may be good even if they are bad for social cohesion and self medication. It is hard to be sober you have to take life as it actually is.

Make it illegal? Well that is almost orthogonal... why? What does it achieve to make it a moral outrage ... and who is the criminal? The brewer, the distributer or the drinker?

Then even if you decide that incarceration is a good think to do to people who do one of the 3 things - the prohibition shows that people will do it anyway. As a drug alcohol in particular is probably the easier to synthesize. You just need readily available pantry items and a jar. Other drugs need chenistry labs, precursor chemicals or plants. So that effects the affect of criminializing alcohol.

Then mix in its deep root in culture!

Now alcohols is discussed, what next... too much work...

That will have a different set of problems, solutions, unintended consequences of fixing the issue and so on.

So just treat gambling like its own thing. Even then casino poker vs. Slots vs. Lottery vs. Physical Bookie vs. Online booke vs. Crypto vs. Backstreet all have different subissues and may need to be legislated individually.

If we can, and it works out to less harm vs benefit than otherwise: Yes. But it turns out we can't for alcohol and cigarettes (except regulation). We fairly much can for workaholics - Norway has laws that stop working overtime except in certain situations, and they actually work fairly well. I don't know if we can for social media, though I see California is trying to stop some of the addictive forms of social media.

Of course. Freedom and all.

My uncle gambled away a successful business, a beautiful house, his family, his friends. In my early memory he was a giant who carried me in the ocean, flying just above the breaking waves. Later on, when I was in elementary school, he lived with us for a bit. Some time later he lived in his Buick. He died alone and with nothing.

In my mind, we all should not allow a man to do that.

That still leaves you with a question if harm reduction is better approach than criminalization. At least you don't attract the mob into the business with the former.

Banning addictive things isn't as straightforward as people love to believe. Even during the worst theocratic times, you could get alcohol in Saudi Arabia by asking the right people; and Saudi Arabia had way harsher means at its disposal than democratic countries do.

(For the complete picture, my grandpa drank himself to death at 57 and even though he used to have a good income, on the order of 3x as much as an average Czechoslovak worker of that time, he left almost nothing behind. All "liquefied". Other people were able to build family houses for their kids with less money.)

Many such similar stories, except where the crutch is alcohol. Back to the original question, would you propose banning alcohol as well?

Perhaps ban is too strong. I think Canada has had a really positive result in how it has dealt with tobacco. Cigarettes are by no means illegal, you can get them at any gas station, grocery store, 7-11 or pharmacy. But they are heavily taxed, the packages have to be covered in graphic warnings, the branding has to be plain and just use a generic font of the brand name. Commercials aren't allowed. Advertising isn't allowed. As a result, a lot less people just take up smoking, and it's almost completely fallen off culturally.

That might be the best solution to gambling. At least in Canada, casinos are very well advertised and glamorized. They're often run by the government, but they still market themselves to attract customers in a way you wouldn't expect of say, a safe opioid consumption site. Their slot machines are just as addictive. Sure, there's lip service paid to preventing gambling addiction, eg a piece of paper on the wall instructing patrons to play responsibly. But if we took the same attitude towards it as we do to tobacco, it might just fade away without all the downsides of prohibition.

I hold the strong belief that gambling companies are evil and make the world worse and I wouldn't find the burning of them down by the loved ones of people's lives they ruined to be unethical.

However people should know what regulating ethics to this degree looks like: the modern PRC. In the PRC you get a government mandated timer on your MMOs to ensure you don't spend too much time playing videogames. In the internet cafes there's 24/7 a CPC bureaucrat prowling around keeping an eye on your chats - plus automated mandated filters which depending on the implementation can auto kick you from a multiplayer match, hence the entirely viable strategy when playing against PRC players to spam "FREE HONG KONG REVOLUTION OF OUR TIMES CCP COMMITS GENOCIDE AGAINST UIGHUR MUSLIMS XINJIANG" into chat to get them kicked from the match.

There's industry level morality controls as well such as not being allowed to make a tv show featuring "feminine men" and the implicit ban on showing LGBT couples.

Personally I don't trust a State to choose the correct morals, be it aesthetically communist or aesthetically capitalist. We can look at America's history of moral laws to see another example, such as prohibition.

There’s a readily available example proving your slippery slope isn’t guaranteed to happen: gambling was illegal in most of the US very recently and it wasn’t anything like China.

The gambling bans in the US weren't that effective. People who wanted to gamble went to crypto casinos or other online gambling games.

They still stopped the vast majority of casual people.

So instead, you trust for-profit companies to direct the morals of society?

Surely the reason prohibition failed so badly was that it wasn't democratic. You can't mandate against vice unless you have the support of the majority.

> So instead, you trust for-profit companies to direct the morals of society?

Absolutely not. I don't really have a solution, but in general it seems distributing power to more local level forms of governance works well for many things, so perhaps something along those lines?

Local control has limits too. In the US one can now export pollution to ones neighboring states. Las Vegas exports it's externalities by marketing to out of state populations. (Or at least they did when gambling was more heavily regulated elsewhere)

>it seems distributing power to more local level forms of governance works well for many things

>CCP COMMITS GENOCIDE AGAINST UIGHUR MUSLIMS XINJIANG

wow, you seem to really know what you're talking about!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_regions_of_China

Is your argument that Xinjiang is somehow autonomous from the CPC government? That's a very strange claim to make considering it's undeniably ruled completely by the whims of the CPC.

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

If that's not what you mean, can you help me understand what you're saying?

I think this is a false dichotomy between the state and private industry.

The morals of society is directed by culture. The state does not and never have a monopoly on culture, because culture is embedded.

If a culture is against gambling, you need no regulation/laws at all. The daoist would argue that the need to have strict laws on behaviour is due to a deviant culture. As an aside the legalist argues that humans are evil, fickle and morally corrupt by default and need strict laws.

I'm just making shit up, but perhaps an Abrahamic culture needs salvation, thus it needs outlets of sin so that it generates demand for people to be saved.

Re your last paragraph, the New Testament addresses an argument about Christian grace, some said they should sin more because that left more room for God's grace. Not surprisingly the Bible's answer is, nu-uh (an emphatic no).

I think society can generally be against something, yet it succeed. Most people consider greed to be bad, but it's the foundation of capitalism. I'm not sure if most people would say gambling is wrong. (This survey, https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/blog/post/gambling-sur..., found only 41 of self-selected UK gamblers rated it positively.)

A democratic state should reflect the desired culture, if it doesn't it's not being democratic. Businesses can also do that, as can other organisations. Most businesses goals are aligned away from benefiting society in general; whilst a democratic state should be at least loosely aligned with that end (by definition).

Thanks for a thought provoking response.

Regulating what businesses can sell is pretty different from regulating what people can say.

Ehh is it? The CPC regulates videogames the way it does because it views it as a moral harm to society the same way people argue about gambling destroying lives. And gay sex harms the fertile output of the People and so also shouldn't be promoted. Capitalist imperialism is always at the gates trying to tempt people to turn on their fellow citizens and oftentimes it masquerades as a Christian Missionary so the State is obligated to keep a sharp check on religious organizations, not to mention to protect people from destroying their lives through cults (and ALL religions are cults). These needs require the regulation of speech and business.

The USA doesn't take it quite so far but it did strongly regulate the socio-economic imperialism of Communism, leveraging State resources to attempt to convince socialist leaders to kill themselves (MLK) or just by assassinating and imprisoning them (Black Panthers). The State protects people from ruining their lives with marijuana, or from ruining the justice system by telling people walking into a courthouse about Jury Nullification. These needs require the regulation of speech (can't tell people Communism is super awesome and you should unionize and strike) and business (can't open a casino in downtown LA).

For the record gay sex isn't harmful to the fertility of the state and shouldn't be regulated, nor should speech about Jury Nullification, I was just making a point about both nations.

> Ehh is it?

Yes.

Your first paragraph is about motive, which isn't enough to make those two actions the same.

Your second paragraph is just bad things the US did? I don't see how it's relevant to the question.

Some people believe that their beliefs and way of life should be enforced. Here, which human habits or activities are allowed or "OK" even if partially or very deletorious.

The desired force vector varies in magntitude and orientation, but can, in the extreme include removal of independence / imprisonment or less extreme banning and fining etc

Because a single or group of people believe it, it must be for everyone, equally.

So? Literally the entire political apparatus depends on a few people enforcing their ideas of how the rules should be, and everyone else has to play by them.

The question of legality isn't just about the potential for harm; it’s about balancing individual freedom with societal responsibility

Exactly. Sports gambling takes the fun out of sports for those who are not interested in gambling.

that's like saying alcoholics take the fun out of wine drinking for people who don't have a drinking problem.

Alcohol takes the fun out of socializing when stripped of it you are left with tables, chairs and a room. And company that spits and slurs!

Without alchohol social scenes may be more creative. Karoke. Board games. Social games. Deep conversatiobs. Challenges. Parties like you had as a kid.

I absolutely cannot imagine singing karaoke without alcohol.

Alcohol certainly does not preclude it.

Karoke is an alcohol+non alcohol friendlier gig than sitting at a table for 6 hours not even eating :)

Everything you mentioned is more fun with alcohol. Alcohol makes humans less shy and more sociable which is one of the main reasons people enjoy it.

Karaoke without alcohol sounds like a torture.

I sing a lot and my choir friends can do karaoke sober, but they are the only people I know who can sing in public with no social lubricant. Citing karaoke as a sober activity was very odd to me.

Your off hand comment about spits and slurs makes me realize people all consume alcohol very differently. I feel like anytime there is a conversation around alcohol, dose needs to be stated. Obviously it's going to be hard to have deep conversations with someone who has had 12 beers, but someone who has had a drink or two, lowering their inhibitions, will likely open up more.

Not really? It's more like saying alcoholics take the fun out of going to a restaurant that happens to have a bar.

Your analogy is an improvement, but both of you are weirdly mapping "alcoholics" to "people who are interested in gambling". A valid analogy would speak of people who are interested in alcohol.

(Incidentally, the restaurant in your analogy would probably not be viable without that bar!)

>A valid analogy would speak of people who are interested in alcohol.

I did speak of people who enjoy wine (that contains alcohol) and don't have an alcohol problem. Their enjoyment of wine is not ruined by winos on the curb drinking out of paper bags.

This would be true if wine was deliberately made worse quality in order to maximize some incentive behind manipulating alcoholics. I don't have a horse in this race, but this comparison misses the entire point of this particular counter to sports gambling. The sports in question are, purportedly, made worse - the outcome changed in arbitrary ways disconnected from the spirit of nature of the sport - in order to maximize the profits of the incredibly wealthy. There is no way to escape this when enjoying the sport; if deliberately throwing is rampant, you would always have to ask if a player's mistake was genuine, and your emotional investment in a game is poisoned as a result. Likewise, the comparison would be that no wine is immune from this kind of quality reduction. Eventually, a wine drinker will drink wine which has been reduced in quality on purpose.

So you're saying I should engage in alcoholism and gambling if I want to maximize fun?

If you want to see this train wreck in action, look no further than eSports. Here you can see the gradual erosion of sportsmanship in a way that likely played out for conventional sports in the past.

Agree. I would add that it is a bit of a perfect storm:

- lower income families struggle for upwards mobility

- we are moving ever more towards a full material world, where you need to have a lot of disposable income just to keep up (remember the first over 1000 usd iPhone and people saying it was too much?)

- social media keeps reminding us that there are “successful” people who have all the stuff you dream, and can burn money (all a lie, but if desperate and poorly educated you buy it)

- vanishing of social construct: less weight of family in peoples life, less local communities (replaced by only pseudo-communities as twitter or insta) which translates into less emotional support, pushing you to consumerism for solace.

It’s no surprise that the hope of a quick buck (be it sports betting or also damaging scratch cards / lotteries) thrive in the context, and in particular with people desperate or with poor understanding of odds and biases….

Edit: I don’t think is necessary a poor-people-only problem, I think this is a symptom that a new definition of poverty is brewing - one beyond financial indicators… (stale life, no prospects of moving up, disenfranchising of society, resentment for feeling rug pulled from underneath, prone to absorb/consume anything that makes you feel “in the loop” or relevant like fake news or crazy theories, etc). I believe we are seeing this all across the Western world, yet us and our leaders fail to address it.

I'd add another point to your list: decades of wage depression by rabid unchecked globalization, in urban areas combined with ever more power going to landlords.

The amount of money especially young people have to fork off of their paychecks just to have a place to live is outright insane.

> you need to have a lot of disposable income just to keep up (remember the first over 1000 usd iPhone and people saying it was too much?)

You may have meant this facetiously, but just to be clear—there is no "need to" "keep up". I'm a software engineer making more than enough money and I still use budget Android phones for years at a time. We live in a world where corporations have persuaded people that they "need to" live beyond their means, but most things are still optional or doable with a budget version.

As the proud owner of a 200 usd iPhone SE (second hand) I agree. However that’s not what society thinks, looking how many people jump to the latest upgrade because it has (check notes) a new life-changing emoji generator

Gambling, in the same way as consumption of drugs can be indeed harmful for individuals and the people surrounding them.

But the solution is not forbidding them, but educating people and families on how to deal with them.

Alcohol consumption is even more dangerous than sport betting, however several cultures after generations have been able to develop a healthy relationship towards its consumption. You can clearly see that by comparing deaths in Mediterranean countries against other northern countries or other parts of the world.

I can feel that difference also directly in the way my Mediterranean cultural background has driven my relationship with alcohol. Me and my family love to drink wine or beer, but we despise getting drunk. The moment our heads get light headed we stop drinking. We enjoy the social aspect of it and its flavor, but we do not enjoy being incapacitated because of it. However the moment I started traveling north I noticed the difference in how people relate to alcohol:in a lot of cultures people just drink alcohol to get drunk or to disconnect from their every day lives. They have not learnt to stop on time and they develop a very unhealthy relationship to drinking.

Same could be said about sports betting. If it’s part of our culture or our individual interests we need as a society to be able to develop a healthy relationship towards it and not forbid it (with the exception of minors).

Which culture are you implying has a healthy relationship with alcohol?

Mediterranean (or at least the GP's family, which they say is Mediterranean).

I've made solid side income gambling over a number of different games and sports, and I say it should definitely be banned.

It ruins lives, funnels money to terrible people, makes sports worse for everyone, and has no positive impact on society. The benefits of the "freedom" to let manipulation of your lizard brain drain you of your past and future earnings is not worth it.

Over the years I did get to know a couple of people that were winning players in poker and sports betting. I was never patient enough for poker, so I just played it for fun every now and then (probably break-even, maybe a bit minus) and just watched the discussions about it interested. As poker got harder, a lot of them switched over to sports betting, which I was never interested in, but I found it amazing how they analyzed the games.

But if you really think about it, yes there might be a tiny portion that wins overall, but they only win because there are a lot of people emotionally invested that ruin their lives. So yes, please ban.

Edit: While yes, it can be fun and I personally can have a lot of fun when I put 50 bucks into a slot machine once or twice a year, no matter the outcome, it doesn't really justify to keep that business alive

> yes there might be a tiny portion that wins overall

Probably explained by chance.

Gambling "systems" don't work unless there's a flaw in the game.

There are inefficiencies that make certain bets positive EV if you are smart enough. It's usually a combination of playing in a weird way and having some insight that the maker of the game (the oddsmaker) didn't see. Gambling establishments don't mind because there are few enough of these and they will ban you if you take too much money from them.

Winning sports betting players often go on to set odds.

>It's usually a combination of playing in a weird way and having some insight that the maker of the game (the oddsmaker) didn't see

Apparently exactly this. The people that I knew where always discussing the fitness of certain players and how that'd impact the game and stuff like that. Though it could've also been that they were on a long long lucky streak, because they minimized the risk with such considerations. At least t hey were not ruining their own lives

I have a friend who professionally plays video poker, and has been doing that for a very long time. He runs Monte Carlo simulations to find his strategies around various kinds of promotions and specials that casinos offer. He has about a 2-5% edge whenever he plays, and maximizes his bet size and machine time to take advantage of this. Casinos don't care about this sort of thing because the strategy he plays is usually batshit insane compared to how you would think video poker ought to be played (eg "throw away cards from a flush to mine for a straight flush" is a frequent rule he uses), and is very complicated. They lose ~$10k a week to the three people like him who can do this, but more than make up for it in the rubes that come in the door from those promotions.

These sorts of inefficiencies, and often even true arbitrage bets, show up in sports betting because the bets you need to make are so complicated. There is a team at Susquehanna that does sports gambling as their form of trading, and they will sometimes play these sorts of arbitrages against bookies. I remember hearing about a perfectly-hedged arbitrage of 8 different bets from one member of that team in a specific gambling forum, but the bets were all so arcane that very few other players were playing each one.

Sportsbooks make money by taking bets on both sides of a game and offering odds that work in their favor. For example, even on an "even money" bet, you might have to bet $105 to win $100. The more one-sided a game seems, the bigger the gap between the odds on either side because the sportsbook is trying to manage its risk. As people place bets, they adjust the odds to balance the action. The sportsbook isn't banking on you being wrong—they want enough bets on both sides so they win no matter what. The difference between the odds is basically their "fee."

As a professional bettor, you're not really outsmarting the sportsbook—you’re trying to outsmart the public. The key is finding moments where the crowd is wrong enough that betting the other side makes sense, even with the sportsbook’s fees. That means you’ll often skip betting when the odds are pretty accurate.

Most sportsbooks will limit how much you can bet if you're too successful, but they usually won’t ban you outright.

Many sportsbooks actually do not run that way. The name "sportsbook" implies that they do, but that is an older style of betting that has fallen out of favor. Modern sports books usually use fixed odds set by an oddsmaker (in modern times, algorithms set by the oddsmaker), but those odds are allowed to float with the probability of the outcome changing. I believe they take supply and demand into account, but you actually are betting against the house. That prevents the kind of trading against the crowd that would be normally viable.

The Hong Kong horse race track was a famous example of market-priced bets where the book was run the way you said and the crowd was exploitable in the way you are suggesting. It was one of the last books to work that way.

I can see the misunderstanding, but I was not actually describing parimutuel betting (horseracing). In parimutuel betting the odds continue to change up until the race even once you've placed your bet ensuring that the payout is always the total amount wagered less a fee kept by the house.

Sportsbooks will open lines intelligently, but they absolutely do move the line in response to market forces in an attempt to balance money on both sides, because when the money is balanced, they are guaranteed profit.

It's true that when you make a sports wager, the house is paying you out of their wallet. It's also true that they employ a lot of energy and expertise in order to open the betting at accurate odds. However, no corporate, end user facing sportsbook is themselves fading action on one side of the match intentionally. They aggressively try to balance money on both sides so they can guarantee a profit.

Where is the movement to ban those ticket machines from places like Dave and Busters/Chuck-e-Cheese where you exchange coins for tickets which are only redeemable for cancer inducing sugary foods or (at exchange rates which would please your local African warlord) occasionally game consoles?

Because that shit is legal in all 50 states and is worse for society in my opinion. No hysteria against this.

This hot take is just a bad take.

People don't lose their life savings redeeming D&B tickets. You have an uphill battle convincing me the Chuck E Cheese model is worth banning when it's mostly seen as harmless kids' fun.

If this is seriously bothering you, you probably spend way too much time at Dave & Buster's. And I would guess you do not have children.

If sports betting bothers you, you spend too much time playing or watching sports ;)

Chuck E Cheese taught me a lot about the value of company scrip and cutting out middlemen.

Unless you live by yourself in the middle of the woods you never ruin just your life.

I'd push back on the idea that gambling is inherently harmful. Gambling can be done at a scale where it is essentially play. It is particularly gambling against corporations or other non-individual actors, in games that they rig to be perpetually -EV, and market like crazy, that is inherently harmful.

Unfortunately, banning it outright will probably only exacerbate problems.

If you, hypothetically, banned it outright in the US, then you go from having few levers on what you can mitigate in the industry to none, because if it's all banned and has more than a slap on the wrist punishment, there's no reason not to charge 200% interest on gambling debts, or other absurd things.

I'm firmly of the belief that the only thing you can really do is tightly regulate it to the point that there's still enough gambling, with controls minimizing as much unexpected harm as you can, to avoid most people feeling tempted to seek out the unregulated illegal avenues with more exploitative arrangements.

I think history has shown that you can't effectively ban a lot of vices, you just wind up with them underground and even more destructive to people involved. The best you can do is try to minimize how easily one can destroy themself - look at Japan's reactive regulation around the most predatory gacha mechanics. Whether you think they strike the right balance or not, that's rather an example of what I mean - you can't really stop someone from deciding to deliberately spend their life's savings on things, you can just do as much as you can to avoid it being an impulsive choice.

Sports gambling has been legal in the UK since 1960. Gambling wasn't seriously problematic in this country until 2005, when regulations were substantially liberalised. Pre-2005, sports betting was something that old men did in dingy backstreet shops; post-2005, it became a widespread social phenomenon, turbocharged by advertising and the growing influence and accessibility of the internet.

There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-faire, which the US seems particularly prone to. You've seen similar issues with the decriminalisation of cannabis, where many states seem to have switched abruptly from criminalisation to a fully-fledged commercial market. There is a broad spectrum of other options in between those points that tend to be under-discussed.

You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019. You can set limits on maximum stakes or impose regulations to make gambling products less attractive to new customers and less risky for problem gamblers. You can have a single state-controlled parimutuel operator. Gambling does cause harm - whether it's legal or not - but it is within the purview of legislators to create a gambling market in which harm reduction is the main priority.

White paper on recent UK reform of the Gambling Act for the digital age.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-stakes-gambl...

I understand your position in theory but feel the comparison to cannabis is a bit unfair. Most physicians will agree that cannabis is fairly harmless in adults.

Gambling, however has previously in the U.S. shown to be the leading cause of suicide attempts (20% in total) among all forms of addiction [1]. A body of evidence has also demonstrated it leads to divorce, bankruptcy, poor health and sometimes incarceration. Worth noting many of these studies centered around machine gambling and all forms of gambling are unique in terms of tendency for compulsion. Considering the landscape it is quite difficult for me to see a way of regulating out of this, not in the U.S. at least.

[1] Zangeneh and Hason 2006, 191-93

It’s just an example.

That's fair, and I really don't fundamentally disagree with what they said I just wanted to add some cultural context here. Will plead ignorance that my experience working on issues of "addiction" or compulsions outside of the U.S. is incredibly thin but, knowing how compulsion tends to play out stateside- these are my observations. I'm genuinely concerned considering how poorly we've done treating those with substance use disorder, which I think is arguably simpler than gambling addiction in some respects

I don't necessarily disagree, but the original comment didn't suggest that gambling and cannabis are equally harmful, or even that cannabis is harmful. The point was that policymaking seems to tend toward all-or-nothing (either fully prohibited, or anything goes), and the legalization of cannabis is a recent example of that. The goods or harms of cannabis are beside the point.

> Most physicians will agree that cannabis is fairly harmless.

If you read some papers on the subject it should be plenty apparent that it has adverse effects on the development of young adults, as well as long term use by anyone, particularly of recent high-potency strains.

It's not as bad as other drugs (heroine), and it's worse than others (coffee), but it's not harmless. I'm far from being a prohibitionist, and live somewhere that has (I think) sensible policies (The Netherlands), but to simply put that it's "fairly harmless" as something most physicians agree with is not true. I'd say it's similar to alcohol in terms of its moderate use being possible in a working society - albeit with some negative outcomes for people that overdo it, or do it too early in life.

Edit: there's lots of discussion below about if the studies that exist are trustworthy or not, but since anyone can google for studies, I'll leave a different recommendation to check out the r/Leaves subreddit, and read some first hand accounts of long term and heavy users. It's at least a different type of source and you can make up your own mind about what real users say about it, in case you never encountered it before.

edited to specify that I was addressing adult use. Agreed use in adolescence or even younger can be problematic. I also think that there isn't enough discussion around the impact of cannabis on cognition. Here in the U.S., though, as far as medical consensus there truly is not very much concern around cannabis use. A report found that there is limited evidence of the harms of cannabis, and ample evidence of medical use-cases- published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) in 2017

Worth noting our current overdose crisis and general lack of health care in many parts of the country, now the under-prescription of controlled medications- which all helps shift a lot of these dynamics in a direction that might not be seen in other parts of the world.

I'd challenge you to read those results again. They admit to the evidence for health effects being elusive (due to limited or no robust studies), yet there is still enough evidence to summarize the following:

There is substantial evidence of a statistical association between cannabis use and:

The development of schizophrenia or other psychoses, with the highest risk among the most frequent users (12-1) There is moderate evidence of a statistical association between cannabis use and:

Better cognitive performance among individuals with psychotic disorders and a history of cannabis use (12-2a) Increased symptoms of mania and hypomania in individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorders (regular cannabis use) (12-4) A small increased risk for the development of depressive disorders (12-5) Increased incidence of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts with a higher incidence among heavier users (12-7a) Increased incidence of suicide completion (12-7b) Increased incidence of social anxiety disorder (regular cannabis use) (12-8b)"

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24625.

I would warrant that these summaries should be a concern for anyone using cannabis and that blanket statements regarding the overall tone and summation of the report negating health effects of cannabis is somewhat misguided.

None of which are causal associations. Given the millennia-long history of cannabis use to self-medicate, and lack of evidence (not without trying!) for a biological mechanism of any of this, it’s probably safe to assume this is largely people with an issue (or a proto-issue) self-medicating.

Your argument appears to be jumping from (lack of causal associations) to (assumption that causality is in the opposite direction).

This has also been studied more since 2017 now that there are a lot more people taking cannabis, and many of these links have been confirmed, although some have not.

It has also been confirmed that heavy use of marijuana has negative effects on cognitive performance and short-term memory even in adults, although these symptoms go away after you stop using.

I think the evidence is closer to “completely harmless” than “mostly harmless” there’s literally never been a reproducible study that shows cannabis is in any way “bad for you.”

The negative effect on brain development of young people has been extensively studied and proven, by many different studies across many different countries.

And the GP was clearly stating that it was about adults. You're either arguing in bad faith or not paying attention.

what's an adult for you? Studies show effects on people of up to 25 years of age.

My wife is a psychiatrist. It’s not unheard of for her to have to deal with cannabis induced psychosis.

One of the more challenging things with cannabis is it can trigger people who are more predisposed to issues. Some of these things can stick around for a while, after an initial incident. Compared to something, like alcohol, cannabis based issues don’t only affect heavy or long term users. You might just be the unlucky person that cannabis doesn’t jive with.

That being said, I think she largely thinks legal cannabis is good. She’s seen recovered alcoholics who’ve turned to cannabis as their outlet without killing their liver and destroying their body.

However, acting like there are no risks to cannabis is not helping anyone.

For a while it was unclear if the link between cannabis and psychosis was correlation or causation, but causation was ultimately established. It seems to be a relatively small percentage of the population that experience such things, but that's largely the same part of the population prone to heavy, chronic cannabis consumption in the first place.

So I just wanted to add that for a subset of the population, the risks are several orders of magnitude more serious than "lost a few IQ points", as many people are not able to resume normal life (nor indeed, a normal experience of reality) after a psychotic experience.

That being said, I do support legalization, since the alternatives are worse. I just also support people being well informed, and aware that while they're probably not in that 2%, there's only one way to find out, and you really, really don't want to find out.

I have a graduate degree in neuroscience, worked with colleagues who focused on psychopharmacology for their research, and many of my friends and neighbors are biologists of various stripes, including still-active neuroscientists, as well as epidemiologists, and clinicians. They all agree cannabis is fairly harmless, and would outright laugh you out of the room if you compared its negative effects (either in the individual or to society) to alcohol.

Clinicians aren’t the ones to go to for harms anyways, they’re largely not doing the research at any level.

Alcoholism is certainly destructive, but if you have predisposition to schizophrenia you really better off with drinking than smoking pot.

Unfortunately, people with predispositions like that are even more drawn to marijuana (and other drugs). It's a form of self-medication-- that sometimes goes wrong.

That's hilarious

Schizophrenia is the result of deficiency (and dependency) of vitamin B3, aka niacin. Adam Hoffer's therapy cured thousands

What is the harmless dose? One join per year? Per month? Per week? Per day? Several per day, as I often saw in my youth? My father was addicted to cannabis, I can tell you that it reduces a lot ones' life outcomes and has consequences on your family.

If you are alcoholic enough, alcohol withdrawal can literally kill you. Likewise, consequences on family and your own outcomes are massive even before that stage.

that's the part they leave out. the cannabis they test in the labs is probably 5mg. The flower sold in the streets is over 20mg.

I have seen people go into psychosis from weed. & no it wasn't laced. I have seen my gf's dad go from a non-smoker to rolling a blunt every hour. I have had friends drop out of college due to weed.

"Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but… well, son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored. And it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything." - Randy Marsh, South Park (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Future_Self_'n'_Me)

What a neighborhood where you have deep discussions about psychopharmacology research with your neighbors, incredible.

>> Most physicians will agree that cannabis is fairly harmless in adults.

It's a recreational drug. Unless a patient needs it to counter some other malady such as for pain relief, most doctors will say that less is better and none is best.

there's nothing inherently wrong with recreational drug use

[flagged]

It's looks like you have wrong assumptions about liberal philosophy. In liberal philosophy, price of human life is set to infinity, thus price of life of any individual (even worthless ones) is equal to price of life of any group (even top of the top).

However, unlike anarchy, any harm to human life is very costly (because value of human life is infinite!), for example: killing of someone, suicide, death because of incompetence or laziness, or self damage because of self medication, etc. are «sins» for libertarians.

Libertarian != Liberal

Yep, my mistake. However, I disagree that HN is the libertarian site.

Well, most physicians will tell you the same about smoking and drinking (i.e. "less is better and none is best"), but some/many then go in their private lives and smoke and drink.

This is a thing physicians say but often don't heed themselves, and I don't think it singles out cannabis in particular.

The thing that horrifies me the most is physicians who smoke. There's an activity of which there is no safe level of doing other than "none", plus they've definitely seen what a smoker's lung looks like, and yet I've seen plenty of doctors who smoke regularly.

> most physicians will agree that cannabis is fairly harmless in adults.

This isn’t a good argument. Cannabis is harmless in adults that it’s harmless in. However, there’s a percentage of the population that has strong, adverse reactions to cannabis. Some of these can be life altering, requiring treatment to correct or mitigate.

The problem with cannabis is you can’t predict if any single person will be susceptible to negative outcomes until they have that negative outcome.

I didn’t refer to it as harmless. I referred to it as “fairly harmless”. An acknowledgment of what you are referring to. I don’t see this as terribly different than referring to cough syrup containing DXM as fairly harmless. If you are on MAOIs or have liver issues it can be quite dangerous- but for the vast majority of the population it is perfectly safe

I agree with you 100% but just one thing of note

> You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019

this has been widely sidestepped, betting companies now advertise something like "sport-results.com" and then that one has a prominent link to the betting site.

Isn't sport-results.com then advertising for gambling, which should be illegal?!

This is the whole problem with half-measures

If someone posts a link to a gambling site on Facebook, should Facebook be banned?

Facebook has to abide to the local laws.

You probably don’t ban Facebook as a whole but if they fail to crack down on gambling links that violate advertising laws or allow gambling companies to advertise in spite of those laws they probably face heavy fines from regulators.

I think the issue he's raising is how you define advertising though. Is texting your friend a link advertising? What about posting a link on a forum? On Wikipedia? On your portfolio? On your footer? On your nav bar?

I think everyone agrees the name should not be damnatio memoriae nor should you be able to link to a click-wrapper, but people will always push the gray area in between as far as they can for that kind of money.

I think it's pretty easy to define, actually. Were they paid in some way to do those things? If yes, then it was advertising.

It sounds like the most common way to do these things is to have one company operate one gambling and one non-gambling site and just tell people they operate the other site on each. No money's changing hands, so that's not advertising. Then you can advertise to go to your non-gambling site, and they can organically navigate to the gambling site which was disclosed, not advertised. You would almost have to ban companies which have any interest in a gambling product from advertising anything at all.

That sounds like a conspiracy and the penalties for conspiracy are much more severe than just illegal advertising.

Conspiracy to do what? Advertise? We already established it's not advertising.

If we're gonna play Reductio ad absurdum my question is, if someone whispers "online gambling" to a friend, should they be put to death?

This is the same issue where poker companies used to advertise their play money sites and use the play money sites to link to separate real money sites. The loophole exists although it is certainly closeable.

I'd say it still reduces exposure and makes a statement. It also denormalises gambling a bit

That's an enforcement problem, not a problem with banning advertising.

Here in the Netherlands we had TV advertising for gambling, using semi-celebrities, those were outlawed again within a few months and have not come back. 20-30 years ago, there were a lot of 'call in to win' shows on TV that were of course basically a scam. They too were made illegal and have not returned.

FWIW the Netherlands used to ban gambling advertising, and then legalized it (purely due to corruption if you ask me, but that's besides the point). The change was night and day. Overnight, half the banner ads around town were promoting poker sites and sports betting etc. There really weren't lots of similar ads for "sports results" sites before then.

That is because the ban was universal. In Italy they only banned advertisements.

I hate it though the legalisation, especially since it turns out:it is as bad as they thought it was, no the companies do not do the required addiction checks and yes it ruins people's lives.

It's the most blatantly corrupt thing I've seen our government do in a long time. It made things worse for everybody, to the benefit of a few gambling bosses and absolutely nobody else.

> There is a broad spectrum of other options in between those points that tend to be under-discussed.

Where we fall on that spectrum is generally a matter of culture, rather than regulation. American culture is one of maximalism, especially when it comes to commercialization.

Regulation is the enforcement and control of culture. They cannot really be disentangled.

American culture is not one of maximalism. Going overseas I was surprised to see tobacco products and beer legal at 16 or 18, people drinking alcohol in the open at parks, soft-porn on late-night broadcast TV, and newsstands with uncovered porn magazines.

All of which are commercialization.

Further, a maximalism interpretation can't be used to understand American culture pre-1974, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited banks from preventing women from getting a bank account, nor pre-1964, when the Civil Rights Act prohibited most businesses from preventing blacks from exercising the same commercial maximalism as whites.

I am pointing out that, the moment betting and marijuana got the "you can profit from this" nod, money poured in and profit seeking explodes. Build! Advertise! Build! Advertise! This is the American way. Capital circles potential profits like vultures waiting for regulation to die.

I don't think many other countries' private markets act as extreme in this regard.

>All of which are commercialization

I feel like those are just cultural norms as opposed to commercialization pressure.

> Further, a maximalism interpretation can't be used to understand American culture pre-1974, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited banks from preventing women from getting a bank account, nor pre-1964, when the Civil Rights Act prohibited most businesses from preventing blacks from exercising the same commercial maximalism as whites.

I am failing to draw a line from your point to your argument here. I was referring to commercial maximalism, not sexual and racial equality maximalism.

> I don't think many other countries' private markets act as extreme in this regard.

How well do you know about what happens in other countries? To me it sounds like everywhere, once limitations to the flow of global capital are dropped.

> I feel like those are just cultural norms

My observation is that commercialization pressure is subordinate to cultural norms. The capital vultures did not swoop in to provide full services to women and blacks until the laws changed, even though providing those services was legal.

Commercialization can shape those norms, certainly, but that is not specifically American either.

> How well do you know about what happens in other countries?

Pretty well.

> To me it sounds like everywhere, once limitations to the flow of global capital are dropped.

Its a matter of degree, hence "maximalism". Just look at investment capital stats. There is a pretty objective way to confirm that money moves faster and in greater volume into new private industries in the U.S. The only foreign investment arms that come close are multinational conglomerates or authoritarian governments.

> The capital vultures did not swoop in to provide full services to women and blacks until the laws changed, even though providing those services was legal.

...how much profit do you think there was to be made off of people who were previously blocked from capital accumulation?

> Just look at investment capital stats

Is it fair to say that's part of American culture then? Very few people are involved in making new private industries, and the regulatory systems don't seem well aligned with the general culture.

> how much profit

How much profit would have been lost if a company was public about supporting blacks and upsetting the white supremacist culture of the time?

That's why I say you can't really disentangle culture and regulation.

> Is it fair to say that's part of American culture then?

I think so.

> How much profit would have been lost if a company was public about supporting blacks and upsetting the white supremacist culture of the time?

In the 1970s? No idea. I didn't have a well formed brain until the 2000s.

> That's why I say you can't really disentangle culture and regulation.

Definitely. One depends on the other, and our commercial maximalist culture is reflected in our laws.

"American culture": How about the Amish?

cannabis not a good example as it is still criminalize at Fed level including earning money in that industry and putting it in a federal licensed bank...

I absolutely hate that gambling adverts on TV are legal in the UK. I've seen at least one friend's life ruined because of it.

9pm, and it's wall-to-wall.

Ironically, this is around the same time as bans on smoking in pubs, and tobacco advertising became draconian.

But gambling doesn't do any first-order physical harm, so it's all good, right?

Seeing betting firms on the front of football teams' shirts offends me.

> When Tony Blair's Labour government introduced the Gambling Act in 2005, it allowed gambling firms to advertise sports betting, poker and online casinos on TV and radio for the first time.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64510095

Whenever I’m introduce a friend to the JLeague, 90% of the time the first they compliment is the lack of gambling adds. It really is a breath of fresh air. And I believe that if the JLegaue used this point in its international marketing, it would work to get a lot of people tired of gambling ads to want to follow the league.

It’s also unfortunately a problem in niche sports that don’t really have international gambling-ad-free leagues. e.g. If you want to watch professional curling, your options are pretty slim, and they’re gambling sponsored.

The curling community is also pretty small, so even though I’m nowhere near pro-level, I overlap with some of them - would be disappointing if I couldn’t watch the events with curlers from my city/country.

Bans cost money to enforce, while diminishing personal choice and responsibility. Why not spend that money on education instead? I've not had an ad in my home or on my mobile devices for well over a decade, and I've spent exactly zero on additional hardware to make that happen. It takes less than 10 minutes to configure a new device to be completely ad-free. I won't purchase anything that can't be configured to be free of ads, including smart TVs and iPhones. I still watch whatever content I want on my TV via HDMI from a PC. If our governments are going to be involved, their focus should be on teaching people how to do what people like me do. It's not difficult.

How do you prevent yourself or others from seeing banner/commercials around the city? Some cities are full of it. Just because you removed it from your phone or PC, it doesn't mean that there are no people who are affected by it by watching TV or while walking/driving around the city.

I’m fairly pro-market, certainly more than most people. And I’ll agree that bans cost money, but it’s unclear how much for this specific instance. We may also “save” money for taxpayers who avoided sports betting losses because it was never shoved in their face (because the ads are banned).

I would also guess that banning an ad is cheaper than banning something like “dancing in public.” One is easy and affects few people or entities directly (basically the companies that want to advertise their sports betting business and those that can host it), while the other is impossible to truly ban because you’d need an army of police or a high tech surveillance state (which probably still cannot institute a full ban).

I think there’s an argument that behavioral change is much more difficult that just ingesting the information. (And I’m talking about people who want to change, not some nefarious change instituted by someone else or an institution). Think of how many people want to lose weight but struggle. It’s not usually from the lack of education; there are psychological, social, and environmental impediments to change.

I think the “all it takes is the right information” model lacks a nuanced understanding of human behavior.

I also mentioned personal choice and responsibility. If someone doesn't want to change, why should we attempt to force them? It's not likely to have the effect you desire.

I think the "all it takes is a government ban" model lacks a nuanced understanding of human behavior. Cannabis is a prime example.

To be clear, I'm not advocating a solution for all of society's ills. I'm advocating a path toward the goals we all share. That path may be longer and more difficult to traverse, but it's my belief that it'll lead us closer to where we want to go.

>belief that it'll lead us closer to where we want to go.

That just sounds like a hypothesis (ie unfounded conjecture). Meanwhile, the counterclaim at least has a basis in empirical results. We should craft policy based on how people actually behave, not in how we wish they did.

I get that HN skews towards libertarian. My issue is that that the libertarian idea of how people operate is an idealist’s fantasy and not rooted in the real world.

But didn't we not have this problem only a few short years ago?

What changed?

It’s hard to ad block live sports.

If you watch a football (English premier league) match then you'll see that not only are there gambling ads at the side of the pitch, but the players are running around wearing gambling adverts.

> Seeing betting firms on the front of football teams' shirts offends me

How are gambling sponsorships/ads not a conflict of interest?

It's a mess. One player with a gambling sponsor on his shirt got caught match fixing. Another got caught betting against his own team - when he wasn't playing.

It's bad for the atmosphere too. There are people in the stands ignoring the match in front of them because they're checking bets on other games on their phone.

I was a big proponent of legalizing sports gambling before it happened here in the US. After that, one of my best friends lost 5 figures on sports gambling that he really couldn’t afford to lose. I’ve also watched sports talk shows degrade to simple betting tips, and TV is now borderline unwatchable due to the pharmaceutical and gambling ads. To me, a few regulations/restrictions seem useful. I think broad legalization went too far.

One regulation would be banning gambling advertising, for the same reason why smoking ads are (I think?) banned. It is especially nefarious how companies lure in new customers with free bets, often with unscrupulous cash-out conditions, in order to get people hooked. It’s the equivalent of ads providing someone a coupon code to get several boxes of free cigarettes, at which point they get hooked.

Another change I’d like to see is the end of mobile gambling. I’ve never done it, but from watching friends do it, it was far too easy to deposit money, or borrow money on credit, and bet it frivolously. At least if such behavior is confined to a casino, there is some larger barrier to entry for people.

I do not know if this is true in other states, but certain states have the ability for an individual to self-institute a gambling ban at all facilities in the state. I’m not sure if this applies to gambling online. If not, then it should. And if other states don’t have it, then they would greatly benefit from it.

It also seems somewhat fair to me to tax the casinos and other companies profiting from gambling and using that money to fund services for people who become addicted. If you’re going to help create a problem, you should have to help clean it up.

Requiring gambling to be done at established facilities or even the sports facility itself and limiting the bets to five dollars or some nominal amount would solve 99% of the problems.

Limiting it to a licensed location, instead of app or website, and requiring cash instead of credit would likely be sufficient.

I'm pretty sure the owners of the licensed locations were principals in getting the online betting scene going. I am guessing here, but it seems likely they saw that it's inevitable that off-shore online sports books will exist, so they were driven to capitalize on it legally (from the US).

The other thing I’d add is a mandatory system where people can tell the company not to allow them to bet with a lengthy time delay (say 90 days) to remove themselves from the list. Most people with problems know they have them at least some of the time and it’s important to give them tools to prevent moments of weakness.

Self exclusion is something that is handled by each states gaming enforcement department. All 34 states that have a self-exclusion program also have wildly different policies.

Is this mitigated by time to get between states?

They have a system for this in the UK https://www.gamstop.co.uk/ - though I only know it exists from TV adverts (presumably they are legally obligated to run these)

It would also result in way less profits, so we'd need something truly incredible to happen to see it through.

> something truly incredible

That's one interesting way to say "government regulation".

Government regulation that results in the government having less money is truly incredible.

Examples are not particularly hard to come by: All government regulations to reduce smoking, all regulations to reduce petrol cars. All regulations to ban drugs. All of those aim to reduce the sale of some item the government could or does tax. I’m sure more can be found.

The only actual problem casino gambling, lotteries, and sports betting has been intended to solve is to generate revenue for state and local governments. Limiting bets to $5 would ensure failure for that purpose. Gambling addiction, crime, cheating, game fixing, etc are unfortunate side effects, but not real problems, in the eyes of lawmakers.

Why not just ban it? I fail to see the point of spending all of this money administering an industry with such a low total income. That would lose money every year and keep increasing.

A total ban ... on legal gambling ... would likely lead to at least some increase in illegal gambling, which of necessity allies itself to organised crime.

That's not an iron-clad argument, as legal gambling can still have mob ties, and tacit permission of some illegal gambling might still permit some level of oversight. And of course, legal gambling doesn't ensure reasonable or effective oversight or regulation.

By establishing known, legal, and possibly even bettor-favourable facilities or systems, gaming becomes something which might have some level of oversight. The increase in online gambling does severely cut into this argument though.

Another challenge, in the U.S., comes in the form of reservation casinos which can operate independently of other state prohibitions on gambling, which means that total eradication is at the very least difficult.

But that is an argument which might be made in answer to your "why not just..." question.

(I'm generally not a fan of gambling in any of its various forms. I'm cognisant of its pervasiveness and some of the worse aspects of it.)

According to the article, the other way around didn't happen: the legalization didn't decrease illegal gambling

That would put a damper on things.

Though the pre-2018 situation was that personal (that is, not intermediated by a company) gambling was legal, which provided an out.

Again: I'm positing the argument, I'm not advocating for it. And it does appear to be counterfactual.

It's a lot easier for the IRS to track your betting earnings when it's reported to them directly by the broker.

Of course doing it in a way so it can't be tracked keeps the IRS ignorant, which is a big deal to many people

Huh TIL that the usa taxes gambling winnings, and that you can offset with losses up to the amount of winnings (https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc419)

Guess it's good my luck was terrible in Vegas or I might've inadvertently committed tax fraud. Though now I'm curious if I had won a few hundred dollars would there have been tax due?

I'm pretty sure it's tax free in most countries.

In the UK you can choose to pay tax on your stake when you place it, so that your winnings are tax free, or not, in which case your winnings are taxed.

Are you sure? I never make bets over £20 or so, but my understanding is if I hit it big there's no tax to worry about - this source seems to agree, unless you're a professional gambler which somewhat makes sense https://intelligentodds.com/gambling/do-you-pay-tax-on-gambl...

According to that link, it changed in 2001. I left the uk before that. Now I feel very old.

Thanks for the correction.

This is true of other vices as well. Many have argued that legalized sex work will decrease the amount of human trafficking, when reality has shown it actually increases it.

I'd really like to see an in-depth analysis of multiple such cases of ... what to call it? Vice permissivity? And what effects stack up.

I strongly suspect that one element of legalisation is that it normalises the activity, which lowers all sorts of social and psychological barriers to participation.

Another is that it creates self-organised self-interest groups. This is actually a really great way to ensure the longevity of governmental programmes, with both positive and negative examples: welfare systems such as Social Security, Medicare, and the ACA in the US are all immensely popular with the elderly, a staunch voting block, to the extent that its general trend toward conservativism doesn't fully mute interest in social welfare. The military-industrial complex is another, and a recent discussion I'd heard of the Inflation Reduction Act highlighted the constituencies built in to support it even in deep-red southern US states.

In the case of legalisation of gambling, drugs, and sex work, what had previously been the purview of criminal gangs now becomes "ordinary business" (though the thought occurs that the distinction between the two may be less than is commonly understood). To the extent that established businesses prove to be highly effective at defending even the most indefensible of practices (tobacco, alcohol, asbestos, lead, plastics, fossil fuels) is well established, and the risks of that path should be strongly considered.

Another option is to decriminalise rather than legalise a practice, but focus on policing the most problematic elements of the practice. That might be the provider side (as with drugs and gambling) or the consumer side (as with sex work, targeting johns), or on going up-market and tightly limiting or prohibiting private aggregators (e.g., pimps, drug lords) rather than focusing on low-level actors (streetwalkers, individual workers, street crews within drug operations).

State-operated operations (gambling, lotteries, alcohol and tobacco sales, drug distribution *with integrated treatment), is another option, though it too isn't a surefire solution. My view is that lottery programmes in the US are out of control and a net negative, though in part that itself reflects the public-private partnership in the operation of many of these.

The problem with legalized sex work is that when a cop is faced with a human trafficking victim, there is nothing he can do if the trafficking victim does not testify and explicitly ask for police intervention, which is a high bar to clear for a victim that would at best become homeless in a foreign country and at worst receive severe repercussions for an escape attempt.

The solution to this problem would be mandatory sex worker licenses and mandatory yearly counseling that acts as an escape path for trafficking victims.

There are three frameworks of legalisation in Australia, none of which ban the selling of sex, all of which limit or criminalise brothels and forms of "organised prostition by third parties".

There are many women police officers in vice and many means with which to tackle sex trafficking, with or without the testimony of specific victims (bearing in mind that sex trafficking almost always involves many victims).

Yearly contact seems ... sparse... there's more sense to be had in mandatory weekly or fortnightly STI checkups, etc. which incorporates contact with trained medical professionals familiar with the ins and outs of te game.

I don't have a strong opinion in the matter, but the argument is that banning things don't automatically make them go away. Banning things that people want to do will make organized crime spring up around it, which is often worse. The idea is, by allowing it in some limited legal way, you make it unprofitable for the organized criminals.

Yeah and I think I believed in aspects of this line of logic when my state legalized sportsbooks. I believe in harm reduction in most regards. What happened though, in my opinion, is an increase in access wound up creating an increase in net harm. Just my assessment. Timing is worth noting, this was rolled out to users initially during quarantine times.

Yeah but how do you do that when you have online casinos who are conveniently placed on some tropical island state?

> One regulation would be banning gambling advertising, for the same reason why smoking ads are (I think?) banned.

Generally, a law that made it illegal to advertise age-restricted activities to audiences where a significant portion of the audience would be under-age should be a workable solution. Let the courts decide what that gray area of "significant portion" is on a case by case basis.

Sure, but I think that falls a bit short of what's really at play here. Advertising anything which tugs at our animal weaknesses is unreasonably manipulative. Images of food (especially marketing images, which are photos of inedible objects masquerading as food), ads for sex, drugs, gambling - these are vices for a reason. Humans, generally, are weak to these things. Adults shouldn't really be exposed to these advertisements either.

We're also susceptible to bright colors and certain screen movement patterns and topic sequences, as practical the entire internet industry has figured out and has been using against us with competing degrees of success for about 20 years.

Humans are weak and easy to manipulate, and some more so than others. It seems like the question is always about the degree to which the governments ought to intervene to protect us from each other...and ourselves.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US6017302A/en

Wow, I'm glad I clicked this. Feels kind of like you buried the lede not giving the title: "Subliminal acoustic manipulation of nervous systems"

Is this based on actual science? How effective is this?

Agreed, it's about the degree of regulation.

And not sure where you sit on this, but for me personally, gambling ads cross a line as gambling has major negative effects to public well-being, especially to those who are the most financially in need.

I'm one of those people who has become convinced that device addiction has ruined the capacity to think or pay attention for an entire generation from the time they were most vulnerable, and we haven't even begun to realize the negative consequences of that. But yeah, gambling ads are bad too.

HN doesn't let me reply to your reply so will reply on your early comment (think too many levels of nesting?). But I agree about your comment on devices, smartphone addiction is having negative impact people's mental health - smartphones are a super-useful tool, but too much screen-time has led to detachment from the real world and depression.

Sure, there are many other forms of advertising that are irresponsible in the public sphere.

> It seems like the question is always about the degree to which the governments ought to intervene to protect us from each other...and ourselves.

Of course. That's why I defined the degree I was advocating for

I had a small laugh when I read your comment and imagined legislation for fighting attention-grabbing sites, requiring them to all look like this site.

Want to see an image? Follow a link, sir. It is far too distracting to have it simply be there, between the words, enticing us.

Legislation about plain packaging for other vices, like cigarettes, has been successful in Australia.

The idea was to destroy the 'brand value' and positive associations that cigarette companies have worked hard to build.

It does work, but I dont know that the concept would translate to digital media that well.

Yes I live here and it seems quite successful. Most smokers I see now in my area (not counting vapes) are foreign Asian students who didn't grow up with it.

I don't think it'd work well online for similar reasons, the internet is global, it would just disadvantage local companies for no real gain due to our population. It would have to be a concerted global effort. I think there is quite a bit of overlap with accessibility too (simple and quiet is easier to parse for computers and humans than confusing noise), so maybe a push in that direction.

> Images of food (especially marketing images, which are photos of inedible objects masquerading as food

I agree with your overall point, but this is incorrect. I'm pretty sure there is already a law that says they cannot have fake food in commercials, at least for restaurants. There have been articles explaining how they take a "stock" hamburger (ok, they call it a "sandwich", technically) and dress it up for the commercial. But the interesting part is that the food photographers are constrained to using only ingredients from the store, they cannot use paint or plastic to represent the food. One of the little details I remember was they would use a brush to draw the ketchup to one side of the bun to make it look like it was liberally applied. It's quite interesting how they achieve the final goal - even though it looks NOTHING like the product that is delivered to the consumer.

Interesting, using the under-age argument to ban these ads generally - guessing this is how smoking ads where banned - seems like a good technical way to ban them generally to the overall population.

And even if we look just at under-age audiences, a ban for them make sense, since that for a decent-sized portion of teenage boys, sports is an obsession. Having them pummeled by sports-betting ads at an age when they are often exploring new things is probably not a good idea, as it will make betting (and for some of these, betting addiction) a part of their lives while they are young.

> I do not know if this is true in other states, but certain states have the ability for an individual to self-institute a gambling ban at all facilities in the state

In Michigan this is part of the Responsible Gaming program. You can opt out for certain lengths of time and they will not let you back for any reason. It's on a per-casino basis though, not some global list.

You can also get restricted if you ever claim to support that you need the money, have to pay bills, can't wait on the withdraw, etc.

I made a mistake once, while upset at some promo conditions not being clear, that I was "counting" on it. I meant I was counting on using it to gamble more (lmao) but they thought I meant for bills and ended up having to go through a special process to get my account back.

Honestly, if the employees were that trigger-happy, it sounds like the system was working well.

I think that one of the issues that really hurts the advertising is that the sports betting adverts will pay above and beyond what anyone else pays and it prices everyone out. It's the same problem we had with crypto and cigarettes. They need to spend infinite money to normalize their desired behavior. I feel like advertising for casinos around there being interesting non-gambling activities (e.g. concerts) is the right kind of indirect advertisement, but by necessity the online slots and online sports betting is monotone towards the outcome.

Sports betting is a market.

Like any market, those with knowledge and power systematically enrich themselves by extracting wealth from those without.

If sports betting should be banned because it exploits those without wealth or knowledge, then other markets with many naive participants should also be banned, such as markets for stocks and crypto.

So every market should be banned?

Sports betting is a negative EV zero-sum game motivated by an addiction, for a significant fraction of the population.

Investment in equities is principally a non-zero-sum positive EV game motivated by rational expectations for preservation and growth of wealth.

The fact that some financial actors have very good sharpe ratios or dominate capture of trading profits on millisecond horizons isn’t a significant detriment to the larger good resulting from retail investment.

If you support banning sports betting because it's a zero-sum game that is generally -EV for non-professionals in aggregate, and if short-term trading of stocks is also zero-sum and -EV for non-professionals in aggregate, then do you support also banning short-term stock trading for non-professionals?

I don’t know exactly what the right regulation would look like to restrict this specific kind of activity, but I don’t have a problem, in principle, with such regulation.

Bookies don't take stakes from habitual winners. The "market" is rigged.

So save people from their own irresponsibility?

This is an unfair framing of it. Addiction is a mental illness and these companies are preying on the mentally ill to make money. They rely on them ruining their own lives and others' to make a profit.

It seems more like a problem that should be solved elsewhere? Are there cases where the company forces you to gamble?

How do you draw the line between someone who wants to gamble recreationally and someone who does it because they are addicted without harming the recreational parties?

> I’ve never done it, but from watching friends do it, it was far too easy to deposit money, or borrow money on credit, and bet it frivolously.

A data point for you...

I was on a train earlier this year and I was standing behind someone out with their wife/girlfriend. He had his phone in his hand the whole time with a gambling app opened (the green one, PaddyPower maybe?). I couldn't read the screen exactly but there was a list of fixtures for football matches and a button next to each one. From memory, I think each button was odds for the game, e.g. 10:1 Luton win vs Exeter or something.

Anyway, the point is that (again, from memory) at least 8 times in the journey, he opened and closed the app and clicked on 10+ of these odds buttons, while in conversation with his girlfriend who had put her phone away at the start of the journey.

I vaguely recall him checking his balance at one point too.

Anyway, I thought I'd back up your story by telling one of mine where I watched someone place 50+ bets on a 30 min train journey! It's frighteningly easy (emphasis on "frightening")

Edit: This happened a while back and I remember telling this story to people at the time so the numbers may be off but they're in the ballpark!

Yeah there is so much gambling discussion on sports show, it’s a complete waste of time to actually hear about sports.

I live in Dublin where a lot of the tech developement centres for many online bookmaker and casinos are based. I have been approached by recruiters for some of them and even though they offer VERY generous packages I refuse to work for them on moral grounds.

The thing that bothers me the most is that they know a lot of poitential employees have issues with the whole sector, so they try to give it a false veneer of acceptability. A good example of that was that both Paddy Power and Boyle Sports referred to themselves as suppliers of "risk-based entertainment" in their recruitment literature, something I found to be very sleazy.

I also know people who work for some of these companies and they tell me that all their talk about caring for problem gamblers is complete nonsense and that they actively seek ways to lure back problem gamblers who were able to quit.

It's also very weird that as governments around the world are cracking down on alcohol poromotion at the same time they seem to be encouraging the promotion of gambling. I would say gambling can do as much harm to a family as alcohol addiction can. I'm frankly shocked at the amount of gambling adverts there are these days. And so many of them carry the subtle sub-text that if you don't bet on your team then you aren't a true fan.

The problem is that people will gamble no matter what, so providing a safe way to do so is better than banning it. I agree with you that it's all about to what degree you allow gambling. At the very least I would ban advertising as it's effectively normalising something that most definitely should not be normalised.

Gambling isn't the only form of entertainment meant to tickle the part of the brain that craves risk. Movies have car chases. Amusement parks have roller coasters.

And many jobs involve taking risks. Investment houses. Sales. etc. We reward those who take risks because society (often) benefits.

I find it much easier to argue against standard casino games because it's pretty easy to mathematically prove that the gambler will end up broke. With sports, it's a bit harder. As long as the vig is small enough, smart gamblers who know the teams can eke out a profit. If anything, sports gambling rewards study, thought, and focus, all things we should celebrate. THat doesn't mean I like. I would like to see it banned. But it means I have trouble arguing against it with any vigor.

Being a savvy sports gambler will only get you banned though, the house always wins also applies to sports betting.

But that's not true. I know several guys who make a living at it. The casinos don't care because they make their vig on the action. The only losers are the folks on the other side of the bets.

It is true that the casinos will find a way to ban people who find an advantage in traditional games like blackjack (think card counting), but that's different. In sports gambling, the profit is extracted with the vig/spread.

There exists big sports betting exchanges like Betfair, where there isn't a "house" and where they don't really have an incentive to limit big winners. I have friends who make consistent profit from these sites - though it must be said they do ramp up the commission

How do you know that they make a consistent profit? You take their word for it? Gamblers are notorious liars and are also known to keep very poor record of their bets.

Right -- this is much like alcohol, something which is roughly as dangerous as gambling -- but also as enjoyable to people who can do it responsibly.

It's not a choice between prohibition and selling it in the grocery store. There are many nuances in between.

States changed their laws around cannabis as a measure to gather votes and to increase tax revenues. Theories of markets and economics have little to do with it.

> You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019

The US already has plenty of legislation regulating advertisements of other vices, so I think a similar ban is totally appropriate here.

Good luck with all your less profitable options: have a look at how much lobbying the sector does.

Pre 1970s it was something you did at the on-track TOTE and in Bingo Halls/Working Mens Clubs.

Games of skill with money wagered have always been a significant part of Western European society, starting with the Equestrian Aristocratic classes and funnelling all the way down to the 'Football Pools' and the national pastimes of putting a wager down for the Grand National or Cheltenham festivals, legitimised by social events like Ladies Day or Student Race Week.

There are multiple ways of 'fairer' gambling - exchange markets like Betfair rather than sportsbook being the current epitome. The main issue is lack of legislation around targeting vulnerable demographics and those suffering from addictive traits - and that's an advertising rather than a gambling issue.

Technology is the tool that magnifies both good and bad things. It's up to us to prevent bad things at the source, not ban the tool; it's the social media problem, really.

Every state is supposed to be a "laboratory" of democracy, but we really screwed the pooch with cannabis legalization. At least one state should have gone the way with absolutely zero marketing allowed (like tobacco currently is), and all containers should be in standardized, sterile, black & white containers, with only the name & description of the product, and big warnings describing the dangers (like cigarette packs in Australia).

24 legalized states, and not one chose this approach which is a shame.

They're not cigarettes. Nobody is sitting down and smoking 40 joints a day. What serious dangers are there besides the fact that you might eat the entire bag of Doritos while watching Planet Earth?

The important context is that life is short, just seventy years, and has stages, your early twenties are a magical time. Losing your ambition and wasting your early twenties are a subtle danger, but nevertheless a serious danger.

One of the more ridiculous assertions I have seen, as if cannabis causes people to lose ambitions, any more than a million other things that can happen in society.

You know, like wage stagnation in the face of skyrocketing real estate costs.

The high levels of thc concentration make the new drugs ‘not your dad’s weed’

Is there any data to show population wide issues being caused by this “not your dad’s weed”?

And even if there were, how is it any different than being able to buy 80 proof vodka versus 4.5% beer.

I reject any argument for cannabis regulation as long as alcohol is less restricted. I don’t even use cannabis, or ever have. I just know from lots of experience that people high on cannabis have caused me zero problems, compared to an innumerable problems from people high on alcohol.

The most ambitious people I've ever known were all Google employees and most of them enjoyed marijuana after work.

University and college do just fine in destroying hopes, ambitions and wasting your twenties.

The world is full of weed-smoking go-getters, you just don't know who they are

Risk of killing someone while driving high

It's like you let the kids play with fire but then you make sure to have the first aid kits ready.

> There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-faire, which the US seems particularly prone to.

Nicely put

> There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-faire, which the US seems particularly prone to.

You are raising an interesting question there. I always wondered why in US many things have to be either Yes or Now, Good or Bad, Black or White, Left or Right, Up or Down and so on.

No (or very few) things, opinions or anything in between.

Democrats or Republicans.

With only two choices for everything the country is set up for polarization.

> in this country until 2005, when regulations were substantially liberalised

I've always found it very striking when the sports team jersey sponsers are betting companies.

Gambling - Causing harm since (at least) the Iron Age.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_Lament

And on a good day,wall Street is orthagonal.

I find it funny how in Germany the state lottery advertises itself on TV but needs to add the info that "Gambling can be addictive."

For example, this ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0-pKS_zx5E is made by "LOTTO 6aus49", which is "LOTTO.de", which is "Toto-Lotto Niedersachsen GmbH", which is the lottery company of the state Lower Saxony.

To me this is as if the state would place TV ads for wine which a state-owned winery produces, like "Landesbetrieb Hessische Staatsweingüter" also known as "Hessische Staatsweingüter GmbH Kloster Eberbach".

And the lottery numbers are then presented in the prime time news in the publicly funded television.

Lotto Quebec runs both lottery ads and gambling-can-ruin-your-life ads. The German ads have nothing on those.

You do know that lotto is state run, and all profit that isn’t redistributed to players is given to charity (mostly deutsche sporthilfe, who fund a lot of sports who would otherwise have trouble running).

Lotto and sports betting in its modern incarnation are very different.

Lotto was created so that people’s desire for gambling is diverted towards charity.

How does operating expenses like salaries and bonuses look like? 10k bonus for every life ruined? I'm always worried about cronyism and corruption with this kind of monopolies.

When I was a cashier the state owned lottery monopoly had a training session for us on how to operate the lottery machines, and it was really dystopian how most of the time was spent on encouraging us to make upsells with sales pitches and being happy about gambling.

Sure. Is a private free for all better though?

Sorry, but that is not true.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotto#Verwendung_der_Einnahmen

50% for is the gamblers

23% is diverted towards the charity you mention.

16.7% is taxes

7.5% is commission

2.8% is for running the business

In other words, the "Aktion Mensch" gives around 1/4 to those in need.

* Correction, "Aktion Mensch" give close to 1/3 to those in need and less to gamblers (also 30%). But they keep more to themselves.

What is "provision"?

My apologies, I meant commission. For the places which offer lottery tickets, usually kiosks.

Yes. 2.8% is kept by the business. vs 40-60% by a bookie.

I don't think this really disproves their post? They said the profit that doesn't go to players goes to charity. Probably a smidge of the 10.3% that goes to the business and the lotto becomes profit, but out of the other 89.7% everything after taxes goes to either the players or the charity. Close enough; if they're off it's only by a couple percent.

I don't get why you are using the lottery ticket revenue as a baseline when in reality the lottery company mostly acts as a payment processor or intermediary. It'd be like arguing Visa only gives 2% to shareholders and shareholders should be owed all money transacted over the Visa network.

Governments make tons of money on gambling/lotteries. So they keep it running. This shows how much they don't care about making positive impact to people's lives.

Advertising state lottery on TV is just a way for politicians to funnel money to their buddies in the marketing agency and TV. I guess they get some positive coverage for that or w/e. It's one of the most obvious signs of corruption imo. It happens in Poland as well and it's infuriating when you are a tax payer in that country.

The nice thing about sports gambling is it's a strong signal that your local government has been captured by outside interests. If anyone complains about the way things are you can simply point and say well, look we know the government doesn't represent us or work for the people, we have legalized gambling. Of course there's all sorts of other tells too but none is as clear cut without any need of conspiracy theories.

unlike more complex policy areas where vested interests may be hidden behind layers of bureaucracy or decades of refined pseudo-moral talking points, gambling legalization is straightforward: the flow of money into lobbying, the rapid legislative changes, and the immediate establishment of large-scale betting operations make the influence unmistakable. It's a tangible, almost irrefutable sign that decisions are being made in favor of profit at the expense of public welfare.

I'm going to suggest that you not use "run a train through" to mean "destroy".

I didn't realize it had that meaning, good suggestion!

The line between legitimate competition and gambling-fueled manipulation is becoming increasingly blurred now!

This only truly works if sports gambling is illegal globally. The reason this doesn't apply too much with the US is foreign interest in US sport is limited.

For example http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/426092.stm is why british people of a certain age all know the phrase "Malaysian gambling syndicates" and associate it with random blackouts.

The US has pretty strict laws against its citizens from gambling on the Internet. Other countries could pass similar laws for their own citizens.

    > foreign interest in US sport is limited.

I am pretty sure that American baseball is very popular in the Carribbean and Japan. And American basketball is very popular in China due to the legacy of Yao Ming.

Japan has their own baseball league, Nippon Professional Baseball, I don't think they care about the MLB very much.

Gambling triggers capitalism to ruin lives. If we had a well-designed society, you could lose a lot by gambling, but you could end up with $0 and still not be completely "ruined".

man im torn here

from sugar, cigs, to alcohol

from netflix, pornhub, to onlyfans

where do we draw the line

This depends very much on how you define gambling. The stock market very much is gambling, though most people consider it investing.

Legalized sports betting and "weekly fantasy" leagues have severely reduced my enjoyment of NFL football.

Last week in the NFL there was a player that went down at the one yard line and his team ran off the rest of the clock to win. The game was under the O/U but would have been over if the player had gone into the end zone. The player made the choice so that his team could run out the clock without giving the ball back to the other team, and if he had scored then they would have had to kick the ball back to the other team who could potentially (although unlikely) scored a touchdown on the kickoff or in the last few seconds after the kickoff which would have given the other team the game. It was, objectively, the right thing to do in the circumstance.

The NFL analysts (who shill gambling apps) spent more time talking about if the player was responsible for everyone who lost on the O/U, and it just really killed it for me. Every. Single. Aspect is filtered through the lens of gambling. Games show the betting line on the screen and the analysts try to map out potential good parlays for the viewers. It's absolutely nuts and a very (in my mind) clear conflict of interest. It also blurs the line, in my mind, between objective reporting, analysis based on statistics, and paid promotion, and while I realize that sports reporting is probably the least important field in journalism, it's frustrating to see this unholy confluence and to see the impact it has on the ability for non-degenerate gamblers to enjoy the game.

Perhaps it's not ruining sports, it's just forcing us to confront the emptiness of sports.

I love gambling. I go to Vegas 4-6 times per year, and I play poker at the local casinos/card houses almost every week.

I've NEVER liked sports gambling because it's so hard to predict and I also believe that it's rigged by Vegas and the Mafia. The NBA has already been outed as rigged via referees and the insane actions of refs in last year's Super Bowl by ignoring obvious penalties makes it even worse. The games are obviously tainted as this point. And the fact that none of the leagues want to implement rules that correct wrong penalties only solidifies the fact that they want these things to occur.

It really ruined watching games for me with the constant talk of odds and gambling right in the broadcast. I thank my lucky stars this happened after I was a teenager/twenty-year-old because having to find a shady bookie that would break my legs if I didn't pay was one of the main factors that kept me from being stupid like a number of my friends.

I would have been in deep trouble with an appified, gamified, psychologically addicting betting app on my phone offering me free bets to log in again. I had a hard enough time breaking away from phone gatcha shit that I would mindlessly click while sitting on the couch.

> It's certainly worth having the discussion about whether people should be able to run a train through their life and the lives of their families via app.

Even if you’ve convinced yourself that being able to ruin one’s own life is a sign of a society with Great Freedom, you might be willing to oppose other people profiting from urging people to ruin their lives.

I agree but I'd put in a carve out for the kind of gambling that reinforces sociality. Poker night with your neighbors or a fantasy football league with your pals from school (with a groupchat where you shit-talk one another) make some sense: you spend the buy-in in order to have something to talk about with your buddies.

A shooting range I used to go to would not rent to unaccompanied men. They had to be members and take a class at least, or be in a group, or bring their own guns. This was to prevent impulsive suicides. Maybe if you want to keep any kind of gambling on sports, you should have to go to a sports book with your pals and watch some games together.

Putting the casino in your pocket feels like a social suicide.

I think sports gambling should be legal because otherwise the Bookies will kill you if you can't pay your debts. At least with legal gambling the worst that can happen is bankruptcy.

The gambling institutions have some regulation as well.

I do think that gambling ads should be banned just like cigarettes, and pharmaceuticals.

USA and New Zealand are the only places that allow pharma ads and the public is uninformed to make that decision but the Agency problem means MDs will prescribe those drugs.

Honest question: why cares about the effect on sports?

The most extreme example of cheating is sports theater, and even that has a fandom in the form of WWF.

So why not let the sports police themselves, and let the market decide whether they are doing a good job with their attention?

I don't care about sports, so I am asking from a naive position, but I from this position I can't fathom caring more about the sport than the people who compulsively wager on them, and destroy their lives.

As a fan, it absolutely sucks to have your team throw.

This isn't just a gambling problem, having your team tank to get top draft picks also sucks. But if you enjoy the sport, you probably enjoy it in a "may the best player/team win" way.

It sucks to realize your team lost because the other team cheated, and it sucks to realize your team lost because somebody threw. If I wanted to watch scripted drama, I would put on succession. Or wwf.

I know many in those era are even aggressively opposed to the Bible, but I have long seen it as a kind of change log, commit notes, code notes, etc. …

“hi, ancient people here. We learned this lesson hard over many iterations that gambling is bad, we are making a rule that you, future reader shouldn’t gamble or it will also result in your societal debt and likely contribute to your destruction too if you take on too many of the things we learned over millennia and many different civilizations and societies collapsing; and we wrapped it in nice allegories for so it appeals to your innate human proclivity to dream, imagine, and tell stories. Don’t say we didn’t want you!”

Unfortunately it seems our Digital Age civilization is hell bent on emulating its Bronze Age and Tower of Babel compatriots the way we are going.

Unfortunately Brazil also legalized it in 2018, after Dilma was impeached using very sketchy arguments (many call it a legal coup).

It is spreading as a cancer. This month the central bank published a report saying that in August 20% of the Bolsa Família, the largest money transfer program for very poor Brazilians, was spent on these bets.

Out of the 20 million people that receive it, 5 million made bets during that month. This is 2 billion reais (about $450M) spent in a single month by the poorest Brazilians.

It's a cancer. Everywhere you go there are ads. The influencers, the biggest athletes and musicians are marketing it.

Although I tend to be liberal, this needs to be heavily regulated.

We’ve spent years conditioning an entire generation of kids on quick hits of dopamine from mobile phone apps. I personally believe that it’s a “glitch in the matrix” for a large enough segment of the population to cause societal chaos.

As a libertarian however, I break with the opinion of making consensual activities illegal even if they are self-harming. So I guess my stance is probably the same as addictive drugs. They could be legal, but come with the same labeling, warnings, ID requirements and age restrictions that come with a pack of cigarettes. We should probably be educating kids about the dangers of addictive apps like we once did with DARE on the dangers of drugs.

It's funny you mention DARE because studies have shown the program was a complete failure, along with the War on Drugs™ and "Just Say No". The only reason it continued as long as it did was not because it was effective, but because it was popular with politicians and the general public because they thought – intuitively – that the program should work. It did not reduce student drug use. In face, it backfired and taught kids about interesting drugs that they probably wouldn't have found learned about otherwise. This ineffective program cost U.S. taxpayers $750M per year for 26 years. Let's not do that again.

Now there's New DARE (15+ years old at this point). Not sure if this has been scrutinized as much, but supposedly it is effective since it's eligible for funding that requires demonstrated effectiveness.

How could you possibly study such a thing? Even if you compare DARE students against non-comparable DARE students, how could you reliably capture measure how many did drugs? People can lie on surveys, particularly with respect to illegal actions. You could measure arrests but that's not going to capture how many used drugs without ever getting arrested, nor the social context in which they were used. It's a double-edged sword too because the control data would have similar issues with obtainment.

I've seen a lot of these talking points before by the pro-drug crowd. "It taught kids about interesting drugs that they probably wouldn't have learned about otherwise" is laughable when subjected to scrutiny. You'd have to live under a rock to otherwise not learn about the drugs the DARE program teaches (and they don't get particularly exotic either). The idea is asinine to begin with - you'd want kids to know about exotic drugs and their side effects to know to avoid them in the first place.

The worst part is that the pro-drug crowd, like yourself, touts these talking points in an attempt to end the program - to what end? If I accept your talking points blindly that the program has failed, does that mean we simply stop trying? It seems less that you disagreed with the implementation of the program and more that you don't believe kids, or anyone, should be dissuaded from drugs.

Surprisingly you can test this with a randomized field test:

> The Illinois D.A.R.E. Evaluation was conducted as a randomized field experiment with one pretest and multiple planned post-tests. The researchers identified 18 pairs of elementary schools, representative of urban, suburban, and rural areas throughout northern and central Illinois. Schools were matched in each pair by type, ethnic composition, number of students with limited English proficiency, and the percent of students from low income families. None of these schools had previously received D.A.R.E.. For the 12 pairs of schools located in urban and suburban areas, one school in each pair was randomly assigned to receive D.A.R.E. in the spring of 1990

https://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/uic.htm

Yes, surveys do have flaws but they are a better approach than just giving up and saying any research is impossible.

I’d recommend we don’t simply stop trying, instead we test different programs, and only once we have shown their effectiveness do we role them out further.

I'm a member of the "anti drug crowd" (lifelong organized teetotaller), and I rely on the research of Thomas Babor among others, for WHO among others. We know how to study social interventions. There's a lot of evidence this type of intervention doesn't work.

It is well studied. I am pro-science more than I am pro-drug.

> D.A.R.E.’s original curriculum was not shaped by prevention specialists but by police officers and teachers in Los Angeles. They started D.A.R.E. in 1983 to curb the use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco among teens and to improve community–police relations. Fueled by word of mouth, the program quickly spread to 75 percent of U.S. schools.

> But for over a decade research cast doubt on the program’s benefits. The Department of Justice funded the first national study of D.A.R.E. and the results, made public in 1994, showed only small short-term reductions in participants’ use of tobacco—but not alcohol or marijuana. A 2009 report by Justice referred to 30 subsequent evaluations that also found no significant long-term improvement in teen substance abuse.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-new-d-a-r-e-p...

> Launched in 1983, D.A.R.E. was taught by police officers in classrooms nationwide. Their presentations warned students about the dangers of substance use and told kids to say no to drugs. It was a message that was repeated in PSAs and cheesy songs. Former First Lady Nancy Reagan even made it one of her major causes.

> Teaching drug abstinence remains popular among some groups, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's messaging to teenagers still focuses on the goal that they should be "drug-free." But numerous studies published in the 1990s and early 2000s concluded programs like D.A.R.E. had no significant impact on drug use. And one study actually found a slight uptick in drug use among suburban students after participation in D.A.R.E.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/09/1211217460/fentanyl-drug-educ...

What did work for smoking? From my understanding, that dropped significantly. Could we do what worked for smoking?

I suspect what worked - at least in Canada - is making it very very inconvenient. The number of places you can smoke outside of your own house is very limited now. And "going outside for a smoke" at -20C is miserable.

It was already dropping a lot by the time most places implemented smoking bans, though I think it certainly helped push rates even further down.

A large part of it was public awareness of the health risks and relatead damage to the image of smoking as cool and classy.

Now, the proportion of people who still take up smoking today do so in spite of all this, which is probably down to them having various specific user profiles that are unaffected by this (IE they live in communities/work jobs where its ubiquitous or are huge James Dean fans).

For gambling, you could possibly go a long way with awareness and labelling, but I think an issue is that gambling is a lot less visible than smoking. Nobody can smell that you popped outside to blow your paycheck on tonight's game. Making gambling deeply uncool might make some people not take it up, but most of the existing addicts would likely carry on in secret. They're already commonly hiding their losses from spouses and friends, so what's one more layer of secrecy?

At any rate, what worked for smoking wasn't making smokers quit, but making fewer and fewer kids start doing it, so making it a pain in the ass to place your first bet might help.

Smoking, in many countries, is no longer aggressively advertised (if it's advertised at all).

Gambling in some of those same countries is now very aggressively advertised.

Other replies have mentioned the positive reasons why smoking declined, and I'd like to believe that because I want to imitate it in my country. But in my most skeptical heart I suspect it's because of marijuana and vape instead. I haven't researched further to support this hypothesis but the first Google hit I get looks confirming.

The decline of smoking started long before vaping existed and weed was popular. Smoking peaked in the US in 1965.

> because it was popular with politicians and the general public because they thought – intuitively – that the program should work

Are you sure they did? Maybe they were just OK with programs that didn't actually work.

What does work is restricted access through age limits, closing times, and higher prices (through taxes is what's been studied, but it's safe to say making something illegal also increases prices). These are unpopular policies, and those who profit from alcohol/gambling/etc. have an easy time mobilizing opposition to it.

What has been studied little, but was a big part of historical anti-alcohol movements until total prohibition won out, was profit bans. Government/municipal monopolies were justified in that it took away regular people's incentive to tempt their fellow citizens into ruin, and the idea was that while government may be corrupted by the profit incentive, at least they carried the costs of alcohol/gambling abuse as well. (Some teetotallers didn't think that was enough, and came up with rules that e.g restricting municipal monopolies from spending the profit as they pleased)

> It did not reduce student drug use. In face, it backfired and taught kids about interesting drugs that they probably wouldn't have found learned about otherwise.

I will never forget the day in fifth grade when a DARE representative came to our class with a briefcase full of samples of esoteric (to me at least) drugs. The way they were presented made them extremely appealing to me, similar to perusing the choices at a high-end candy store. I don't know for sure if this had any effect on me but I strongly suspect that it did.

I don't think it was a "complete failure" since we are talking about it here. I remember the whole thing quite vividly from elementary school, and it really scared me away from drugs, even as an adult to this day.

Counterpoint: DARE didn’t scare me away from drugs at all, and in fact taught me how to do the more common ones and what “street names” to ask for at an age where I wasn’t otherwise being exposed to that knowledge.

The War on Drugs is now considered a failure because it was unable to eliminate drug usage and led to a large number of people being incarcerated for drug offenses. But as drugs have been increasingly legalized/decriminalized in certain areas of the country, the results are even worse. I’m now becoming more convinced that the war on drugs wasn’t a failure, and in fact might be the best that can feasibly be accomplished. I think the “war” terminology doomed it from the start, as it primed us all to think complete and total victory was actually attainable, instead of a scenario where we are instead simply trying to keep society afloat.

Warnings do not really work in practice. What if these activities are not simply self-harming but destroy the families of the addict and large parts of the fabric of society? Even you mention societal chaos. How does the libertarian world-view accommodate that?

I tend to believe that warnings are somewhat effective otherwise cigarette manufacturers wouldn’t be so opposed to them.

Yes, they would still be opposed to them.

A measure could well be somewhat effective on its own, but then it would require the industry to get creative and work extra hard to still get people hooked, which they will do, but they'd rather not have to do it in the first place.

What's more, opposition to any type of well intended regulation is typical for harmful industries, even if the regulation might be ineffective. They do that on principle, as they don't want the precedent of getting regulated. The mere idea of having regulations for the benefit of society threatens their business models.

They oppose them, because they oppose any first steps on the slope to curtailing them.

Warnings serve to ruin their image in the public eye, which makes opposing further control harder.

As for gambling, there's a simple solution. Ban all advertising of it. If people really need to gamble, they'll find it on their own.

This will dramatically shrink the problem overnight.

The (naive) libertarian world view wants people overdosing to have different providers bidding for Narcan just-in-time

I do favour a libertarian world view but a lot of people using that moniker believe in discussing a mother-child bond through a libertarian point of view

In most respects I would consider myself a libertarian, but when it comes to hard drugs or betting, I tend to be a lot more conservative. Pot is fine, actually better for you than alcohol, but drugs like cocaine are far too addictive. That addiction actively strips away one’s freedom due to their use, and thus I find it counterproductive to a libertarian society. I would argue most forms of betting fall within this category, and much like drug use disproportionately affects poorer areas.

As a libertarian myself, I've come to the conclusion that anything addictive is not really consensual, because addiction can't be controlled. Thus, selling or providing addictive stuff violates consent of the buyer, and should either be illegal, or have high taxes. Maybe there should be different laws to those who are already addicted and those who are not. Drugs which are not addictive, should be legal, but have all the information about their negative effects on the label.

Imo this should apply to addictive apps as well. The damage here is mostly the time that is wasted.

Ban the advertising of betting, like cigarettes in many countries

I think it's similar with all things that hook into our dopamine centers, like alcohol, food, sugar foods, tobacco, gambling, drugs, games, ... It has to be regulated to the correct amount to benefit society. Outlawing them, like with prohibition in United States, just moves it all to black markets. Having them completely free, as has been the case with all of them at some point, also brings harm to society. Somewhere in between those two points is where it's correctly regulated.

For example, maybe gamling can continue being legal but advertising for it be outlawed or severely restricted? Can gambling have the same sort of warnings as on cigarettes, maybe with children going hungry because the parent gambled away all the money for the month? Another way is that some part of the revenue from gambling could go to programs such as Bolsa Família that you bring up? Or to fight gambling addiction in some way?

That's my pragmatic view of these types of thing: try to find what actually works and hurts society the least. You'll never find any perfect system with no harm anyway.

>Outlawing them, like with prohibition in United States, just moves it all to black markets.

Ok, good, fine. You should have to seek out a black market connect to gamble on sports.

Maybe a fine approach for the individual, but then the black market, and its general disregard for the law or the well being of others, comes along with them.

I’m pretty happy with our “no murdering” setup, even though it makes some people happy (in the moment).

IMO there’s plenty of room for hardline stances. Who cares if gambling goes to the black market? There’s a black market for every serious crime - doesn’t mean we should just okay it. And I’m not sure the USA’s halfhearted only-for-the-poor prohibition is proof that the concept of banning things is broken; if it proves anything unrelated to capitalism, it proves that you need societal buy-in and continued, consistent government pressure.

I think the problem is more the banning does not address the root cause and will not increase societal buy-in, hence will waste a lot of energy without a result.

Alcohol consumption is currently dropping in many (not all places) in Europe (some ref: https://www.euronews.com/health/2024/08/21/dry-january-where...), without any bans, so compared to the prohibition episode I would claim that it would be better to insist on finding and implementing "efficient stances".

So what? It's pretty hard to tackle the root causes of anything and we are plenty happy with solutions that stop bad habits in other ways. Should we have the FDA just ban harmful substances or do we need to educate everyone about everything eatable? Surely education would be better, but it's just not feasible and creating a world in which you have to dodge yet another scam seems bad to me.

I had the pleasure of visiting a town on the Amazon river a few times over the course of a decade. I watched as western culture and civilization creeped in and ruined their society.

The first time I went, people were living off the land, fishing, gardening, children playing ball games, etc.

Here's what I saw last time I went: Gambling, alcoholism, plastic waste, sugary drinks, public advertising, and kids glued to their smartphones. Forests being cleared to raise cattle because now everyone wants to eat burgers.

They've managed to bring in the worst parts of modern society without the good parts (medicine, infrastructure, education, etc.)

I do believe that without a modern education, these people are not equipped to deal with modern vices. They've never taken a math class let alone learned enough probability to know that gambling is a losing bet. They've never had a nutrition class to learn that Coca Cola is disastrous to your health.

> I do believe that without a modern education, these people are not equipped to deal with modern vices.

This isn't limited to the third world. The reason sports betting becomes such a problem is that people don't have a solid foundation in basic statistics.

People go bankrupt by thinking they can get out of a small debt by placing even larger bets at a negative expected value.

Martingale, baby!!!

Martingale is dumb, but i think that's the point, it's telling you what not to do because the only way to recover your initial lost bet is to have a larger bank than the house (and why casinos restrict max bets, $2000 max, $10000 max) - martingale fails.

If you just gotta have a betting system because it helps quell the gambling anxiety or whatever, reverse martingale is fine. I made a video a long time ago about how it works[0] - but in essence, you only stand to lose your initial bet, and you have a bet schedule if you start winning. In "bet units" the way i do it is 1 unit until a win, then for each consecutive win: 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5 (etc). Everything after the first 3 unit bet is the casino's money you're gambling with, which is a good feeling. Note, this implies i consider each "round" that starts after a loss as separate from other rounds, obviously if you lose 20 times in a row and then win 3 games you're not suddenly in the green!

There's no system guaranteed to make you winner, but there are systems to help you lose more slowly, and reverse martingale is my go-to

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwu-5g3q-2E

The education point is interesting. If you grow up as a hunter gatherer, there are powerful forces you don’t understand trying to take resources away from you. If you grow up in a capitalist society, there are powerful forces you don’t understand trying to force all sorts of “resources” on you.

Success in a modern capitalist society is driven in part by your ability to say no to things.

Two things: OP said they were farmers, or peasants if you will. Now you are talking hunter gathers. To me, they are totally different levels of human development.

And, specifically about the few remaining hunter gather tribes in the Amazon, Brazil has a dedicated govt dept to keep these people safe from outside influence. As I understand, they have made great strides in the last 30 years to keep these tribes safe.

> They've never taken a math class let alone learned enough probability to know that gambling is a losing bet.

Even with a modern education this is a losing proposition for many people...

The almost perpetual brainwashing (adverts) don't really help.

This is so sad to hear...

>They've managed to bring in the worst parts of modern society without the good parts

IMHO That's the spontaneous action and unless curated carefully it happens everywhere. It's the spontaneous way because all the bad things about the Western culture are about getting rich or happy quick. I'm sure the outer civilizations also desire to get rich or happy quick and that's why they end up trying when exposed to the Western ways but unlike those cultures the west is very good at oiling the machine to run very productively. Maybe its something about being an industrialized high throughput individualistic culture, I don't know.

Isn't it also possible that the best in their society just left to find other opportunities? The people who couldn't leave would be more prone to gambling, alcoholism, etc.

The best are not prone to addiction or gambling? Better revise our meritocracy to downgrade the value of Wall St brokers to poverty levels then.

This sounds like an amazing story. Do you have anything documented?

> They've never taken a math class let alone learned enough probability to know that gambling is a losing bet.

Smart well-educated people get caught in the gambling trap too. Addiction and emotions are the issue, not knowledge of how the house always wins.

Not much different from other addictions - people know alcohol and smoking are bad yet they don't stop.

> I do believe that without a modern education, these people are not equipped to deal with modern vices. They've never taken a math class let alone learned enough probability to know that gambling is a losing bet. They've never had a nutrition class to learn that Coca Cola is disastrous to your health.

Talking about Americans???

The figures you state are misleading. Money bet is not money lost. For example, roulette payout is 97.3% and sports betting payout can be as high as 99% or even 100% (done to attract players so that they open an account).

Pop quiz: What's better for your wallet? a game with a 66% expected payout that you will play twice before you lose interest, or a game with a 97.3% payout that you'll play 31 times on average?

The comparison needs to be in terms of typical use, otherwise engineering for addictiveness gets a free pass because it often hinges on frequent small rewards and can have a near unity return on a single shot basis yet be a big money maker for the house.

Of course there are probably 'safer' forms of gambling that some addicts are presumably able to use to maintain their addiction at a level which isn't disruptive to their life. ... but single shot EV isn't the right metric. Some weekly state lottery usually has pretty poor EV, yet is seldom ruining anyone.

I'm not sure I'd call them misleading because they didn't say the money was gone, just that it was spent (not implying it didn't come back). The fact that that much money was bet at all for an aid program is astonishing and unfortunate. Sure, not all of that money was lost, but I'd call any of those returned "winnings" an investment by the sports betting companies to secure clients for life.

I'm curious which statistic they actually used (spent vs lost). If you're playing a quick game with 99% payout, you could earn $1k of income in a month and "spend" $10k on gambling. It seems like money lost would be an easier figure to compare.

> The influencers, the biggest athletes and musicians are marketing it

The government is marketing it.

Public concerts hosted by the municipality will have gambling ads posted all over, sponsored by the latest scam.

Sample size: Alagoas/Pernambuco. Cannot say anything about the gambling ads in the other states.

Same thing is happening in India. For a poor country like India, Sports betting app that shows advertisements that you can make this much money should be banned.

It is literally taking money from the poorest and most gullible Indians to the owners.

There is simply no reason why this should not be better regulated here in Brazil. It ruins families and the sport. They can advertise themselves freely.

The impeachment has zero relation with this topic, you are using this space to drop in a political and highly controversial statement in order to try and gain visibility to your highly contentious POV. How is this not removed yet? Flagged.

I'd argue that sports betting is not the biggest concern. What we saw was the rise of online cassinos after a new law in 2023 classified them as "sports betting" too.

Betting your team will win the tournament has a very delayed reward: the game needs to play out for hours/minutes before you know if you have won. Only hardcore gamblers experience instant rewards and becoming a 'serious' sports gambler is no easy task: you have learn about the sport, then teams, the players, the outcomes, the time of the matches, etc. Cassinos, on the other hand, are just an app with a lever that provides instantaneous rewards and thus hook your brain with much more intensity in a shorter time span. A lot of people who don't care about sports or just won't be hooked by sports betting are now trapped in those online cassinos. It's a shame.

Gambling is also ruining professional sports for me because I find the frequent gambling promos during the games depressing and disruptive.

Many years ago I worked at a company that had Ladbrokes in the UK as a customer. On my first visit to London, I noticed their storefronts and found them appalling. They were some of the sorriest, shabbiest public spaces I'd seen, clearly designed to extract resources from the least well off.

I don't really buy any of the arguments in favor of widespread legalization (and I include state lotteries in this). I could be ok with legalization for a few big events like the NCAA tournament because clearly there is some demand that must be met, but we should not be enabling gambling as a widespread daily habit.

Of course there will always be black market gambling and the state cannot protect its citizens from every evil, but nor should it actively enable them.

Walking through the UK really does not lead to a good view of sports betting. The store fronts do not look like places that a happy person would go to.

The state of sports gambling in the UK is now such that Sky Sports (used to be a cable/satellite TV station catering purely to sports) is now basically just a series of gambling adverts with some sport thrown in to keep the punters hooked. They even launched a Sky Bet betting company which seems to have completely overtaken the TV channels - every sport is riddled with Sky Bet adverts and sponsorship. The biggest irony is that professional sportsmen (it's always men) keep getting bans for gambling on their own sport, and yet we somehow expect extremely rich young men in a "banter" culture to ignore the fact that every week they pull on a shirt with multiple gambling sponsors on it and then play in a stadium with endless gambling ads scrolling around the LED boards before being interviewed afterwards standing in front of a wall of gambling sponsors by a man with Sky Bet written on his microphone.

It's the same in Australia. I've seen little kids who are into a particular sport parrot off the odds for the game. It's crazy.

Rule zero of bookmakers: No punter is allowed to have an edge. Rule one: see rule zero.

>The biggest irony is that professional sportsmen (it's always men) keep getting bans for gambling on their own sport

People pointing this out often leads me to an impression that athletes should be allowed to bet on their own games. Problem is, that leads to match-fixing.

Upvoted for the mention of state lotteries.

I think getting wiped out financially by lotteries is still pretty rare in comparison to stuff like sports betting and drug use.

State lotteries at least fund positive things, instead of just private profit. WA State as an example: https://www.walottery.com/PressRoom/Details.aspx?id=12129

My state makes lotteries illegal but I still support gambling. It’s one thing for someone to get ripped off in a private transaction that you can walk away from.

However the government is a monopoly, and has a monopoly on violence. Giving a mafia that can take your house away or put you behind bars their own casino is an incredibly bad idea.

I used to support SG legalization quite a bit, but after seeing how quickly it can get people that I once thought were rock solid financially into a very bad financial situation quicker than I thought possible, I have no problem with heavily regulating bets sizes and interaction limits, if not an outright ban. Before it was slightly illegal and those people I guess avoided “bookies” as a result of being afraid of that whole scene. The most I ever gamble is when the lotteries get to ridiculously high amounts like $500 million and get a $2 ticket. However, people seem to get addicted to sports betting as fast as crack cocaine and it’s much wider spread than I thought, and contributes almost nothing to civilization other than the pocket books of the middle men. Is it because sports betting gives you quick feedback as oppose to lotteries making you wait or maybe the ease it is to drop your whole bank account as a bet? It seems like net societal negative in almost all ways other than a brief chance of thrill.

> Is it because sports betting gives you quick feedback as oppose to lotteries making you wait or maybe the ease it is to drop your whole bank account as a bet?

I suspect it's because unlike the lotto and games of chance, people can delude themselves into thinking they "know" the sport. It's not a gambling if they know better. It's also easy to externalize the blame for your loses "they would have won if not for <bad call, bad play, bad management, injury, weather, etc... Or combination thereof>"

You can dip your toe in betting on the obvious mismatched, where it's pretty clear who will win. This is priced into the bookmaking, so the payout is little, but this helps people convince themselves they do know the sport and chase longer odds with better payouts.

And then you get sunk cost fallacy, as they lose, they convince themselves they can win it back because they learned from before and their system will work this time.

I also don't think people realize how much money, effort, time, very smart (and well-funded) individuals are working on making those odds. They have access to decades worth of data, all the stats, and are entirely un-emotional or clinical about the data they are trawling through. Even if they miss something or get it wrong, it's usually minute and you as the gambler barely make any money out of it. Short of some black-swan like event or insider knowledge, you as a single individual would not be able to come up with a system that on average does better than the book makers.

At least (very loosely) with the lottery it's kinda random and your odds are "set" or rather your payout is not proportionate to your chance of winning. It's a happy surprise kind of thing as long as you don't overdo it.

It's not just the bookmakers either - there are syndicates, much like hedge funds, whose entire 9-5 job is trying to make money out of this stuff too, which forces the bookies into line and makes the prices on markets like Betfair fairly efficient.

Basically, as a guy on the street, you don't have a clue and you're up against MIT-tier brains trying to beat you.

It's interesting to me that more people don't realise this is intuitively obvious, though. No-one would look at the Olympics and think, oh yeah, I can run faster than Usain Bolt.

You don't need to beat the bookies, you need to beat the odds. The bookies win either way. All they need to do is make sure bets on each side net out, minus their take.

If you have a reliable way to beat the odds (ie. Inefficient betting markets that get the odds of success wrong) you can theoretically make money - but its a similar scenario to daytrading, where you need to do extremely well because you have to overcome the negative drag from the booky take too.

That's a good point about being easy to externalize the blame. I'd also add on that likely a reason is the emotion of it. People are already emotional about sports and their team. With money on the line, that ramps up even more. The emotional aspect with highs and lows helps people crave more of that excitement.

> because clearly there is some demand that must be met

There is demand it's not clear that it "must be met." The problem is not the betting or oddsmaking, the problem is, how do you handle settlements?

You're presenting the false dichotomy, that we should just allow gambling, because it's inevitable, and we can occasionally use the violence of the state and it's courts to run the settlement racket on behalf of short changed bookies.

> but we should not be enabling gambling

And we have no reason to. We should harshly penalize people who try to collect on gambling debt and they should have no access to the courts or to sheriff's over problems arising from it.

> cannot protect its citizens from every evil

That's why this is all so insidious because it's really only one you need to actually protect them from. Suddenly you'll find the industry self regulating customers with an obvious illness out at the front door. They'll get amazingly good at this.

Removing access the the courts results in alternative forms of justice

Do that and your access to the courts is immediately restored as the defendant. CEO goes to jail, company's gambling license is revoked.

Not sure about total death rates but I think gambling addiction has the highest suicide rate of any of the big addictions out there. It seems truly ruinous. I suppose if any random person can blow their savings on out of the money options theyre unable to gauge the risk of then they might as well be allowed to do the same with crazy parlay bets but seeing the whole landscape of sports betting evolve over the last handful of years has still been quite eerie to me.

My gut these days tells me its probably better for the humans in society if this stuff is left only to black markets because it seems like it destroys lives.

What about gambling suicide rates vs drug overdose or drug-related, non-violent death rates?

While we don't have Ladbrokes, we do have a number of different companies running gambling halls, with slot machines and sports gambling. Those should be outlawed, there is nothing good about them, they provide absolutely no value to society. I'm fine with people being able to place a small bet on their local football team and I'm fine with casinos where people make it an occasional event, similar to going to the movies or seeing a concert.

But these commercial gambling halls, it's not some well of person who decides to pop in Friday afternoon and maybe lose €20 on a crazy sports bet or the slot machines and then go home and have dinner with the family. It is the some of our weakest and loneliest people who line up, waiting for the place to open and then spend the next 10 hours there. There are places who will provide free food for their best "customers", to ensure that they don't leave. We're transferring money from social welfare to private companies, using addiction and loneliness.

As for sports, I don't think professional soccer would like a ban on sports gambling. The revenue and salaries it have generated are to high for them to walk away now. It is hurting the sport though, in the sense that the community and local fans have been pushed out long ago. A local football club had to leave the premier league a few years ago, as a result they could no longer charge insane prices for tickets at the stadium. The result: They had more fans come to every single game, they sold more season passes, because the fans still wanted to see the games, and now they could afford it. Sure, they made less money, but the connection to the fans and the city grow.

This is a very thoughtful post. I have witnessed similar gambling establishments in Japan/JRA and Hong Kong/HJC. Both are equally unappealing to me for various reasons that you mentioned.

Your post made me think more about sports betting vs a lottery. To me, they really are different. With a lottery, you need to wait days to get the result (mostly). The chance for multiple quick dopamine hits is exceedingly low. (Scratch tickets and high speed lottos are another matter.). Now think about sports betting: So many simultaneous events or races, so the customer (user?) has many more chances for multiple quick dopamine hits. Maybe a potential framework to talk about gambling harm is opportunities for for multiple quick dopamine hits. If very low, then many tolerate it in their community, especially if a significant portion goes to social causes.

One thing I am absolutely sure about: Advertising for sports betting should be banned. I put it in the same class as cigarette ads as a child. Damn they looked so cool and fun. What a terrible message to spread!

I was just talking about this issue last night with a friend.

When I was six, my father burned me with a lesson. We were at a fairground, and I saw a pyramid of cans. The standard game: throw a ball and knock em down. At six years old, I was already a good throw. I knew I could win. My father made me an offer. He gave me the money for the game and told me that was my lunch money. If I won, I'd get both lunch and the win otherwise .....

Of course, even the best six-year-old has a very low chance of knocking over those weighted cans. The house wins. I went hungry that day.

Since then, I’ve had a terrible reaction to gambling. Casinos make me feel ill just walking through and seeing all the sad faces. I’ve never bought a lottery ticket in my life. I always feel that hungry belly when I think of gambling and it turns me right off.

Little did you know at the time that your father was also gambling. His bet was against you. His reward was that you would align to his views.

Had his gamble failed, you would’ve been addicted at a young age to that rush, and his authority on many life matters would’ve been diminished in your young eyes.

Many choices in life have some risk and some odds of failing. Calling them all gambling is plain wrong. Are you gambling that you will not be implicated in an accident every time you leave your home? There's definitely a risk, and a significant number of people lose every day.

Or maybe the odds do matter, as does the existence of a house that manipulates them.

This is baseless cynicism.

Not only is this baseless cynicism as another comment said (and, hey, I'm one hell of a cynic), but it also makes wild assumptions, based on absolutely nothing, about how the father would've handled the situation had he won.

That's not really an A/B scenario, there are a variety of outcomes there.

I have a 7 year old, and I think the parent is right. It would be very hard to unwind the winning experience from the psyche of a kid. They'd be talking about it for months - maybe even years. My kid still talks about the run-of-the-mill soccer goal he scored three weeks ago.

Parent is dramatizing it, and one event probably wouldn't make _that_ much of a difference in life outcome, but I think there's a valuable lesson here. The dad was gambling.

I'm a little more concerned about the withholding food from a child because they couldn't throw a ball well enough

One lunch. Let’s not exaggerate.

Pure comedy, I love it

In the loosest sense. And the parallels between that and the type of gambling being discussed here are nonexistent.

Besides, it was hardly gambling. He knew those games are rigged.

A 99% probability of winning is a gamble I would take any day.

> Casinos make me feel ill just walking through

I feel something similar, even though I never had a lesson like you did. I feel like I must be completely immune to gambling addiction because the thought that I could walk out of a casino with more money than I came in with is just unimaginable to me.

I met up with some old college friends on a trip after 20 years of not seeing them, and all they wanted to do on Saturday and Sunday was sit around, watch football on TV, and talk about their bets.

No one was going for any team in particular. They were cheering for their bets to win. I lost all interest in the idea of me ever gambling after that.

There are certains sports I love to watch because I love the game. Gambling would ruin that for me. No thanks.

Makes me sad to read this

“People don’t like what I like so they’re wrong!”

Contrary to you, there’s certain sports I find boring to watch as such (eg, American football) — but enjoy in a condensed version focused on bets (eg, RedZone and dailies on American football). The game of predicting individual performance and ensemble outperformance is more interesting to me than the underlying sport — and much more interesting to discuss than any single game.

You don’t have to gamble, but trying to portray it as some grievous fault people enjoy things differently than you is ridiculous.

I re-read my comment and did not pass any judgement then, nor now. I simply shared my experience.

If you are triggered by something I wrote, that's all on you. I get it, no one dealing with addiction wants to be called out on it. That is less than helpful for either party.

> No one was going for any team in particular. They were cheering for their bets to win. I lost all interest in the idea of me ever gambling after this.

You’re negative here — and I think you know it.

> I get it, no one dealing with addiction wants to be called out on it.

Wowza, calling me “triggered” and an “addict” because I enjoy something differently than you and thought your comment was negative isn’t appropriate.

I think your response here confirms my initial impression that you have issues with this topic.

"I" lost all interest. That's not a dig at them, or you. I've dealt with my own demons and am very comfortable differentiating between sharing my experience from the "I", and not drifting into giving unwanted advice.

I know myself, and I know if I gambled on my one sport where I follow one team, it would ruin the game for me. I would no longer watch for the intricacies of the game. I get worked up enough without the extra dopamine hits of gambling added into the mix. I hate the fact that half the advertisements are now for a product that ruins lives. My kids are being target with gambling ads when they watch with me.

These are still my old college roommates. Not good friends though. More like drinking buddies. And that's okay. I don't hop on airplanes to go see them anymore because I can get the same quality of interaction from our text message group. I'm at a place in life where I value deeper human connection, and its not there anymore.

That's all on me. I know plenty of people content to watch sports all weekend, with or without gambling. Good for them. It's just not my thing, and both perspectives can coexist just fine. One doesn't invalidate the other.

> You’re negative here — and I think you know it. > you have issues with this topic.

I absolutely have issues with this topic. It's a cancer on society, as the article confirms.

Some in people can gamble and not ruin their lives. Same with drinking. If you are one of those who can moderate in dopamine fueled areas of life, congrats. I can't, so I chose not to participate.

I know what you mean in that i gamble when i golf.

golf is boring so i need some action to entertain myself. I suck at golf so i usually lose money, but as long as i go in knowing im risking money for entertainment then its really not unlike any other form of entertainment.

similar to you i prefer placing many small bets in order to keep myself entertained.

Golf is boring to you because as you said, you suck at it. When you can play well enough to execute reasonably well the strategic aspect of the game opens up. But yes, match play and betting do make things fun in their own way too!

That's way too judgy.

Maybe they just don't enjoy the sport: they could get better at it and still not like it.

You would love water ballet if you learnt the intricacies of it.

Golf is so hard you can’t possibly get good at it and not love it. People golf for a variety of reasons. I play with guys that are relatively terrible because they never practice because it’s just not important to them. They don’t golf because they love the game but rather because they like to get out and away from everything for a few hours and to socialize.

A lot of times people do things they don’t find too interesting because they really like the side effects. I used to play cards with friends that took it seriously and I never really won and wasn’t too into it but it was fun to hang out.

I had lunch with my dad recently and he mentioned he tried out one of the sports betting apps, because they gave him a free $20 to gamble with. My heart sunk a little. I know he likes a deal, but I didn't think he'd take obvious bait like that. I brought up what they were doing incase he didn't see what was in front of his face, and tried to make sure it wasn't going to become a problem. I'd hate to see him destroy his retirement with gambling, he worked so hard to get there.

His entire working life he was never a sports fan, but in retirement he seems really into it. There have been a lot of changes, and I really hope this doesn't become one of them. I could see him really getting into all the statistics.

This really resonated with me because at first glance I feel that these gambling apps have almost no effect on me because I don’t gamble, but the fact that they can so effectively lure people you love who are less cynical, that’s rough.

The free money up front is bad too. They are acting like drug dealers… the first hit is free. He never would have tried it without that “free” money.

If the person wins their first bet they are very likely to let their winnings ride until it is lost.

If the person loses their first bet, and it's against another player, then not only have they potentially hooked in a new player but they also rewarded an active user.

If the person loses their first bet and it's against the house then they just attracted a potential new player while paying $0.

Wait, you're upset because they aren't in love with a particular team? Lol I see nothing wrong with this. Do you not fill out a bracket for March madness? It's the same thing.

Edit: down voted, ok

I'm not upset with them, at all. I chose to get on an airplane to go see them. Then wasted a weekend sitting around next to each other staring at the tv and not really being present. That was on me. I wanted to be with my old friends, and could have left and done my own thing at any time.

It was a good learning experience for myself. My state does not have online gambling and I hope it stays that way.

> No one was going for any team in particular.

Honestly, I would expect the opposite. I wouldn't care who wins between the Cowboys and the Giants, but if I put a $10 bet down on the Giants, all of the sudden and find myself rooting for them. You should tell your buds to bet on a team and forget all the prop bets. ;)

I like that the religion of teams is going away

That part was weirder to me

In my view, gambling should be a service provided directly by the government. And I'm not talking a "public-private partnership", but an actual DoG that will be taking bets, running gaming rooms in select cities etc. -- all with the explicit mandate to make of gambling available but boring. No bonuses, no ads, no promotions, no glitzy websites.

Gambling is inherently exploitative and no amount of regulation will align the incentives for commercial operators. You also don't want to ban it outright, as it may descend into the underground otherwise, so this looks like a reasonable area for the govt to take direct control.

Well we do have that in some states of India, and guess what? It has the same effects. Moreover the government is incentivized to promote this as it's an alternate source of revenue. Roads are peppered with ads, and there's the constant infighting in the ruling government to see who gets the gambling and liquor sales portfolio (and usually it's a buddy or kid of the chief minister).

That was how it worked in Sweden and it solved nothing.

I think this used to be the case in (most of) Australia (it's still government run in Western Australia but that will change - they've already tried twice to privatise it but the first time was derailed by the pandemic and the second time no one was offering enough money).

I think privatisation happened quite a while ago (mid to late 1990s) but my vague memory is that there was some sort of deregulation in the mid 2000s (or at least that's when I remember the ads becoming incessant) and that seems to have coincided with the endless offers of bonus bets, deposit matches, bet returns etc.

This sets up several conflicts of interest for the government. The money is just too good.

I think the Netherlands has this and it sort of seems to work. In that I've never seen anyone really addicted to gambling, even if half the country provides the government some extra money in the 'national lottery' every month. We got a lot of random wins of boxes of ice cream and stuff growing up.

Casinos exist, but are basically a regulated service (possibly private, but as far as I know there's only a single operator).

In the US that’s called the lottery. Go into any gas station in a poor neighborhood and there’s a line of people buying tickets.

They advertise government lotteries in the US though, which is fucked up.

The UK sort of had this for a while via "The Tote" - set up in the 1920s by the UK government, it ran stores that took sports bets, had a presence at almost all horse races etc providing safe/legitimate services.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tote

It operated alongside other private operators, but was entirely State owned and operated until it was privatized in 2011. I forget the specifics of it, but the Tote uses (or at least used to) some kind of "pool betting" model that meant it didn't profit directly from customers losing bets, being agnostic about the results was meant to reduce predatory pressures etc.

I think this likely helped a lot to give those who wanted to gamble somewhere they could always trust to honor the arrangement and avoid "underground" operators, I don't know that it helped all that much in reducing the social harms etc though.

Silly take: humans are really bad at controlling themselves and stick to doing the correct things, that's why newer languages like Go and Rust force you to check errors in return values, among many other additional checks/guardrails that didn't exist or weren't common in older languages. It is just easier to have the compiler checks these things for you instead of manually making sure things are correct. Same for sports gambling. Human nature is really bad, and it is really hard to control yourself. See that wsj reporting. Even someone as rich and educated as a psychiatrist can sink 6 digit amount of money into gambling. When the law allowed gambling, especially online gambling, it opened a can of worms.

If human nature is truly that inherently bad and dangerous, then the worst possible thing we could do is to allow adult human beings to rule over other adult human beings as their parent, using the threat of violence to prevent them from doing things “for their own good”.

Indeed, allowing this to occur has wrought orders of magnitude more death and destruction than sports gambling or drug use or prostitution.

no victim == no crime

If I understand your comment correctly, you are saying laws are bad, and decriminalization/deregulation is good

I would very much like to believe that. But see what happened in Oregon after decriminalizing drugs.

Look what happened in Mexico and California and many other places after criminalizing them.

They are not the same thing. One causes huge amounts of murder and violence, and the other is simply people destroying their own selves, as is their right.

Almost all of the gun crime in the US is the direct result of the prohibitions on the sale and manufacture of drugs.

I used to think this, but do you really see the liberalization of gambling laws as having a positive effect? Would you describe the previous state of it being illegal as some kind of dystopia? Do you care at all about the wreckage it creates in the lives of individuals and their families?

I think laws should be viewed from the lens of human rights and the idea of what might be an actual justifiable application of violence, and not a naive “positive effect”.

It would have a positive effect if I went around summarily executing everyone accused of child exploitation, for example, but it would be insane and unjust. There’s a reason we don’t do it that way.

Threatening people with violence for what other people view as misapplication of their own resources is incredibly unjust.

If you don’t have the freedom to destroy yourself or your own resources, you don’t have freedom.

It isn’t the legal system that causes this wreckage (although you might disagree, “lifting” a ban isn’t an action - it’s cessation of the threat of future enforcement action), and it isn’t the legal system that is the appropriate solution to the problem. All bans are, practically, are the threat of someone pulling out a gun to force you to stop. If you personally aren’t willing to go to that length, you shouldn’t vote for or support such policies.

Are you willing to pull a gun on an addict to stop them from indulging in their addiction? If not, what possible moral justification do you have for instructing a cop to do same?

If stats showed that instances of gambling related social ills increased massively after liberalization would that impact you at all? is your ideology truly consequence-free?

edit: Also yes, I would use physical violence to stop someone I cared about from destroying their lives with gambling if it would help. I would hope for the sake of your loved ones you would be willing to do the same

I do not have to be willing to take out a gun for the ban, and neither does a cop. Cessation of easy online gambling would be enough for some high proportion of the problem. All that takes is the court shutting the company down and serving a cease and desist to their website. You may claim this requires a gun but as far as I know that's never been the case.

The only reason that a ban like that works is because there is the threat of a gun. You can pretend that it doesn’t require a gun but that’s what the ban is: threat of arrest if you don’t comply.

It does require the gun, but it doesn’t require that the gun get pulled out, because everyone knows the police WILL do so if you resist them. It’s implicit. The cop does have to be ready and willing to do so (contrary to your claim), or everyone would ignore the ban, as it would have no teeth.

People don’t obey laws that are inconvenient to them because of the goodness of their hearts, they do it because the police will draw down on them and force them if push comes to shove.

This is not so much than human are "really bad" at this. Here they're facing other human (scientists, psychologists, artists, marketers), computers, algorithms, spending all their waking hours devising scheme to make them addicted.

The C language may not help you much with clean memory allocation, but at least they are not using A/B testing and emotional appeal to coerce you into doing deadly memory management.

Sorry for the nitpick but I'm curious if I'm off here:

> that's why newer languages like Go and Rust force you to check errors in return values

Go doesn't require you check return values though, no? I can get a return of type (*Model, error) and just completely ignore the error portion of it and never check it. Rust doesn't let you access the value until you deal with the Result/Option wrapper, requiring that you at least acknowledge the potential for an error.

The language doesn't force it but some common tooling does. They probably are using something like staticcheck in their setup and conflating it with the core language.

You can ignore it but the compiler will force you to assign it to something, usually `_`. That alone is helpful in reminding the programmer that return values need to thought of, but in addition you have pretty much all Go linters/analyzers force you to check its value and not use `_`.

Argentina is currently facing a huge teenager gambling addiction on illegal websites, we're talking about kids from 11 years old onwards. They gamble on school breaks, among their friends as something completely natural. Mobsters catch them by giving away for free an initial fixed amount of money, then they get hooked and keep betting and burning money. The worst part of it is that is an extremely silent addiction: parents would only realize about it once a kid is so full of debts that they get threatened by the mobsters that run these sites, in their despair they reveal the situation to their parents. They easily search them online through social networks and pressure them really hard for the money that they owe. In my opinion online gambling is a f***g disgrace and should simply not exist at all. It ruins lives and families. It should only be possible to play/gamble/bet physically in a casino or authorized venue.

"But the more elegant solution is the blunter one: ban sports gambling once again."

I don't think anyone would call blanket banning "elegant", even if it would be the best solution.

"They estimate that legal sports betting leads to a roughly 9 percent increase in intimate-partner violence."

I'm sure the numbers are probably right, but I can't help but feel some of this is reaching a bit - many population causation studies seembto be more about triggers than true root causes. Just because betting triggered this doesn't mean betting needs to be banned. What this should lead to is better support and treatment for people affected by this type of violence. If it's not betting that set it off, it would be some other stressor (probably also money related or feeling like a loser). Trying to fix the person's behavior such as impulse control and anger management would be much better than progressively banning everything as the next trigger emerges.

I am waiting for the day when one of them proposes to ban relationships altogether, because they have an inherent risk for partner violence... A certain TOS episode comes to mind, which depicted the aftermath of such a law.

Gambling is a vice, and we should allow it but make it expensive and somewhat stigmatized.

At the very least, ads should be banned or require nasty images like tobacco products.

I would also suggest capping the amount that people can bet per week or month to prevent too many weak human minds from ruining their lives and worse than that ruining the lives of their wives and kids.

But his would those amounts be set? For some people $100/week would be a lot of money; for higher earners it'd be basically nothing.

that would be a good system, base it on income or wealth — you're limited to $100/week or whatever unless you can validate you can afford more

let's means test the rich for once

100/week is 5200/year. That's probably the difference between making ends meet and being always in debt for a lot of households - the median us household income is about $50k and we're talking 10% of that. That's a huge difference for the median household, and likely pretty catastrophic for the bottom quartile.

Which arguably is as much a problem with income inequality as anything else, but the point is, gambling exacerbates existing social problems.

I have participated in a few meetings of some lottery boards, and I have heard that there is a tension here between the illegal market and the pricing of the legal market. Some states charge the (relatively low) commissions that the illegal market charges because they would prefer to stamp out the illegal market, and others take your position but have a thriving black market for gambling. Those are basically the two options.

I think illegal sports gambling was less pernicious. The usual bookie offered bets on the outcome of games which are much harder to manipulate than the stupid prop bets that people get addicted to now. The stigma of being involved in something illegal also slowed things down, you had to actually call up a bookie and not just press a button on an app.

For what it's worth, I agree with you, but that's the counter-argument: if prices are too high, you're going to essentially get people either circumventing restrictions (eg with VPNs) or turning to gangs.

Some of the other games that state lotteries are adopting are almost as bad as sports betting in terms of their availability (look up instant-play gaming), but sports betting feels like a game of skill, which certainly makes it worse from a psychological perspective. I still think it should be legal if people are going to do it anyway. Maybe banning the "specials" on combo bets or requiring them to be labeled as "this is still a bad bet" could help.

For the record, I have a vested interest in sports gambling being banned because I sell products involved in instant-play and other forms of gaming that are not involved in sports betting.

Did people do illegal online sports gambling before it was legal? Did it do as much harm as it does now?

Yes they did, and I don't know if we have harm data. It certainly provided a lot of funding to criminals. It probably did not cause nearly as much direct harm as we see today.

> Some states charge the (relatively low) commissions that the illegal market charges because they would prefer to stamp out the illegal market

Slight tangent, but I am now of the view the state should not be allowed to tax legal vices. (Drugs, gambling, alcohol primarily). The reason is it keeps pushing amazing conflicts of interest, and the state ends up incentivized to maintain the behavior it supposedly does not want.

Either [vice] is wrong and should be illegal, or is tolerated and regulated but in no way profited from by those that do the regulation.

Taxing vices is how you control the amount of them while still allowing people to do them. Taxation is an important form of regulation.

Sort of. It's how you bankrupt poor people addicted to the vice while not meaningfully affecting the well-off.

Ideally you would make it extremely expensive to get started, but inexpensive if you're already addicted and beyond the point of thinking rationally about money.

That's one theory. Another Theory is that the state is simply piling on and further exploiting these people.

A third theory is that the state shouldnt be in the position of playing nanny or parent, influencing behavior. If it is illegal, prevent it from happening. If it is legal, it shouldn't it shouldnt interfere.

> A third theory is that the state shouldnt be in the position of playing nanny or parent, influencing behavior. If it is illegal, prevent it from happening. If it is legal, it shouldn't it shouldnt interfere.

This sort of black-and-white position basically means either a complete ban (presumably with a harsh penalty for people who participate in the activity) or no regulation at all. A ban will just get circumvented if you don't penalize people for getting around it, so you're going to have to penalize addicts for illegal gambling, not just the people who enable that gambling. If you want to take the other extreme, are laws that force people to put lung cancer warnings on cigarettes "playing nanny"?

In real life, we usually take middle ground positions, and that means doing things that influence behavior, whether they are taxes or restrictions on labeling.

Yes, I do think government should be more black and white, and the government should stay in it's lane. I support regulation that empowers and informs individuals to make their own choices.

Labeling of side effects, calories, and similar topics fall into that category of empowering the citizen.

Sin taxes dont educate or empower, they simply punish and try to prevent individuals from acting on their own choices.

The two are very different.

So do you believe that any behavior should be prohibited?

Do you think sales of raw milk, which have been known to cause listeria outbreaks when people drink from an unsafe batch, should simply force labels of "this milk may be unsafe" or do you think that should be prohibited?

Do you think rhino horn should be legal to sell with the label of "this likely came from poached animals"?

Yes, lots of behavior should be prohibited. Specifically when they cause direct and indisputable harm to another person.

I think raw milk should be legal, and the labeling requirement should depend on the actual risk level, not just a vague possibility.

rhino horn is a tricky one. Poaching animals is a form of stealing, so it is clearly illegal. Off the cuff, I think selling recently harvested rhino horn should be legal but required to have evidence that it was not poached.

Inversely, Do you think the state should be able to criminalize selling or owning farmed Rhino horn?

Do you think think states should be able to ban the sale of meat or specific types of farmed meat?

Raw milk should absolutely be allowed for sale if properly labeled. The risk is miniscule, and it should be up to individuals if they are ok with it or not. I myself grew up drinking raw milk every day, and nobody from my family got sick even once. It's absolutely ridiculous that it's completely banned in the US.

A lot of things are only able to be legal because they are regulated in some way. I absolutely want the state in the position of "playing nanny" when it comes to things like telling companies they can't dump a ton of toxic chemicals into the rivers or how much pollution they are able to spew into our air.

It's legal to sell tobacco, and it should be, but I'm very glad there are rules against selling cigarettes to children. It's legal to drink alcohol, but it's a very good thing when the state influences behavior like drunk driving.

Nobody wants arbitrary laws restricting private individuals for no reason, but communities should have the power to decide that some behaviors or actions are harmful to the group and are unacceptable. Communities have always done that in one way or another. We've just decided that rather than stick with mob justice we would put away the tar and feathers and allow the state, our public servants who are either elected by us or appointed by those we elect, to enforce the rules for us. I'm glad we did. I've already got a job and can't go around policing all day.

I dont think stopping companies from polluting rivers is playing nanny. It is against the law, destroys others property, and the government should act.

Drunk driving is illegal too, for good reasons.

Im not against laws.

What I am against is the state taking things that are explicitly legal, and making your life hard and penalizing you if you do them.

The role of the government should be enforcing law. Enforcing social judgement and incentives on legal behavior should be left to non-governmental society.

Sin taxes are a classic example of this.

I'll admit that sin taxes imposed on the general public aren't usually a very good idea. For example, I'd much rather see government subsidizing the costs of healthy foods rather than add a tax on sugar.

I can see taxes and tariffs imposed on corporations being useful to limit the amount of certain harmful goods or to help offset the costs of externalities caused by those products. I'd still rather see companies regulated and held accountable for what they do more directly in most cases.

I think that is most closer to my position.

In my mind, the government is a heavy hammer, backed by lethal force. As such, it should be used sparingly to prevent concrete damages, enforce laws, and enforce property rights.

If a person or company is causing people real harm, that should be actionable by the government. If they are poisoning someone or killing their land, that is well within the remit.

Inversely, the government should not be a tool for optimizing society, or increasing the subjective efficiency or morality.

Government is a powerful tool, but that doesnt mean it the right tool for everything. Restraint and respecting other people's autononomy is a difficult skill to lean when you have the power to simply force compliance and "know" you are right.

Subsidizing the cost of health foods and adding a tax on sugar are exactly equivalent due to how monetary policy works.

How are they roughly equivalent, let alone "exactly equivalent"? It seems to me that are vast differences any way you compare them.

Economically, there are major differences in who pays them, There are differences in impact/cost. There are also huge moral differences between subsidizing desired behavior, and penalizing undesirable behavior.

Subsidies increase the amount of money in circulation and taxes decrease it. The price of goods is set relative to the amount of money in circulation (this is what inflation does). Hence, exact equivalence of taxing sugar and subsidizing foods without sugar.

Seems like a very narrow definition. If I take $100 from your wallet, or give $100 to your neighbor, is that exactly the same to you?

No, the effect is amortized over everyone. If you elect to take $100 from half the country or give $100 to the other half it's pretty much exactly equivalent. We saw this experiment with COVID helicopter money causing inflation. You weren't seriously suggesting taxing or subsidizing only one person, were you?

taxes are generally levied on a small portion of people and subsidies normally go to even smaller portion.

Taxes and benefits are extremely unequal in their application.

Subsidizing the cost of health foods would actually be a lot more expensive. In fact, ideally it'd include increasing the accessibility of healthy foods while a tax on sugar would be much easier to implement.

It'd result in more people eating better though (instead of just eating slightly less worse, or eating worse differently while still not getting enough healthy food) and so there'd also be savings in the cost of health care and improvements in productivity.

I think the taxes thing is mainly to appease the voting public. People want the profits of the bad things to pay for the good things. It makes the ugly pill possible to swallow.

The tempting comparison is the tendency, at least in England, for things like church maintenance fundraisers to be funded by lotteries, by another name (raffle). i.e. donate money, and you might win.

Either gambling is bad or it's not, but in practice people like to be incredibly selective about it, as here, where as you point out sports betting lacks the positive externalities which for some part of the population offset the negative effects.

A church raffle only happens once a year, and the time between buying the ticket and getting the reward is relatively long. That is not going to lead to an addiction.

Having the TV blaring gambling commercials at you constantly and having the ability to place a bet from your phone at a moments notice is completely different. You’re comparing having a glass of wine on a special occasion with downing a fifth of whiskey every night.

> You’re comparing having a glass of wine on a special occasion with downing a fifth of whiskey every night

No one pretends one of those isn’t drinking though, whereas everyone pretends raffles aren’t gambling, or churches could hardly go in for it so much.

> That is not going to lead to an addiction.

So while the public described by the person I was replying to consider positive externalities sufficient to get around the “gambling bad” label for you it is all about how addictive you think an individual form of it would be for other people?

There are people that think all drink is addictive, and some people for whom this is true, but suggest banning alcohol and you are considered a crackpot.

I have known people that worked in the gambling industry and their descriptions of the addicts are mind bending. For example, they would show up at the offices and demand to gamble in person because they couldn’t find enough in life to bet on. Such people would find board games problematic, let alone a raffle situation.

> There are people that think all drink is addictive, and some people for whom this is true, but suggest banning alcohol and you are considered a crackpot.

Suggest reasonable restrictions on alcohol though and nearly everyone would agree that's a smart thing.

> I have known people that worked in the gambling industry and their descriptions of the addicts are mind bending... Such people would find board games problematic, let alone a raffle situation.

You can find equally horrific stories about alcoholics. We'd have to deal with greater numbers of "such people" if we didn't actively take steps to regulate addictive substances. Even with alcohol we have limits on where and when it can be used, and how it can be advertised. Gambling is available anywhere at anytime and ads are pushed right to addicts phones night and day to remind them to keep paying and broadcast to everyone during sporting events.

> No one pretends one of those isn’t drinking though, whereas everyone pretends raffles aren’t gambling, or churches could hardly go in for it so much.

The raffles I see have a token amount as a reward, compared to the money raised. I think that makes a big difference, both rationally and emotionally.

> There are people that think all drink is addictive

And? Should we legislate based on some peoples' belief that the rapture is imminent?

FYI charity raffles are actually lotteries that would be illegal if not for the charitable use of the funds and exceptions in the rules on lotteries. A lottery generally has three things:

1. A prize

2. Consideration - you must pay to enter

3. A game of pure chance - this differentiates a lottery from a tournament or a silent auction, for example

A raffle fits these definitions, but nonprofits are often allowed to run them specifically because they get an exception to the rules. That is also why many "buy my shit to win a prize" promotions have a way to enter without buying something (getting around the consideration rule) and some of these have a short math test that you need to do to claim your prize (making it a game of not pure chance).

All the big sports betting companies are now dumping money into political television commercials with school teacher testimonials and happy classroom shots urging how passing Bill X will benefit state schools, yet years into legalized sports betting, teachers still have some of the lowest compensation rates.

I mean, yes, that is a theory one could reasonably believe in. In the absence of evidence, it's not obvious at all whether it is true or false.

But this submission is about research showing that the legal market isn't just replacing the illegal market. It expands the market and the bad effects.

That is, they're able to track the deposits made to betting sites and other spending. Bets to illegal bookies are obviously not in that dataset. But if the legal gambling had replaced illegal gambling, the money going into legal gambling would appear to be coming from nowhere. Most likely a reduction in cash withdrawals? But that's not the effect they're observing. The money going into gambling is displacing other spending, including spending on +EV investments.

Given there is now evidence that the theory isn't correct, there's probably not much value in talking about it as if there really was a legitimate tradeoff here.

There's some evidence ludopathy has a genetic component (aside from obviously environmental).

I think it's cruel for us as a society to allow that to be exploited for financial gain.

This is basically where I am at. I live in Illinois and it used to be you could bet at the race track or a couple Off Track Betting locations, otherwise you would have to go to a casino which was probably a distance away. Then they legalized Video Gambling and it popped up in a bunch of bars, restaurants, and stand alone places. You even see it in gas stations sometimes. Now with sports betting online there are constant advertisements for it all the time. In just 15 years legalized gambling went from something relatively niche to extremely prevalent.

Slippery slopes and all that

There's a scene in Idiocracy where a the main character goes to a hospital and there are slot machines in the background (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70UdQJDzj4k). The last time I saw it I immediately thought of Illinois. Every time I travel to chicagoland I'm shocked to seem them everywhere. Their presence somehow makes otherwise normal places look very sad.

Higher res and earlier shot where the slot machines are focused on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcYbYhjdUb4&t=69s&ab_channel...

Bonus for phrases on them like "Play while you wait" and "Win free medical care"

SpongeBob is the voice of the doctor machine.

Tobacco bans are the way of the future, with existing smokers grandfathered out of the ban to minimize political opposition. If you're born after X date then it will never be legal for you to but it.

Opposition to bans is sort of a libertarian dogma, they say bans never work and only make the problem worse or introduce new problems, and usually cite alcohol prohibition in America. But a lot of bans do work, and even that one apparently succeeded in reducing alcohol consumption even if it did empower organized crime. What's more, it's pretty easy to ferment alcohol in your basement but it's a lot harder to hide fields of tobacco. Political dogma never captures the nuance of reality.

You seem to have the assumption that libertarian opposition to bans is based on the practicality of such and not the principle of allowing adults to make their own choices

It never ceases to amaze me how much people love to tell other people what to do even when it has absolutely nothing to do with them.

I think sports gambling is stupid and has largely ruined sports for me. Most people I know though seem to really love it, gamble completely responsibly and seem to enjoy sports they did not enjoy previously.

Unfortunately, there is no story to click on without some kind of moral outrage or "mistake" that the "smart" people need to correct. Especially appealing if it can bent into some kind of political bullshit narrative .

> they say bans never work and only make the problem worse or introduce new problems

No, that's not what we say. The primary argument for it is because we do not subscribe to a utilitarian morality. If we know that some decision leads to better outcomes from the POV of general quality of life and the like, we still wouldn't support it if it trampled individual freedoms, because we consider the latter to be more important.

It's not a difference of opinion over whether a certain theorem proves true or false. It's a matter of different set of axioms altogether.

Expensive in terms of effort, yes. There must be several opportunities for higher brain function to over-ride the reptile brain before a bet is placed.

New federal law: all gambling bets must be placed by fax or mail accompanied by a legible signature, with results to be released no less than 24 hours after betting closes.

You jest but a serious proposal on the table in Brasil right now is constant/ongoing facial recognition on online betting sites to authorise the session.

Indeed. Expensive in terms of money it already is, and it's not effective.

Sports betting sites generally have margins well under 10%. That's not expensive IMO.

Just about everything that's fun is a "vice".

There might be someone hopelessly addicted to amateur astronomy, frequently disrupting their sleep schedule and taking out usurious loans to pay for their equipment. But, that's not happening on a scale that we need societal regulation. Gambling is a different sort of vice than many fun activities.

Playing tennis is a vice?

Tennis can certainly be viewed that way.

It's done recreationally, costs money, costs time, can cause injuries and joint problems, and is not productive. There are health benefits, but nothing that can't be had by much safer and less costly means of exercise.

Well, anything "can be viewed" in any way. That doesn't mean the view is correct or commonly used or accepted.

So criticizing the concept of vice on the grounds that "everything that's fun is a vice" is somewhat of a semantic strawman - you're criticizing the word by changing its meaning.

No it isn't. It's an opinion as to whether something is a vice. There is no theoretical model of what makes a vice; no piece of kit to measure the viceness of something. There is no morality particle to reference. It's also an opinion whether a vice is actually something negative or just a necessary aspect of the human experience.

You have a bit of a point: things that are fun are much more addictive than things that are hard or boring. And vice versa: addiction makes people believe it is fun. An addict will accept any kind of rationalization before giving up the addiction.

That doesn't mean it should be allowed. Not all fun is healthy. It's been known for over a century that gambling is detrimental, to both society and individual.

The christian morality summed up in one sentence.

I'm not sure it would work to make it expensive, I've lived in London for a while, and tobacco products are very expensive there, they were expensive for me, I knew few Ukrainian guys I would buy cigarettes from, for 2-3 pounds a packet, while I had enough money to buy 13 pounds cigarettes after I found a better job. I know a lot of people from when I was there, they were still buying cigarettes from those Ukrainians. You make gambling expensive? I'm sure lower classes can find someone who can let them gamble for cheap. I am no libertarian, but I think when it comes to vices, it's a lost battle, prohibition works for a the better-off part of the population, it leaves the one who need government the most, outside the government reach. I'd say things should be legalised, but money shouldn't be spent for anything except help programs, social programs, better working conditions for those who suffer and find peace in gambling and/or drugs. Legalising gambling was probably a mistake, but it was a way to keep it out of reach of organised crime.

I think being born and raised in Naples, I've lived all my life in direct contact with organised crime, but many people live in places and don't make the connection, but I'd suggest everyone who think about regulating or not, to keep in mind that in any place you're in, there are 2 governments, one you can see, and one you can not

It’s already stigmatised - have you seen the quintessential meth addict/crack whores that hang around gambling/gaming joints?

There has to be a lower class. Not all but most of the people who inhabit it are just where they belong. Interventionist states with paternal social policies can’t magically raise the IQs of the dumbest 20% of their populations by 50 points, alas.

No respectable person goes to a casino except as a gag to throw away expendable income. Some labourer spending 80% of his wages at Ladbroke’s is a symptom of his stupidity, not the cause of it.

I see so many younger cousins/niblings casually gambling on their phones all the time. And these are not poor kids/men, easily top 20% in the US.

The sheer amount of advertising for gambling and revenue growth for these companies indicates there is little stigma.

This is not the case in the US.

That may be true for the UK, but in America it’s very different. Most casinos are big fancy places, the local casino by me on the Indian reservation has world famous DJ’s playing pool parties, an amazing restaurant, and valet parking with supercars out front every time I have been.

Every football game has an announcer giving his lock of the week pick for DraftKings. Every stadium has a brand new fancy looking sports book attached or next door. Hell they built a draft kings attached to the local PGA course.

Most people do it all via an app, no need to even leave your couch. People openly share their bets with friends. I don’t even do sports betting, but it’s basically all over and constantly in my face.

What state is that? Sounds pretty bad.

Arizona

Im in the US, grew up in Washington where its legal to gamble at 18 and absolutely its stigmatized. I gambled somewhat frequently and a big part of the appeal was to be a jerk and go mingle with people we perceived as degenerate.

Other comments mention how fancy casinos look, theyre still disgusting. Most casinos ive been to are not fancy at all. There are large "fancy" tribal casinos and the Vegas casinos but even those reek of smoke and are mostly filled with morbidly obese.

Id go as far to say people who think theres no stigma in the US have only visited Vegas or seen it on TV and dont play pai gow in Spokane bowling alleys on weeknights.

As a step one online betting should be banned. Make access to it more difficult as with all substances.

Its already expensive as it is, is it not? Like in a "people are losing heaps of money from their sour bets" kind of way.

My thought is it being more expensive is not going to stop gambling addicts since they are already willing to lose heaps of money by making the bet in the first place.

I agree about banning ads 100%.

It should be expensive to make business out of it.

Legalising it? No.

Normalising it? Yes.

Unfortunately, our culture seems to have two settings: legal ban; full celebratory embrace. We don’t seem to be able to handle tolerating and discouraging (see smoking, which is slowly being banned across the once-civilised world).

Should the awesome power of the State be deployed to wield violence against people who bet money on sports? No, that’s insane. Should there be half a dozen betting ads every hour on primetime TV? No, that’s crazy too.

>> Unfortunately, our culture seems to have two settings: legal ban; full celebratory embrace.

If something is legally banned, there's generally a black market for it. Once it's legalized, the bar for consumers to enter the market is nearly eliminated; large companies can pour a ton of money into gaining new users in the legal market and moving users from the black market to the legal market.

>> Should there be half a dozen betting ads every hour on primetime TV? No, that’s crazy too.

It's even worse than that. There are betting ads during the actual game broadcast. Commentators read ads listing various odds on the current game. Betting companies sponsor a ton of stuff related to the teams and leagues. ESPN (Disney) both broadcasts games and runs its own sportsbook. You can't watch a sports game without hearing about betting on that game itself, much less sports in general.

Prior to legalized sports betting, was "state violence" used against people who bet on sports as a casual hobby? It seems like it was basically tolerated as long as it was kept amongst friends/coworkers, etc.

Not the bettors as much as the organizations facilitating it.

> Prior to legalized sports betting, was "state violence" used against people who bet on sports as a casual hobby?

Yes: Sal Culosi was shot and killed by police in Virginia for wagering more than $2,000: https://reason.com/2011/01/17/justice-for-sal/

I am certain that there are more — that’s just one which leaps to mind.

You left out that the officer who shot and killed him did so by accident during the arrest. The police are not out there killing people "for" betting as you said.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110615051217/http://www.foxnew...

This is specifically about something that is very addictive. Moderation was never a likely outcome.

Rest is Politics Leading recently had an interview with Frank Luntz who, as well as rebranding “global warming” as “climate change”, rebranded “gambling” to “gaming”. A really eye opening interview https://open.spotify.com/episode/5sSaRKxclEFwz80cH2FwJu?si=N...

Is climate change a sinister rebranding?

Global warming suffers from "but it rained yesterday" and other misleading small scale variations making people disbelieve.

"More fires, more hurricanes: Climate change" then rebrands it as scary: need to take seriously.

The term "climate change" was used in research even back in the 50s. It isn't some new invention.

Not doubting your Mr. Luntz's influence but it turns out gaming is an old term for gambling which still causes legal nightmares for anyone in my area trying to serve alcohol at a video game themed location. Ancient laws ban gaming and alcohol to be co-located.

Isn't that video sport?

Sports and alcohol seem to have a long history together.

There were tons of red flags that were completely set aside.

The largest are probably mobile betting and allowing for instant credit card deposits.

There is also the fantasy of being able to win money but the reality that if you actually win money in a consistent fashion, you will be either kicked-off or your action will be severely crippled.

I'd like to think the emerging prediction markets, like Polymarket, are much fairer systems, especially for winning players, and would be much better than sports books like DraftKings, FanDuel, etc.

Polymarket works on mobile and allows instant USDC deposits. Are these somehow red flags elsewhere, but not here?

Not to mention the Pandora's box that prediction markets open, when the order book can begin to influence real life events - from match fixing, to assassination markets.

Polymarket isn't legal in the US

Polymarket is based in New York, and all but tells prospective US users to use a VPN.

And yet the biggest markets on there are consistently us centric.

It's not like that box has been firmly closed until now. Every time someone stands to profit from one outcome over another they already have an incentive to influence the outcome, prediction market existing or not. And stock markets already act as a sort of prediction basket about future events that will influence the trajectory of a company (e.g. the outcome of trade negotiations, wars, court decisions, elections, the health of their CEO etc. etc.)

The upside of prediction markets is that it incentives people with information to make their honest estimates legible to society. E.g. an opinion piece in a newspaper has little skin in the game, other than the author's reputation.

> There is also the fantasy of being able to win money but the reality that if you actually win money in a consistent fashion, you will be either kicked-off or your action will be severely crippled.

This does not apply to all bookmakers. Also, betting exchanges exist where the players bet against each other therefore there is no incentive for the operator to ban winning players.

I used to love watching basketball. I hate all the ads now and don't want to have my kids see that.

But, what's the alternative?

Going to a live event, for two bad teams, for four people, cost me over $500 a year ago. I can't afford that.

Youth sports?

I live in Florida, and was hoping Jai Alai (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jai_alai) would be a weird respite, but that was the original gamblers refuge.

College basketball for an unranked school probably fits the bill. I go watch my local uni's volleyball team play and it's super low budget, all run by volunteers, the fans are invested and local, and it's just all-around wholesome.

Simple question: isn't risk taking a part of most people's lives? Speeding on the highway and jaywalking may seem harmless, but can have dire results at times. Other risky behaviors can spin out of control sometimes before you have a chance to understand how it all went so bad as quickly as it did!

I've known several gambling addicts down through the years, the damage they did to their financial and family lives was tragic. Divorce was almost a given, homelessness occurred on several occasions. Being shunned by their parents and siblings sometimes followed after money was borrowed and never paid back.

Two things I never could understand after all the above. First, I couldn't get any of them to attend GA meetings after I offered to attend with them and second, why they ever thought they had a chance to win consistently in any gambling endeavor when the gamble itself is connected to a computer. (Yes, I'm saying cheating can be involved. Imagine!)

>Speeding on the highway and jaywalking may seem harmless

These two are not at all the same, and one is much more dangerous and asocial than the other.

They're also a terrible comparison to gambling because the participant can massively reduce the risk compared to the baseline by having the "skill" to not take the risk when the odds are particularly bad, like not jaywalking through traffic that's blinded by sun whereas with pretty much every form of gambling you can only change the risk very slightly if at all.

"skill" is why gambling institutions are making record profits. Sports betting, for example, has way too many variables to ever make winning consistent.

Jaywalking when being blinded by the sun is about as silly as you bringing it up to prove some point. Only a fool would do that, like someone who thinks they can beat a possibly rigged gambling system.

Those two examples were meant to bring the idea that many things in life, though different, can be risky.

> why they ever thought they had a chance to win consistently

> isn't risk taking a part of most people's lives?

Do you not see how these things are different? Leaving the house contains a risk of an accident, but the "you don't stand a chance of winning" certainly does not apply.

Many comments in this thread seem blind to this nuance, yet I wonder how one can go through life without understanding that not all risks are the same. I imagine one would die pretty fast.

I'm afraid you missed the point. Life is full of risk, why risk your money and the possibility of addiction when life is hard enough?

> Speeding on the highway and jaywalking

Are both illegal, because of the risk they pose.

Indeed and shouldn't be done, but who hasn't done either of these? We humans are risk takers almost by nature. This world is so full of uncertainty, limiting the types of risk we participate in is both wise and needful. Thankfully, moderation is a virtue, but for some it is merely a hindrance.

Legalising is fine, failing to regulate is not.

I strongly believe it is better to have something legal and well regulated than illegal and left to illegal operators.

This is true for a number of vices.

With legalisation should come strong regulation, including advertising bans.

The UK made this mistake when they strongly de-regulated gambling in the early 2000s, it seems the US did not learn from that when legalising.

I think this is a misapprehension -- there is a ton of regulation around sports gambling. They may not have put the specific regulation that you think is necessary (in this case, banning advertising) but there are pretty huge barriers to entry to get into the sports bookmaking business, including a number of background checks and interviews in an attempt to prevent organized crime from getting a foothold. This is why every time you see an add for gambling there's a note on the ad saying "if you have a problem with gambling call this help line".

In a sane society, sports gambling would be legal but with a lot of guardrails:

* If apps detect compulsive behavior, they could go dark on your phone for a day/week/month/year

* All bets could have delayed payoffs (e.g. greater than 10 minutes [0]) to avoid optimizing for a quick dopamine hit

* Apps could be linked to a credit score/measure of financial health and allow larger bets for people with higher credit scores, or they could stop you from placing bets if there's evidence of negative impacts on your overall financial situation.

In general, the question of: how can we let consenting adults take risks that they find pleasurable (drugs, sex work, gambling, free diving, etc.) while also limiting the worst harms and/or protecting the most vulnerable people, is under-discussed relative to its importance, IMO.

[0] https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1822382269669228822

I've thought that there should people, your family and/or friends, who have to sign on to enable you to gamble - where they will be on the line for any debt or a certain % of the debt the person has, etc.

E.g. Dana White of UFC appears to have a gambling problem, but maybe with how much money he earns it actually isn't a problem - but what if it at some point it gets out of control, and that is hidden from friends or people that care about him - and where that loss of control could be hidden from sight, kept secret until it's perhaps too late - however that looks?

I'll be your friend and enable you to spend all of your money for 1% of any earnings you make.

Sure, if you're taking on risk then that seems like it could be a fair arrangement - and then perhaps there's a requirement of putting some of the potential debt you're promising to cover to be held in escrow.

* Make all bets above a certain threshold public information with the bettor's name and wager amount like political contributions.

I think this would result in some sort of credit score, which would be used by countless institutions. At least people wouldn't be able to hide it from their family. When a person wins the lottery, their name is supposed to be public although there's ways around this.

Obviously, it would create a black market for anonymous gambling, and lots of people would use an intermediary.

I don't think this is a good idea.

Imagine you become an overnight hundred-millionaire through the lottery. Suddenly you need to worry about, e.g., friends treating you differently, strangers begging for money, and kidnapping. Would you really want everyone on earth to know your name instantaneously, with no time to prepare?

People highly underestimate the number of 18-21 year olds sports gambling. At college it seems like slightly over 50% of the guys I meet do. Some just using pick 'ems but it's not uncommon for them to use their parents identity to get on real sport books. The somewhat "nerdy" ones also just use crypto. Some are terribly in the gutter, I told my friend that India was all but guaranteed to win the chess olympiad and he bet on it somehow...

One thing that's not often talked about is how heavily gendered gambling addiction is - with something like 2/3 of gamblers being male[1] and an even more skewed ratio for problem gambling.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4736715/#:~:tex....

It has become an epidemic in Brazil. Lots and lots of people in debt because of it. Celebrities, influencers, beautiful girls... Everyone pushing for it.

Indonesia is also having an illegal online casino epidemic, too. That is in a country where gambling is currently illegal and will continue to be.

“Beautiful girls” What. Why would they be affected any differently?

Those "companies" give them money so they can promote betting. They post fraudulent stories about how they are getting paid using the platform.

The older I get the more I hate gambling. When i was younger I tended to think "hey it's their choice" but i've realized how unfair our society is in terms of things like this.

Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant well paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they make money. On the other side is just regular people like us stressed out trying to survive.

This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge power asymmetry and I think "we the people" need protection from these forces

Yeah, the issue with "it's their choice" is that through addictive behaviors they are trying to take away that sort of agency from people. I don't have an issue with gambling in general but I have a huge issue with people trying to trigger and profit from addicting behaviors. It's a phenomenally cruel thing to do to people.

It's very analogous to drug use. The libertarian point of view that people should be free to do what they want with their own bodies makes sense at first blush. But addiction is such an absolute blight on society that ending it will only improve the world.

Yeah. I think there must be a balance between let the cyber hippies watch trees grow and needle service for addicts. I don’t even think legalizing weed is aging well.

Wait, which of those is libertarians?

Drug abuse is lower where people have a strong sense of community. Drug overuse is a symptom of a larger issue of disconnection and disillusionment. Legislating drug use is like saying "the beatings will continue until morale improves."

No it isn't, it's very straightforward in every single civilization that has experienced it. humans + opiates = misery. it's not like we're some kind of paragons of logic and rationality we're animals and these are exploits

I wouldn't use opiates as an example of causing misery. The opium poppy, for thousands of years, was a miracle plant to every society that knew of it. It allows anybody to have access to pain relief. Yes it can be misused. However, ALL opiates are still derived from the opium poppy. The ability for personal or commercial production of opium was removed from everybody by the US influenced UN policy. The UN now declares that three countries in the world are allowed to grow opium poppies to produce opium. That legal opium supposedly is used to create all of the worlds needed supply of pharmaceutical opiates. Every other country that grows Papaver Somniferum and processes it to opium is a target for military action to reduce the supply of illegal opiates. You see, the recent history of opium is a bit like an opium dream itself. A small number of people decided opium is evil and who gets to produce opiates and if you aren't on the list you are their enemy. This policy has done nothing to stop "illegal" production and use of opiates and has made a small number of people unimaginably wealthy while also creating the environment for "illegal" cartels, AKA competition, to flourish. Bayer first sold heroin as a less addictive morphine after all. In the name of enforcing the "allowed producers" list an innumerable amount of people trying to make a living by producing opium were killed. If it looks like a cartel and behaves like a cartel it might be a cartel.

I don't even want to go into the proven CIA and FBI complicity in drug trafficking in the name of stopping "illegal" opiates or all the people in jail for using "illegal" opiates.

Sure, opiates cause suffering. Its just mostly at the hands of a supranational cartel that we are part of. We aren't even allowed to grow the same plant in the US for seeds that many nations eat as a staple food. However, the pharmaceutical companies are allowed to grow or buy opium from India, Turkey, and Australia and sell millions of derivative opiate pills around the world. But, me being able to grow a handful of plants to produce my own pain medicine or domestic commercial production is the height of evil.

If we were all allowed to produce opium personally or commercially we would effectively end the reasons for illegal opiate importers to exist, create jobs for our own people, and remove an immense amount of power from the UN and pharmaceutical companies. We would also remove the need for military adventurism in places like Afghanistan and Myanmar. As an aside, opium production in Afghanistan increased from 82,000ha to 233,000ha during US occupation, which I choose to believe was, mostly because we didn't care and the Taliban had been destroying opium crops.

https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/bulletin/bu...

when you punish drug use with prison, it is better for it to be legal.

I mean, I understand your sentiment on addiction but in the US, we have not been terribly successful in ending addiction despite most drugs being illegal for decades. In places like Portugal, legalization with an emphasis on treatment has not really been more successful either.

everything worth doing in life is addicting. you cant just ban/regulate dopamine producing activities

Of course, but I think it's worth seriously evaluating the subset of those activities that have an especially large propensity for harm.

Most dopamine producing activities are in some way beneficial in moderation to outweigh the negatives (sex, eating, exercise, even many recreational drugs). I don't know whether pointlessly bleeding money away to some greasy corporation counts there. That said I don't like telling people how they should waste their money but it seems there needs to be some form of a plan for problem gambling.

Agreed it feels like nothing more than taking advantaged of underprivileged people. There are likely people who have better means doing sports betting too but the way the ads are everywhere, I get mail from DraftKings even though I've never used it. Predatory is a good word for it. I feel similarly about state lotteries. The ads always manipulate people by making it seem like high-octane fun where people are just winning massive sums of money when the reality is you click a couple buttons and then allow random chance to decide whether or not your money disappears.

I thought online sports gambling was predatory and then I heard about this little fact:

If you win a lot, they'll effectively kick you off the platform, or make it non-economical to "play" by reducing your max bet sizes down to $1.

Even more diabolical, and clear evidence this shit should be outlawed completely: if you lose a lot, they will increase your maximum bet size

this pattern is a pretty defensible way to run a sports book. obviously you don’t want to accept large bets from someone who is doing arbitrage or consistently has inside information.

any business with variable prices works this way, if some mysterious person shows up to your car dealership and seems really excited to unload a bunch of used cars on you, you should feel nervous that you’re overpaying or something is wrong with the cars.

in my view the diabolical part is the predatory marketing tactics, and making gambling platforms ubiquitous.

i say this as someone who, like you, thinks legalizing sports betting is an ongoing disaster, but wants the strongest arguments against it.

People conceive of gambling as a game where the house typically has a slight edge through fees, information, or structural advantage in the game itself. I don't think this "ban if winning" behavior fits with people's model of "fairness" even in the intrinsically unfair world of gambling.

I think a very good first step legislation would be to require disclosure of this behavior. Public appetite would probably be very strong and it wouldn't run afoul of any of the other "people should be free to play games" arguments. You can play the game, but the owner of the game is required to disclose the rules of it.

Everyone knows you'll get banned for counting cards at Blackjack, but they don't have to catch you red handed. They just have to catch you winning too much. Fixing sporting events is very lucrative and there are criminals doing it. Probably not in the NFL, but it definitely happens still in individual sports like boxing. A blanket policy of banning people who win a statistically impossible amount seems reasonable.

It's not "a statistically impossible amount." That sounds like another great regulation to put in place though. If they can prove cheating or statistical unlikeliness then go ahead.

Regarding "everyone knows" - right! Does "everyone know" this about sports betting apps? If no, then they should. If yes, then no problem requiring unambiguous disclosures.

i think the number of random gamblers who get so consistently lucky that their bet size gets reduced, is probably quite small. this is because you usually lose money betting on sports, because sports betting is bad. it's mainly going to be people doing obvious arbitrage, and secondarily people who truly are professional gamblers.

this can also be spun in a positive way: if that does ever happen, the bookies are literally forcing someone to quit when they are ahead! isn't that considerate of them.

unfortunately, i think sports betting platforms just have many strong arguments that controlling bet sizes in this way is fine.

Then no harm done in requiring that disclosure before people make an account!

Of course the entire business is built on creating the belief that a user can make a ton of money. Due to this mechanic, this is an actual lie.

If you think a sports book is a retailer, selling a product, sure.

But sports books pitch themselves like brokers, giving fair access to bets. A brokerage-style betting market would be perhaps more fair (or at least, the sharks would take the rubes’ money instead of the casino robbing them) but doesn’t exist.

financial markets also work this way — the current market price is for a limited quantity and if you trade the price will move.

moreover people go to great lengths to try to avoid trading with winners.

there have been cases where people’s banks refuse to do any more foreign exchange trades with them when it becomes clear they are just arbitraging. it’s exactly analogous to the sports book case.

> If you win a lot, they'll effectively kick you off the platform

Insurance companies work the same way.

But the sales pitch of insurance isn't "you can make tons of money!"

Casinos do the same thing, try playing a correct game of blackjack (which is the only game approaching fair odds in the place). You'll be backed off or the house will change the minimum of the table you're on all the while trying to extract your ID so they can get you added to their database of "advantaged" players.

Poker is the only casino game approaching fair where a highly skilled player can be profitable as they are taking money from other players and not the casino (casino just collects their rake on every hand). But that's why casinos hate offering many poker tables, it's just not as profitable.

Not even underprivileged people. It's literally everywhere in sports and any kids that watch it are getting inundated with betting and gambling terminology. I find it pretty gross but it's the gears of capitalism ever turning.

> Food, gambling, etc. are all backed by hordes of brilliant well paid people trying to get you to ruin your life so they make money. On the other side is just regular people like us stressed out trying to survive.

Don't forget social media. I mean, we have some of the smartest, best paid people on the planet incentivized to use every bit of data they can to hack your evolutionary biology to keep you scroll, scroll, scrolling.

I think one reason I've sadly become quite disillusioned with technology is because I see it less and less as a tool for improving the human condition, and more about creating addiction machines to siphon ever increasing amounts of money from the system.

> we have some of the smartest, best paid people on the planet incentivized to use every bit of data they can to hack your evolutionary biology...

It's such a waste of a generation's talent. I think about this from time to time.

What problems could we be solving? How much further would the cutting edge of innovation be? It's kind of depressing.

On addition to thinking about "how much better could tech be" I insist we begin thinking abt "how much simpler and more peacefully could we live?"

Why extract so many resources to run gambling and adtech servers? Why doom infants abroad to mining? Why invade international boundaries to get their resources?

Making tools for the powerful to use while they manipulate the weak is not merely a waste. It's actively harmful. We're summoning monsters today that we'll have to fight tomorrow.

The really sad part is that they could even use that same technology for good AND profit. If it's true that (for example) the facebook algorithm knows if someone is depressed, people would pay real money for the algorithm to shape their behavior and mood for the better.

Heh, people said the same thing in the 80s when all of our "greatest minds" were working in Finance.

The last time our great minds were put to a task that most people agree bettered humanity was in the 60s, when working as a government scientist in the space program was considered the best job you could get.

That was mostly a cover to build rockets that could land more accurately on Moscow.

I'd rather we have the gambling.

I think this is part of the greater problem where companies eventually pivot from creating something new and meaningfully better for customers to figuring out how to extract a marginally larger share of the pie - having people work on redirecting value rather than creating value.

Google creates its search engine and its meaningfully better. Even their creation of contextual text advertising was meaningfully better. But then they start pivoting: the ads have a different color background to distinguish them as ads; what if we got rid of that so that they looked like regular search results?

YouTube brings video to people. Ads might be necessary to cover costs and make some money, but then you start pivoting to see exactly how much pain you can inflict with those ads before people turn away.

Smart TVs allow people to stream content...and then they pivot to injecting ads everywhere and spying on what you're watching.

For the companies, they pay someone $250,000 and that person makes $350,000 for the company and it's a net win for the company. However, sometimes people are employed creating additional value for society and other times people are employed redirecting value from one group to another.

What you've hit upon is that we're having so many of the smartest, best paid people working on redirecting value rather than creating value. And this isn't limited to technology. Companies and people have been trying to do this forever. Kings would seek to figure out how they could extract the largest cut from nobles without getting dethroned. A ruler certainly can create value by ensuring wise governance, encouraging good use of public funds, and encouraging good investment in the future. They can also scheme to take a larger cut of the current pie.

And that's a lot of the negative things that we notice: scheming to get more without really creating more value. We set KPIs (key performance indicators) for people who are used to ace'ing tests and they'll hit those marks whether it's useful for the customer (or even the company). One of the best examples of this that comes to mind is Facebook Messenger. For a while, anytime I added a friend on Facebook, I'd get a push notification on my phone from Facebook Messenger telling me that I could now chat with that person on Facebook Messenger. That little red "1" would stare at me until I opened the app to clear it. I can't be sure, but I'd bet that some PM had a KPI of increasing weekly active users on the app. They knew that if people had to clear a notification, more people would open the app each week. They probably crushed their numbers and got a big promotion - despite not actually creating value for users or for Facebook (since it wasn't real activity, just people trying to clear a notification). It's not always even companies redirecting value to them, sometimes it's individuals who have found a way of redirecting value from the company to themselves.

> companies eventually pivot

no, business history is full of selling addictive products, using force against labor, and using trick language in agreements, to name a few examples. In other words, there is plenty of business history that starts from maximum exploitation. "pivot" is more like a gravitational attraction to maximum exploitation, not "pivot" IMO

> Don't forget social media. I mean, we have some of the smartest, best paid people on the planet incentivized to use every bit of data they can to hack your evolutionary biology to keep you scroll, scroll, scrolling.

I remember this being said about NYC investment bankers (often Ivy League grads) during the 2007/2008 Great Recession.

Around that time, Silicon Valley upstarts were seen as the altruistic alternative. Google, Facebook, whoever else was getting started around that time, were giving you a "free" service. Whereas Goldman Sachs and company were being broadly (and appropriately IMO) castigated for ruining lives and crippling the economy.

It is interesting to have lived long enough to see the heroes turn into villains.

Somewhat related, the recruiting pitch from Jobs to get Pepsi's Sculley to work at Apple: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?”

Apple makes a lot of revenue from addictive games, but do they have employees working on or marketing those games?

This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge power asymmetry and I think "we the people" need protection from these forces

No thank you, I can protect myself.

>No thank you, I can protect myself.

In many ways you actually cannot, in any reasonable way:

- You cannot escape surveillance unless you completely (and I do mean completely) withdraw from modern society

- You cannot protect yourself from subconscious manipulation by advertising and marketing firms that pay billions of dollars to find and exploit subconscious weaknesses that we all possess

- You cannot protect yourself from sweeping changes made (e.g. to legislation) made in response to the interests of lobbyists or bad actors, and in consequence from changes in the behaviour of others, in response

> You cannot protect yourself from subconscious manipulation by advertising and marketing firms that pay billions of dollars to find and exploit subconscious weaknesses that we all possess

By learning the techniques they employ, a subconscious manipulation by them, becomes a conscious observation by us. Education defeats these methods. An argument could be made that more money will be spent to continually find deeper subconscious manipulations. I would wager, the ROI would diminish quickly.

I would rather be manipulated by private industry than controlled by government. I cannot out vote a majority, but I can out wit a billboard.

>Education defeats these methods.

It does not. For example young women and girls, even when knowing that an image of a fashion model is photoshopped, still exhibit drops in their self body image.

>I would rather be manipulated by private industry than controlled by government.

In many cases these two things are the same, due to the prevalence and efficacy of lobbying

>I can out wit a billboard.

Lots of people believe this, but it is false.

I wanted to observe how great it is to see "ghastmaster" arguing with "stackghost."

I liked that in the article, somebody with the name "Poet" grew up to be an economist.

> It does not. For example young women and girls, even when knowing that an image of a fashion model is photoshopped, still exhibit drops in their self body image.

In the natural world traits that are wasted on futile efforts are eventually not selected. In the human world, traits that are ripe for manipulation in a free market would result in lower purchasing power. Thus, less ability to afford children and pass on the traits. Subsidizing via regulations or direct support prolongs the subterfuge we are discussing here. Perhaps, in perpetuity.

> In many cases these two things are the same, due to the prevalence and efficacy of lobbying

The reason there are lobbyist is because we have granted those being lobbied control. Take away the control and the lobbying is pointless. More rules and regulations = more lobbying.

> In the human world, traits that a ripe for manipulation in a free market would result in lower purchasing power. Thus, less ability to afford children and pass on the traits

This is mostly nonsense

Air is mostly nitrogen.

How is it mostly nonsense?

There are a lot of mistakes here, but for one, lower economic means correlates with more children.

>Subsidizing via regulations or direct support prolongs the subterfuge we are discussing here. Perhaps, in perpetuity.

>Take away the control and the lobbying is pointless.

This social anarcho-darwinism nonsense doesn't refute my point that you are susceptible to influence and coercion.

You cannot "protect" yourself as the previous poster baselessly asserted.

Has less purchasing power ever resulted in less children? Would you happen to have a source?

> I would rather be manipulated by private industry than controlled by government. I cannot out vote a majority, but I can out wit a billboard.

Another way of saying this is that you would rather be controlled through methods which are subtle, novel, and difficult to put a finger on than through methods which are overt and fit traditional narratives of control.

Cops. On the whole, yes.

This is why doctors and other healthcare professionals never become addicted to drugs. Right? They know better?

> No thank you, I can protect myself.

There's surely some ways you're unprepared to protect yourself. Since you're unaware, you wouldn't be able to thank them. Ignorance is bliss.

Let's let 8 year olds drive drunk. I'm more than capable of spotting them on the road and avoiding them.

Are you responding to an 8 year old?

Will my 8 year old be exposed to sports gambling commercials?

If they like sports at all you absolutely know they will.

Even if you can protect yourself from everything (which I would argue you cannot), not everyone is as smart and infallible as you.

You are not immune to propaganda

You can’t protect yourself from psychological manipulation that’s unavoidable unless you glue your eyes shut.

Let ads and content feeds exist, but make it illegal for them to be casually viewed by anybody who hasn’t given explicit consent to be exposed to deceit and manipulation. I’m dead serious. It’s a sham that you can cannot drive on public roads without viewing billboards, or get to municipal service announcements without traversing twitter or FB.

There are some states that outlaw highway billboards, recognizing the blight they are on the landscape. It is IMMEDIATELY better to drive in those states.

Vermont is a great example, which banned billboards, and is adjacent to New Hampshire, a similarly sized and situated adjacent state. Driving into NH after being in VT for a while, it is immediately jarring just how offensive and ugly even a few billboards make the place.

It is a damn reasonable regulation, and more states should have it. No one is going hungry because they can't put up a billboard (especially the damn bright flashing digital billboards).

If it didn't work, no one would make a cent in advertising

You are not protecting yourself. You are existing within a lifeway and culture where legible and illegible/intangible/unspoken agreements create a context that allows you to believe you are able to protect yourself. Meanwhile, a swirl of beliefs and ideology insulate you from unpredictability, choice, and chaos.

Do you have any concern for the people not as strong as you? do they deserve any protection or is okay if they're just preyed on by the strong?

> No thank you, I can protect myself.

Said every smoker of tobacco. :)

Black market approaches to attempting to limit / control human behavior are insane and do not work.

That goes for gambling, smoking, prostitution, drinking, drugs, et al.

Education, therapy and taxation are about the only things that have been shown to work reasonably (eg not spurring massive crime outcomes) to introduce effective limiting forces or properly respond to the consequences of excess.

Outlawing gambling is just as insane as outlawing alcohol, smoking, drug use.

> Black market approaches to attempting to limit / control human behavior are insane and do not work.

The idea that governments may not be able to (completely?) protect people does not invalidate the the idea that people cannot protect themselves.

Are you a libertarian? What's the libertarian take on this sort of thing, where people have proven time and again that they cannot handle the responsibility without resulting in clearly more demonstrable harm when the guardrails are off?

A more modern example might be people's failure to plan for their financial future or to value critical thinking enough not to be persuaded by charismatic bad-actor shysters to do bad things

This reminds me also of the huge difference between gambling and gambling. Some games are at least somewhat beatable (sports betting, poker) even though the house is most consistent winner.

Then there is junk like every slot machine ever, 98 % of online casinos, etc.

Lotteries would belong to that category if they weren't such a useful way to sell something few people can afford, or to finance projects with an opt-in taxation.

you are trying to say that there is a difference between pure random luck and 'skill' based gambling. However the both act in the brain the same way and both lead to bad ends to the vast majority.

Sports was a mistake, a waste of the concern and attention of billions of people, ban sports.

Come on, do you see "sports" (completed separated from gambling on them) to be a plague on society? Do you have anyone in your family or social circle that had their lives destroyed by sports? It's not even comparable, your comment seems to be in bad faith

Except if it involves robots or Starcraft, because I like those. But I also like poker, which Sleepybrett seems opposed to.

Assuming this isn't sarcasm... I would be very careful about banning or even dismissing anything that has been popular for thousands of years.

Like gambling?

Yes. Consider the tradeoffs carefully. Try the experiments. Do the research. Then make a decision.

Haven't you already made a decision by saying "if the research finds X is true, we have a moral duty to ban gambling"? It's the is-ought problem.

Well, sarcasm is against the guidelines I think, so let's say it was reductio ad absurdum. I'm responding to the idea that gambling+skill is just as bad, or bad enough to also ban. It would make the legislation and policing a lot simpler, close up some loopholes, and would have the side effect of outlawing the stock market, but I'm still against it.

What's the tangible negative outcome of widespread sports interest?

>* However the both act in the brain the same way and both lead to bad ends to the vast majority.*

This is a poor justification for making something illegal. Chocolate and cocaine operate on the same neural pathways, but one is clearly more detrimental than the other. Following this reasoning, we should ban chocolate, and being able to see comment scores on hacker news, and like counts on Instagram photos, and reach on Twitter, and retirement account balances because they produce the same effects in the brain as illegal drugs do.

The online sports platforms will reduce your max bet size to $1 if you win too much.

Should be outlawed and any politician who's advocating otherwise should be (at least) journalistically investigated.

It is so unfathomably antisocial that there is effectively no morally sound reason to advocate for its proliferation.

Oh, yeah. Parimutuel pools among people who know each other is far better, although even then some people are remarkably hard to reach when they have lost even small amounts.

The Spanish lottery is actually quite egalitarian and produces distributed payouts for communities. It’s fascinating really - 99 pi did an episode about them a while back https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/el-gordo/

Beatable games are even worse than unbeatable ones. They hook people who believe they can win. Maybe some can, it doesn't matter - they still ruin lives for no benefit. You just add some skilled gamblers to the group that runs the house directly or indirectly.

A similar argument can be made with healthcare (especially the US insurance system). There is all sorts of information asymmetry, not only from available treatments/procedures, but then also providers

Kenneth Arrow wrote about this (in 1963), "Uncertainty and the welfare economics of health care" (see §II. generally, and perhaps §II. B. specifically):

* https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf

Some disagree with the above assessment:

* https://archive.is/q1nSN / http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/liberals...

One might argue that gambling being illegal doesn’t protect anyone from it. As a former professional poker player who started off in illegal games, I can tell you, there’s plenty of gambling both legal and illegal available in most places.

The line at the gas station of people buying scratchoffs and lottery tickets is proof.

The part we likely need protection from is the marketing.

I have to disagree. Scale does matter.

If murder was legal we'd have a lot more of it. We still have them despite it being a crime, but nobody would ever suggest making it legal because some people do it anyway.

Vices are very different than murder and the fact that people equate the two is how we get things like prohibition and the war on drugs. Lots of studies have shown that legalizing drug use does not appreciatively increase drug use, for instance.

It’s hard to make an argument that making murder illegal was a net harm to society. It’s really easy to make that argument with vices, in fact any history book probably will in the section on prohibition.

Sports betting is not any more insidious than any other type of gambling. Even if legalizing it has increased the amount of sports betting, which likely it has, we don’t know that it has increased the overall amount of gambling, and we certainly don’t know that it has increased the overall amount of societal harm from gambling, no matter how many great anecdotes we get from newspaper articles.

Perhaps people have simply switched from the lottery or slot machines to sports betting. Perhaps some are better off because sports betting has a much lower house edge than the lottery or a lot of other forms of gambling.

I could tell you for sure there is a whole lot of illegal sports betting going on, or at least there was. There is a seedy black market that I would be willing to bet has been largely destroyed by the ability to Gamble from your phone. (I’m far too removed from it these days to have any firsthand knowledge of the current situation.)

I can also tell you about the negative impact that gambling laws have on the lives of non-problem gamblers, myself included.

People always reflexively follow the train of logic: vice bad, make vice illegal. It failed when we made alcohol illegal, the war on drugs has been disastrous for the poor, far worse than the drugs we were fighting, and there’s not much evidence to believe it even significantly reduced drug use. The idea that any vice being illegal creates an overall harm reduction has pretty much been shown time and time again to be incorrect, and yet everybody just believes it because it seems like common sense.

That's a lot of assumptions you're making there. We don't know if these people were playing the lottery/slots before? I doesn't matter. They didn't go bankrupt before.

Sports betting is way too easy to use and thanks to the "skill" part it tricks people into thinking they have even more chances. Turns out those are chances to lose even more money.

Unlike your example of drug use, AFAIK there are no studies saying the same effect happens for sports betting, or even betting in general.

This for me is all pointless. We're arguing about something that does not improve society in any shape or form. The typical argument "we've been gambling since forever" doesn't cut it. We've also been murdering since forever, and both are still a net negative in society.

If we really need this silly vice, then lock it down. We can't allow this free-for-all where everything is sponsored by betting with money straight from the pockets of addicts, kids are getting addicted with loot boxes and the only ones that profit are the few middlemen that are morally corrupt enough to go into this business.

Well banning it would also remove the marketing. Just because some illegal gambling will still happen doesn't mean banning it wouldn't help a lot of people.

Overall harm minimization is more than just helping a lot of people. Prohibition of alcohol helped a lot of people but hurt even more. Same with the war on drugs.

Combatting vices with prohibition fails over and over, badly, and yet people can’t get past the “common sense” idea that it’s an overall harm reduction no matter how many times they see proof that it isn’t.

A much more surgical approach is called for.

You are arguing that reversing the very recent legalization of sports gambling would be a net harm to society and that there would be greater suffering than there is today because of that ban.

Are you making that argument by accident, because you felt compelled to nitpick some word choices, or do you seriously believe that?

No, I really believe that making vices illegal causes more harm than the vices they’re trying to prevent, and that we see it over and over every time we do it. I think nobody would disagree with me that that’s what happened with alcohol. I’ve been saying that’s the case with drugs for decades and public opinion is turning that way too.

It’s true with gambling too. You just likely haven’t seen the harm that happens because of it being illegal. Ever had a gun pointed at you over a game of poker? I have. Doesn’t happen online or in a casino. Ever met people who’ve been violently hurt because they couldn’t pay their gambling debts? I have. Draftkings or your bank aren’t out breaking knees.

Making it illegal does not make it go away. If you had been born into a world where alcohol was illegal for a long time, and then it were legal, you’d probably have the same opinion of that, but you know (because you were lucky to be born with the benefit of decades of hindsight) the world is less good that way. This is not different.

The harms of gambling can be mitigated much more effectively in ways other than prohibition. Regulation is always better than outright bans. Look at what we’ve done with cigarettes.

Making online betting legal was the right thing to do, it being illegal at all was the mistake, we just need to work on harm mitigation.

I just don’t even understand people who think vices should be illegal. I mean I do, their thought process is just overly simplistic and they don’t know what they don’t know, but there’s just so much evidence it is the worst possible solution and yet so many people can’t think past “it’s bad so it should be illegal”. Even intelligent people.

On reflection I think you've convinced me, and I find it curious that I initially dismissed the parallels with other vices.

I think I felt disconnected from, and maybe above, gambling, so I had less sympathy for it happening in illegal ways. I think it was wrong to have less sympathy due to that, but I also think I was wrong to feel disconnected from gambling. I played MTG for years, which is in many ways just legal gambling, and I had to quit it completely to feel comfortable.

I don't know if I would have played if it were illegal, but I can understand what it would be like to do so.

This might sound crazy but I know what you mean. I hate gambling. I never found it fun, and if I’m honest, I genuinely found most of them contemptible. I was very young and much less understanding. I’m just good at games and found one I could make really good money at. I never played slots or pai gow or much else unless I had an edge on the casino, and that’s rare and usually just because of a promotion.

I’ve seen first hand people throw their lives away for it, just like they do with drugs or alcohol. Addiction has familiar patterns regardless of the particular vice, and the answer is better mental health facilities, not criminalization.

All giving an addict a rap sheet does is make it harder for them to get a job.

Illegal gambling is an interesting underworld. You’ll be at the same table with drug addicts, local politicians (even police sometimes), successful businessmen, and everything else you can imagine.

It’s less in-your-face harmful than fentanyl but the processes they go through are similar.

I think legalizing gambling gets rid of a lot of problems, but of course, causes problems too. But just because legalizing it led to an upsurge in sports betting doesn’t mean the best option is to make it illegal again.

Cigarettes are the model to me for vices. It’s the best public health win I’ve lived to see. Instead of making them illegal, we made them expensive and uncouth. We made cigarette companies fund campaigns to get people off cigarettes, to huge effect.

That’s what I believe we should do for gambling. Legalizing it was not a mistake, and looking at the picture shortly after and deciding it was is short sighted.

Also MTG was how I got into poker! I’d travel to the tournaments or game cons, wait for people to bust out, and then get a game started.

In the late 90’s every big MTG tournament had a poker game going. It got to the point where game stores had to ban it because nobody was even playing Magic anymore.

That was the much less seedy side of underground poker. So much fun.

Fully illegal = lots of murders.

Fully legal = lots of suicides.

With drugs, perhaps. But even there, if you count overdoses as suicides, which I largely do, it’s still mainly that. Illegal gambling is probably a precursor to 100x as many suicides as murders. It’s not even close. Murders happen but not a lot.

And almost everywhere has plenty of legal gambling. All that’s been changed is you can gamble on one more thing and not violate federal law. State law still applies.

If your argument is that legalized sports betting doesn't increase the total amount of sports betting, in the absence of extraordinary evidence, that seems implausible on its face.

Impossible optimism can be a good thing too. My family and I play the lottery whenever expected reward is over purchase price. Of course we aren't going to win, but spending $20-50 a week to spend a couple hours dreaming about what we'd do with half a billion is such a fun uplifting family activity that makes us realize our true wishes are a lot closer than needing millions of dollars.

Also I probably talk to my father more often about fantasy football than for any other reason, despite not caring about football.. the gamification and having stakes can be a compelling social experience.

> spending $20-50 a week to spend a couple hours dreaming

Guessing that is "disposable" income. Sad when you think of people doing the same thing for whom their income is not disposable.

> Of course we aren't going to win, but spending $20-50 a week to spend a couple hours dreaming about what we'd do with half a billion is such a fun uplifting family activity

I have heard many people say things like this and I always wonder "Instead of dreaming about buying a winning lottery ticket, why don't they just dream about finding one?"

My real wake-up call was the introductory class in my data science master's program. We spent a whole week learning about all the clever tricks Harrah's data scientists found to keep people in the gambling halls. The course's instructor really lionized Harrah's for doing this, and loved to talk about how much profit it made for the company.

For my part, I was horrified. I couldn't find a way to see some of these tricks the use as anything but a form of highly evolved confidence artistry. Legal con artistry, sure. But a legal scam is still a scam. Even if the people getting scammed never wise to the scam, it's still a scam.

The arguments about tax revenues and suchlike don't make me feel any better about it. All I see in their success is a demonstration that a great many people will happily turn a blind eye to abusive behavior if they believe they can materially benefit from doing so. And, of course, they never do, anyway. The promises of professional con artists that our communities will benefit if we grant them imprimatur for their operations turned out to also be a scam. Con artists pulling a con; quelle surprise!

This class sounds interesting. Where can I learn more about these techniques? (I'm curious, not planning on using them!)

Looks like googling "Harrah's data science" turns up a decent volume of articles. I won't link any in particular here because I haven't read any of them so I don't know which ones are good.

Thanks! Yes, I was looking for recommended papers/info.

Probably here, but might be dry. https://link.springer.com/journal/10899

Thanks for the link. I wonder if this journal is constrained to observing gambling rather than doing experiments to trying to exacerbate it as Harrah's is doing: "The Journal of Gambling Studies is an interdisciplinary forum for research and discussion of the many and varied aspects of gambling behavior, both controlled and pathological. Coverage extends to the wide range of attendant and resultant problems, including alcoholism, suicide, crime, and a number of other mental health concerns."

"Coercion" by Douglas Rushkoff is somewhat dated but by no means out of date.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/348346/coercion-by-...

Its interesting to think many of the techniques the casino's used to keep people gambling going back to the 60's and 70's are the same ones facebook, twitter and youtube all employ now in one way or another today. I had the same reaction you did in your data science class when I took several psychology classes and they talked about the same psychological tricks. You quickly realize how easy it is to manipulate the human brain and by proxy, human behavior.

Reminds of the quote from Joshua the computer in War Games: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

Best course I ever took was one on how to counter your own cognitive biases

If it's so easy... surely you've figured out how to become fabulously wealthy? I'm curious which tricks you use.

I am calling bullshit here. There's a popular narrative that we've somehow hacked the code of the human brain and can program people to do anything we want, against their will. Nonsense. The best you can do is move the needle a few percentage points across a statistically large number of humans. This is not something to worry about.

> surely you've figured out how to become fabulously wealthy

You mean, by starting a big casino, hiring thousands of people, advertising all over, etc.? A small investment like that?

> The best you can do is move the needle a few percentage points across a statistically large number of humans.

That may be true, but a "few percentage points" is enough to create enormous profits, if you do what I said above. Giving the house a 54% advantage instead of 51% makes a big, big difference.

It's obviously not that easy. Casinos go bankrupt left and right. Hell, one famous former president is responsible for three of them.

Yes, but those casinos didn't go bankrupt from players collecting too many winnings. It's still a business and if you don't get enough customers in to keep the lights on you fold.

Customer acquisition and retention is still hard. Especially when you're not the only gambling parlor in town. You're selling an addictive product which is extremely effective over a population but you don't have a moat to make sure they're addicted to specifically you.

But government and society don't care about a specific business, they're counting the number of people addicted by the industry in total.

This thread is fun because the kind of black and white thinking neuro-spicy internet commentator on HN doesn't have an intellectual framework that can capture why alcohol, cannabis, and Oxy might be allowable but not heroine. And then an analyze gambling and sports betting in that framework. It's why the arguments keep circling forever.

Thanks. Having a good average profit over a player's bets gives you a head start, but (a) the amount of their bets, (b) the number of players, and (c) their loyalty all determine your gross profit. All of those are factors you have to work on.

And then your costs have to be less than that.

Most mobile games too, not just the social media apps.

The tax stuff is total bullshit. If it wasn’t the schools in Las Vegas would be the best in the country and the teachers there would be the best paid. They aren’t by a long shot.

My friend is a High School teacher in Las Vegas. He regularly has students tell him that they don't see the point in school because they make more than he does parking cars at the casinos. He tries to point out to them that those tips won't last once they can't run for eight hours a day, but the message is often lost.

However, they aren't wrong. They do in fact make about 50% more than he does just working part time on weekends.

About tax revenue. We like to think the more you make the more you pay.

But using programs like these just turn the most vulnerable into revenue for the state -creating wild conflicts of interest. Additionally these types of revenues tend to replace other sources of funding rather than supplement.

Like sports betting I know that lottery players skew low income - making the state effectively tax low income households at a higher rate.

> We spent a whole week learning about all the clever tricks Harrah's data scientists found to keep people in the gambling halls.

What sort of stuff are they pulling? Like sending down a five dollar cocktail to keep someone spending 20 bucks a hand at the craps table?

Among other things, yeah. On an individualized basis. They figure out, for example, how much of a losing streak will get a particular person to leave the table, and how likely they are to keep playing if someone shows up and gives them a free drink as thanks for being a Gold Star VIP or whatever, and how much more money they can expect to lose if you given them that drink, and use all that data to optimize who gets free drinks when.

I used to date someone whose father had a rather severe gambling addiction, and this is exactly what kept him coming back. When he talked about it, it was clear that what he was hooked on was the feeling of being a winner. Someone surprising you with a free drink and telling you it's because you're part of an exclusive club for winners gives some people that feeling even when they're objectively losing.

And that is the textbook definition confidence artistry: tricking people into thinking you're their special friend as a means to extract money from them.

> The course's instructor really lionized Harrah's for doing this, and loved to talk about how much profit it made for the company.

I took a marketing class in the course of my CS degree, and my main takeaway was that a lot of marketers are aliens in people suits. Their ethics and priorities are utterly disconnected from anything human.

You really start to understand how e.g. IBM could knowingly and cheerfully supply the Nazis with the punchcard hardware they needed to keep the Holocaust running smoothly. The client's satisfaction is the only relevant criterion. "But they're killing millions of people" will be met with the same blank, uncomprehending stare as "But the paint you chose clashes with my sweater."

How shall we as a society decide who is to be denied agency in this way, because someone else determines they are to be infantilized, deemed incapable of exercising full responsibility for their own -- entirely voluntary -- actions?

Can you propose a universally acceptable formula or philosophy? Shall we just consult you on a case by case basis to determine when and where a putative power differential exists, and exactly when such a differnetial becomes large enough to verge into "unfair"?

Why is that the standard? We're in the real world not magic libertarian logic automaton world. We have the ability to judge social harm and weigh it against the benefits and make nuanced decisions

edit: like how we've managed to do with literally every single other law?

You mean the way we passed the current laws that allow such gambling, which you are now complaining about?

By that standard, we're done, the matter has already been concluded in favor of "allow gambling."

Yes, and I think that was a huge mistake. What is your point again?

edit: things can improve, women can open bank accounts without their husband approving it now! We decided something, re-evaluated and made a better decision

This takes us back to the beginning: how shall we determine when the social process has failed, and what constitutes "improvement"?

Society has already spoken on this matter. It seems that your criteria amount to nothing more than "when I personally dislike the results of the social process, the social process has failed, and we ought to revisit it."

So I ask again the question you've begged: by what formula or philosophy are we to determine when a social decision such as "allow gambling" is bad? Is there anything beyond your personal feelings on a topic that we can turn to as a criterion?

>How shall we as a society decide who is to be denied agency in this way

By advocacy and persuasion and some level of agreement through democracy.

>By that standard, we're done

Laws can change, so we're never done.

Society is a never-ending churn of social forces. There will always be a matrix of people who are good and bad and indifferent, who think similar and different to one another. It will never settle.

To answer your question about sports gambling in particular (though you did not ask me): I think the bets on specific things happening in a game are more manipulable and thus damaging to sports in general, as well as to the addictive properties of gambling, than simply betting on an outcome of a game.

So yeah, some aspects of gambling are bad enough that, now that we've seen the impact it's having, we should consider some more guardrails.

Even the college kid libertarian I used to be would say that the government should enforce "an informed consumer": That people should know what mechanisms gambling companies use to entice and addict people.

[edited for tone]

Interesting. Do you then view the lawmaking process as nothing more than a chaotic and never-ending expression of the randomly changing emotions of the people?

No ongoing rational standards, logic, or objective argumentation is required or even relevant -- just might makes right, anything goes, whoever convinces the most people to agree through sophistic "advocacy" wins?

I suppose that such a system could exist in theory, but it seems to be heavily at odds with the constitutional legal system that the United States uses.

Interesting how you consistently prompt questions without making declarative statements of your own beliefs.

Of course there is logic and standards. Such as my logic that sports betting on individual plays is more conducive to corruption and more numerous than whole-game outcomes, thus more appropriate for regulation.

The constitution was written in the aftermath of a might-makes-right event called a war. Among other things, it puts in place certain rules more protected than others, to add some order to the chaos and protect minoruty interests.

> Shall we just consult you on a case by case basis to determine when and where a putative power differential exists, and exactly when such a differnetial becomes large enough to verge into "unfair"?

Yes exactly. Well not "me" or "you" but case by case yes.

It's not necessary that someone be able to articulate and defend a universal moral philosophy consistent with a given policy in order to enact it. Having systems in place to evaluate specific cases as they come up is sufficient.

We have such social systems, and they have already evaluated this specific case and determined that we as a society want to allow gambling.

Note that I am not agreeing or disagreeing with the merits of that outcome; I am just noting that the process you describe has already been done, and has determined in this case that "gambling is OK."

Why should we revisit that process simply because a few people dislike the result? By what right do you suppose your personal views ought to overturn this social process -- simply because you and a few others personally disapprove of the outcome?

Should social processes always yield results that you personally like, and be considered invalid when they don't?

There's no point at which this process is "complete" for a given policy and must be merely accepted. We continue to evaluate based on the results of implementation, and can make changes with that new information.

So yes, I "and a few others" disapprove of this outcome and are acting to change it within the constraints that we have. You oppose that or not that's your business.

So there are no objective standards possible or even relevant in the lawmaking process -- it's purely a question of might makes right, whoever can marshal the most people to their team through sophistry should win?

I didn't say that either, maybe you should reread what I did say.

You said "yes exactly" when I asked if personal sentiment was the means of determining when an unfair power differential exists and ought to be legislated against.

Then you said "there is no point at which the process is 'complete' for a given policy and must be merely accepted..." This sounds very much like you believe it is both possible and correct to revisit any policy topic at any time, and with no particular criteria for when it is valid to do so -- it is always valid to do so, under that statement.

Thus, I asked for clarification -- it sounds like there are no possible objective standards for the lawmaking process in your formulation above; any law or policy can be revisited at any time, and without any objective criteria that leaves purely emotional arguments and whoever successfully gathers a bigger band of followers to their side as the main determining factor in what policy we get.

You know that laws already exist right?

Of course, and our laws have apparently determined that "gambling is OK."

Why ought we revisit and overturn that process in this case? Is there any objective criterion beyond "it seems bad to me, I don't like the result of our lawmaking process?"

My point was that drawing arbitrary lines for what's legal isn't the new invention you acted like it was.

This most recent comment has shifted the topic entirely, and I'm not going to address it because it's obviously either written in bad faith or just painfully unthoughtful.

The lines for what is legal are not at all drawn arbitrarily in a constitutional legal system such as the United States.

Counterpoint: Yes, they are, within the bounds of higher law.

This is a perfectly valid criterion. People sometimes make stupid decisions and want to reverse them, a wholly rational choice.

I don't want to outlaw gambling as such but I think it needs to be far more strictly regulated because gambling corporations massively exploit people and the industry borders on scamming.

> Can you propose a universally acceptable formula or philosophy?

While I have found few people to think this acceptable, I believe it better than the wanton passing of social laws to appease a voter base in order to keep a job. (How many people did DOMA[0] practically harm in order to appease the metaphysical sensitivities of a majority of voters)

Laws should be to prevent[dissuade] harm __to others__. If someone wants to recklessly use drugs, then we have laws that punish them for the harm they did to others, with an added under-the-influence charge. There is no reason to punish a consenting adult doing no harm to another, only possibly themself. The problem with this, is politicians don't get re-elected for creating education and other services that would help those addicted/using it to escape their life or those with trauma/mental instability inflicting trauma on others. But using "moral" arguments to rile up majority population voting bases is low hanging fruit; which the system rewards one for going after. Laws that are publicly passed are usually done by exploiting the emotions of group-type majorities. instead of using funds on analysts to find the current emotional trigger to poke, use it to find the best ways to help those that are a higher risk to cause harm towards others (ie, addicts, mental health - including those with trauma that are not as easy to treat with medication and basic security needs). And honestly, I find it unethical to exploit a persons personal faith for job security.

At some point people have to take responsibility for themselves, their actions, and stay out of your neighbor's business until your neighbor begins harming other humans (whether in their house or outside of it). Laws don't prevent harm to others, they establish (or should only establish) societal time-outs(rehabilitation) and damage/cost/etc retribution/repayment (the word I want to use escapes me in describing this exactly), the same way police are law _enforcement_ officers, not crime prevention psychics.

TL;DR: "The right to swing my arms in any direction ends where your nose begins." (This also encompasses the non-physical assault or harm - stealing etc)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Marriage_Act

Well, it's not really their choice. If you're really good at picking your bets the sites will all limit or kick you off.

Sports betters really only allow losers to do it. There's a bit of a different ring to "We only let losers choose to play".

Shouldn't there be a primary school education about this?

Yeah it's called math class.

Is there a viable way to limit the amounts but still make it enjoyable? I guess the issue is that $10, $100, $1,000 or $10,000 would be different for everyone. I myself only need $10 or $100 on something to "make it interesting".

This may sound crazy, but one way to keep it enjoyable but remove all the negatives could be to allow profit-driven betting only using non-liquidisable, non-transferrable tokens which cannot be aquired or topped up for money. Make the betting industry operate on a flat subscription based model in which token top-ups cannot be correlated with customer payment.

That way gamblers can continue to bet their betting-coins like crazy, show off their big wins, and maybe even exchange large amounts of "earnings" for non-cash prizes, arcade style, depending on what the betting platforms decide to offer to the market. However, win or lose, there must never be a way to top up or increase token wins by spending more money on said platforms.

Edit: Maybe, with effective regulation ensuring gamblers cannot open (and thus spend) more than X simultaneous gambling subscriptions across the market, large betting-token earnings could be allowed to be exchanged for cash prizes, to the extent the gambling platform may consider it profitable. Of course by its very nature this would make top cash winnings orders of magnitude lower than when betting actual money, given the flat income stream. But that would itself be the point, providing no incentive for gambling business to encourage addiction for greater profits.

I walked into the local convenience store the other day and it dawned on me that it exists solely to serve addictions. Nicotine addiction? Cigarettes and vapes galore. Sugar/fat addiction? Dozens of options. Gambling addiction? Multiple lotteries, scratch off, and a couple of video machines in the corner. Alcohol? Plenty of options there too.

It doesn't exist "solely to serve addictions." Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic, but some are. Not everyone who buys a candy bar is on the path to morbid obesity/diabetes, etc., but some are. Not everyone who buys an occasional lottery ticket or burns $100 at a casino is a gambling addict, but some are.

The most addictive item on that list by a long shot is almost certainly nicotine, but even then, there are people who maybe have a cigar on special occasions every couple of years, but otherwise don't smoke.

Black-and-white thinking is a plague on modern society.

I'm not so sure if nicotine is the most addictive, but if it is, certainly not by a long shot. I would say sugar is equally addictive.

It is a freedom issue. It's exactly that.

Why insist on broadening the premise with "regular people like us" and "we the people". If your message is potent you wouldn't need to try to speak for a crowd.

I don't need protection from those supposed forces. In a functioning market economy - which essentially all developed nations possess - I can easily control what food I consume and I can easily control whether I gamble or not. That was true for the years when I was poor as an adult and it was true for my parents who were lower middle class / poor while I was growing up.

I don't personally like prostitution, and it should absolutely be legal.

I don't personally like cocaine or marijuana, and they both should be legal.

I don't personally like late-term abortion, and late-term abortion should absolutely be legal.

I find it disgusting when people glug glug glug 72 gallons of soda while they sit there 250 pounds overweight. It's grotesque. And they should absolutely be allowed to do it. It is a freedom issue.

It's either their body or it isn't. The same goes for abortion as it does what food you get to consume and whether you get to sleep with prostitutes, snort cocaine or gamble (with your brain/body and the money from your labor).

Who does your body belong to?

The moment you start dictating that the state owns your body and what you can do with it, you have started down the path of authoritarianism (whether fascism or other). You'd have to have an extreme authoritarian society, to follow your premise to its logical conclusion in terms of what it implies about the culture and the restraints to be imposed.

> The moment you start dictating that the state owns your body and what you can do with it,

No one said that, and it's a very extreme interpretation of the comment you're replying to

> you have started down the path of authoritarianism

That's an example of the fallacy of infinite progression - that a societal trend will continue forever once started

In a complex system like a society, it's perfectly possible for a trend for e.g. regulation of the personal sphere to give rise to countervailing forces that end up in a steady state

There are plenty of societies e.g. the Nordic states, that have much higher regulation than the USA, yet have remained stable for decades and show no sign of descending into authoritarianism

I hate gambling, so I don't gamble.

However, if you want to gamble, more power to you. However, I don't want protection enforced by the government here. I want the government to protect the air, water, military, forces of nature, etc. I do not want them regulating and optimizing every facet of my life.

Drinking is objectively a drain on society, but you can see how well banning that in America went.

There is a big difference between regulating advertising for something and banning it.

Someone in the research offices at IBM had a bumper sticker that said “the lottery, a tax on people that don’t understand math”

Also the local conscience store I frequented at one job in newton, the owner put up a sign saying “people here have won $500,000 in the lottery last year”. I noted that seemed like a lot, she looked at me and said, I know what they spend, it’s not a lot, then proceeded to go on a little talk about gambling being bad. When another customer came in that ended. I bought my snack and moved on.

That said, I’ll loose 100$ every couple years gambling in person. I do enjoy it as entertainment. I can’t see how it’s enjoyable online though..

When you win something, it’s a little thrill. I can see how it can overwhelm you.

Also people only tell stories of “winning”. It rare to hear the loosing stories.

> I can’t see how it’s enjoyable online though..

With Sports gambling the entertainment doesn't come from actually placing the bet, it comes from watching the game that now has higher stakes.

> The older I get the more I hate gambling

> This isn't some "freedom" issue, it's an incredibly huge power asymmetry

ive been fiercely libertarian most of my life but, like you, im starting to realize its just not practical.

libertarianism made sense 100 years ago; you still needed a limited but powerful government to monopoly bust, but the consumer was close enough to the source of all information. smart people could invent products and whole industries from the ground up. you could know whats going on.

this is no longer the case. god help me for the pseudomarxist thing im about to say (and believe), but individual people are helplessly separated from the source; everything is insulated by layers of abstraction. the gift of reduced margin via capitalism and globalisation has cursed us with powerlessness.

how many information wars are you prepared to fight? teflon, ddt, pfoas, bpa, bpb, bps, bpf, bpaf, lead, asbestos, cocaine, heroin, marijuana, psychedelics, birth control, opioids, hormones, climate change, plastic waste, electronic waste, landfilling, recycling, antibiotics, urban planning, housing development, GMO food, monocropping, wastewater, topsoil, algae blooms, overfishing, deforestation, AGI, LLM, ad tech, social media, diet (sugar, cholesterol, fat), msg, processed foods, radiation (cellular, microwave, electromagnetic power lines), conflict minerals, 3rd world labor and global supply chains, slavery (theres 10s of millions of literal slaves in the world, remember?), human trafficking, israel and palestine, north korea, china, Uyghurs, russia and ukraine, ongoing gender apartheid in parts of the middle east, war torn africa, local state and federal politics.

plus the hundreds i didnt think of and the thousands i dont know i need to care about.

100 years ago there were literally people selling snake oil as medicine. There have always been soft rubes to fleece. What changed is our society decided there should be limits to that, and could afford to do something about it so now we have things like the FDA. A society has the ethics it can afford.

Yeah well said. I've gone through a similar journey in terms of my thinking on these topics

I think at a fundamental level it is a freedom issue.

There is one and only one limit on freedom which I believe in: when one individual (or group) begins to infringe the freedoms of others.

The problem which I see in a lot of ideologies which purport to value freedom, is a naive idea that government is the only organization which can infringe on individual freedoms, and this is blatantly and obviously false. Corporations and religious organizations can and do infringe individual freedoms all the time, and a society which fails to address this problem becomes less and less free as these organizations become the de-facto oligarchy.

We don't need to set aside our belief in freedom to fight against these organizations, and I think when we do that, we're making a huge concession we don't need to make. Casinos and advertisers manipulating people to take their money and provide little value in return absolutely is a freedom issue: casinos and advertisers are manipulating us to give up the freedoms money allows us. When we make concessions like,

> This isn't some "freedom" issue

I think we lose a lot of the people who care about freedom, when we could be explaining to those people how these companies infringe their freedoms.

I'm kind of the in "hey its their choice" camp but would love to hear an alternative perspective.

My main gripe is that it seems like a strangely weird place to decide where we need protection.

I would think a similar article could be written about, just off the top of my head:

* Junk food

* Participating in dangerous sports (Football, Boxing, etc)

* All forms of gambling

* Alcohol, cigarettes

* Pornography

All of which are also dangerous, potentially addictive, and probably has a larger net negative impact than sports gambling.

What principles could be adopted to not turn this into a larger and larger bureaucracy that decides which of these industries gets preferential treatment over another?

> What principles could be adopted to not turn this into a larger and larger bureaucracy that decides which of these industries gets preferential treatment over another?

How about evidence based policy? We've seen what happens with drug prohibition and we've seen what happens with gambling prohibition. The former leads to an extensive underworld and tons of negative consequences but the latter wasn't nearly as bad.

What were the downsides of the prohibition on sports gambling? How many fewer people lost their savings to a blackmarket bookie versus the number of people who lose money now on the easily accessible mobile apps? I struggle to think of any net-negative effects of the prohibition on gambling - all the negative effects of gambling get worse when it's legalized.

What happened to the numbers racket(s), and why do I want to consign that to the past and the era of prohibition? Did it decline along with the mafia? Was it diluted by state lotteries? Was it never so bad in the first place?

Well, I'd argue the net negative effects are people who enjoy responsible sports gambling aren't able to do it anymore.

The state can of course, claim that no one should be gambling on sports anyways, so its not a problem that people lose access, just as it can with any other vice. People who have no interest in sports gambling would of course, not care either way.

If there is no value assigned to having the freedom, in and of itself, then of course, banning anything becomes trivial.

I think under this criteria, as long as we can have an "effective" ban (ie: no black markets are created) on anything that is not healthy for people to participate in, it would be worth banning.

So basically, anything that is unhealthy, but not yet banned, is only allowed because the state cannot yet find an effective way to ban it.

There is lots of value to personal freedom. You are free to bet with your friends and play poker or whatever.

That doesn’t mean that corporations should have the freedom to exploit society for profit while being a total net-negative. Enabling a vice in the name of "freedom" isn’t a virtue.

A little black market gambling is completely fine as long as the bookie is the one committing crimes and not their customers.

Agreed that it's not totally clear cut on some of these, but I would just advocate for:

- a recognition that humans have exploits, we're not rational automatons. The power/resource asymmetries in a lot of these industries make it fundamentally "unfair" to model this like we would rational utility maximizers

- evaluate these things in terms of societal harm

That being said, yeah junk food should absolutely be regulated the industry is killing and crippling millions of people right now

The argument I'll put forth is that having some friction for the masses to engage in behavior that can impact their life is probably good.

Gambling is one of the worst addictions one can acquire (no health drawbacks) and unfortunately young men seem more predisposed to such dopamine hits. I think it is one of the more less seen issues that is growing today. At least going to a casino is a friction point and optimizing for a one click app is probably not good. Perhaps we should cut it off before yet another insanely powerful lobby that feeds on addiction grows and can't be stopped. It seems the boulder is already rolling down the hill though.

Look at what happened with Robinhood when they made trading feel like a game and removed fees. That $10 commission used to make people stop and think, even for just a second. Now, there are tons of young guys who’ve lost a lot, if not everything, but we don't hear about them. My younger brother and his high school friends are literally counting down the days until they turn 18 so they can get on Robinhood, hoping to get rich like people did with Gamestop. Maybe we could have a higher age limit like 24 or something because the real issue is the youth who are prone to sabotaging themselves.

While it might seem like a weird place to draw a protective line, but I don't know, I'm sure many people today would want protections for half the stuff you mentioned if our congress was actually functional. I'd say we have to start somewhere and online gambling is definitely a behavior that is not worth optimizing our access to. If we know people are vulnerable to this stuff psychologically, why put more potholes that people can fall into? Are we really doing this just to build another multi-billion dollar industry that leeches off regular people? Let them go to a casino when they’ve saved up a couple hundred bucks for a fun night, not blow $100 in their car during a 10-minute shift break.

Anyway just my thoughts happy to hear counters, we could just allow people to make their own decisions but can anyone make the argument that overall society has the discipline to turn easy sports betting into a net positive? Perhaps but hey we can bet on it. :)

No commission trading predates Robin Hood.

But making it a flashy app is really what seems to drive meme investing.

I was buying stocks and mutual funds on Schwab for years before RH came along, but it was boring (as investing should be).

> * Junk food

Regulated in many places. Some Energy drinks are frequently banned from sale to minors. Nutrition labeling is required. Taxed at different rates than other foods in some places.

> * Participating in dangerous sports (Football, Boxing, etc)

Professional boxing matches are heavily regulated. Doctors have to be onsite for most bouts. Helmets are extensively tested, and there are rules at all levels about safe and unsafe hits.

> * All forms of gambling

Deeply regulated, down to what games can be played, who can work in a Casino, how they can advertise, what happens if there is a dispute. Etc.

> * Alcohol, cigarettes

Again, deeply regulated. Age restricted. Courts can monitor your alcohol intake if you get in trouble. You have to have a license to serve alcohol in some jurisdictions. Manufacturing alcohol has a licensing process that takes years in most places. You can be held liable for what happens if you overserve someone. Cigarettes can't really be advertised in the US anymore. In Canada, the actual nicotine product is not allowed to be displayed at retail outlets.

> * Pornography

Extensive recordkeeping requirements. Hardly ever advertised. Age and ID restrictions.

You basically listed some of the most restricted and regulated products. Many of them are required to com with warnings about the dangers of using them, and can't be advertised to general audiences.

You won't see former sports stars taking a puff on a nice smooth Lucky Strike and telling you all about the tobacco curing process at half-time on the broadcast. But you will certainly see that same sport star breaking down the odds, and the bonuses that new customers get on that show.

I think in that vein sports betting is also regulated, although I don't know the exact regulations, I do know that you still need a license.

Definitely, it is very regulated, but I think most detractors don’t like the all pervasive advertising (like embedding the odds reporting in the network broadcast) as well as the extreme ease of access through instant mobile applications.

I have no problem with gambling. I used to frequent gambling boats that would go to international waters to do their thing. I have a huge problem with how sports gambling has been marketed lately (at least here in Florida).

Its basically the same as smoking/vaping for me. Allow people their choice. It should be illegal to market it in 'cool' / 'sexy' ways, which is what I am seeing in todays advertising.

I find the power asymmetry is in my favour. I give money to the bookmaker or I don't.

If I don't, then the bookmaker is powerless as regards my money.

If I do, then I also gain some power over the bookmaker's money.

I don't expect many to see it the same way. Most people are more concerned than I am with the problems suffered by those whose decision making does not interact well with the existence of the gambling industry. Given their concerns, it is understandable that they wouldn't share my perspective.

Do you tend to believe the weak should be protected at all from the strong? I mean just as an overall belief, not specific to this issue

Yes.

Add social media to that list

>When i was younger I tended to think "hey it's their choice" but i've realized how unfair our society is in terms of things like this.

Where do we stop? Drugs? Medication? News? Elections?

People choose bad things all the time. Thinking you know better is how you end up banning alcohol because it's obviously a terrible vice.

Just wait 'til you read the case against free will...

It's a strong sign of our overall civilizational inadequacy that betting on events where the discovered probability would actually be useful--like economic policy outcomes, natural disaster frequency and magnitude, etc.--is still illegal, while bets with no positive externalities are fair game.

Polymarket

Almost everyone involved knew it was a mistake, but was captured (directly or indirectly) by the profits to be made.

Also it's hard to be against gambling if your state runs a lotto, which is gambling.

> Also it's hard to be against gambling if your state runs a lotto, which is gambling.

How so? Different kinds of gambling have different characteristics that could make them more or less prone to problematic behavior.

With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a time lag between action and response that intuitively it seems like it would be harder to get addicted or harder for addiction to become really problematic.

State lotteries also run games like Keno, which run every 5-15 minutes. They have also started to run apps which have instant-play games, which are roughly equivalent to turning your phone into a slot machine. Keno and instant-play games still feel like chance, though, and the apps often have warnings and usage limits that the sports betting sites don't have.

>With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a time lag between action and response that intuitively it seems like it would be harder to get addicted

Addictions don't reason. Win $10 and some people are hooked for life.

> or harder for addiction to become really problematic.

Example: a school teacher spending $200 a week on lotto tickets, not life devastating, but do we really want this in our society? This happens a lot.

Lottos just trick the people with less money into paying more taxes on the hopes of "winning it big!" It's essentially a hope tax for the lower and middle class. I can think of better ways of collecting taxes.

>> With the lottery, it's so boring and there's such a time lag between action and response that intuitively it seems like it would be harder to get addicted

> Addictions don't reason.

That argument was specifically based on how gambling feels and not reasoning.

> Win $10 and some people are hooked for life.

That sucks, but ease of addiction is a spectrum.

> Lottos just trick the people with less money into paying more taxes on the hopes of "winning it big!"

How do you explain the school teacher spending $200 per week, then? The teachers here collectively own one of the world's largest hedge funds. These are very wealthy people.

Whoever told you that, you should stop listening to them.

It was the teachers themselves who told me, but sage advice in general. You're quite right that teaching does tend to an attract a crowd that are out to lunch.

Still, the portfolio is public knowledge, so we can also verify what they say. In this case a stopped watch is still right sometimes.

Indeed, you can't argue state lotteries aren't gambling. But hey, there is a wide spectrum of how bad each form of gambling is, and lottery is very much on the lower end of it.

Very, very few people spend $200 a week on lottery tickets -- they spend a few dollars here and there a week. (Spending $200 is just silly and barely increases the chance of winning or return -- if someone can't see that, well, can't stop them from wasting money) Of course, I would like state lotteries to be further restricted, but that's still much much better than online sports betting -- people can lose six digits of wealth quickly, and that has a much bigger and immediate impact on lives than state lotteries.

I think we can have addictive things we just have to rules that minimize their impact.

* If the thing you sell is addictive you cannot advertise it.

* The thing must clearly tell buyers it is an addictive product designed to extract money from you for the rest of your life.

* It should be taxed such that society can pay for the costs of the addiction.

* If it's gambling you can only wager low stakes. If it's food we need to draw the line on how much added sugar, salt, or other bullshit can be used to make food more addictive

Geewhiz, how do i know im addicted to it until im hopelessly addicted to it?

<<The game industry lobby BURSTS through the wall like the kool-aid man to the parent post>>

As someone who worked for a major sports betting company, these are the things we built but only used if required by the country/state/tribe/whatever:

* Deposit limits, per day/week/etc to limit the damage someone could do and also to limit money laundering. This could be self imposed or regulator imposed.

* Withdrawal limits. This was mostly to limit money laundering.

* Wager limits, per event/day/etc

* Self exclusion for a certain time period or forever. This kept people from using our stuff to make bets based on our best efforts to identify them. Sometimes we had a government ID, sometimes we didn't.

* Other exclusions, i.e. blacklisting for things like not paying child support.

* Geofencing to prevent people from using our app outside of the legal jurisdictions. Also, geofencing to only allow people to register for our apps in certain locations, such as a casino. That could easily be extended to prevent people from using the apps outside of a casino, but I don't think that was required anywhere.

These things are technically possible and would greatly help if required globally, short of an outright ban.

I also work in industry. I think a national self-exclusion scheme (like the UK has) would be huge.

I actually think this will be a self correcting problem.

Contrary to popular belief, running a sportsbook is a terrible business. Look at draftkings for instance. They’ve gotten gambling legalized nearly everywhere yet are still wildly unprofitable.

I guarantee you that they will never be profitable unless they are granted a monopoly which will never happen.

It’s fairly obvious. If you travel to Vegas and go to the Aria, one of the premier casinos on the strip, you will have to walk around to find the sportsbook. When you do you may be surprised to see that it’s not out in the center of the floor inviting people in, it’s in a dark remote enclosed corner that feels like a large coat room.

Now ask yourself why that would be? And why do casinos devote so much floor space to slot machines and table games?

Betting apps offer the terrible aspects of running a book- relatively unwealthy gamblers with the inability to cross subsidize more profitable games and alcohol along with the added drag of attracting disloyal users who can and will easily use other books to compare lines or take advantage of promos.

Does the "correction" you speak of involve business failures and acquisitions until a monopoly does exist?

its going to end with these companies going towards zero and then possibly being acquired by private equity

> They’ve gotten gambling legalized nearly everywhere yet are still wildly unprofitable.

They're predicted to profit more than $400 million in 2025.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/draftkings-inc-nasdaq-dkng-br...

Somewhat like Amazon in its early days, their lack of profits was mostly because they were investing their money into growing the company. DraftKings spends hundreds of dollars to acquire each customer.

> running a sportsbook is a terrible business

For a couple years you could make bank on MLS games simply because the odds were so broken you were almost guaranteed a good payout, it was mathematically impossible to lose money if you bet using multiple apps on the same games.

I'm the founder of BeeBettor (YC S24). I've been working in this space for a while.

A lot of the points in the article are valid. I have two major issues with online sports betting (OSB) in the US.

1. Sports betting advertising before, during, and after games is horrendous. There is no way to watch sports without being bombarded. Obviously, this is a huge issue for problem gamblers. Sports become unwatchable.

2. Self-exclusion is impossible. There's 40+ sports betting apps available. There is no centralized body a person can say "hey don't let me bet anymore" and then be automatically restricted from betting across all apps. This is something I think we can help with in the near future.

So what can be done now? I don't think OSB is going to be redeclared illegal. I don't think that would be a good idea either. Millions of people have started sports betting. If it becomes illegal, it won't make them stop.

Happy to discuss this further. Email is in my profile.

> So what can be done now? I don't think OSB is going to be redeclared illegal. I don't think that would be a good idea either.

I disagree - I think it would be a great idea. While some may argue that gambling is a zero-sum game (which isn't exactly great, in and of itself), it's really a net loss. While some people may win a bit of money, I'd argue that the degree to which their lives are improved is much less than the degree that some others' lives are destroyed. Gambling, ultimately, being a negative sum.

> Millions of people have started sports betting. If it becomes illegal, it won't make them stop

I disagree with this too. It's substantially easier for any random person to simply tap a few buttons on their phone to place a bet than to find and arrange opportunities with others to bet on sports or visit a brick & mortar betting site. The level of effort of placing a phone bet is so small (and with 24/7 access), you'd have a very hard time arguing that making OSB illegal would only marginally impact the amount of sports gambling taking place.

Bottom line: gambling is an addictive activity for all people and some more so than others. Limiting access to it will have a positive impact on pretty much everyone who does't own or work at a gambling company.

> you'd have a very hard time arguing that making OSB illegal would only marginally impact the amount of sports gambling taking place.

"Offshore sportsbooks" are another thing to consider. These companies are not regulated in the US market, but still take online bets from people in the US. The ease of placing bets online does not go away with making OSB illegal. Just eliminates any consumer protection we could have had.

Am I wrong in thinking of your company not as Robinhood for Sports Betting, but rather Expedia for Sports Betting?

If you are successful in getting a majority of OSB companies to allow bets to be placed via your app, then I would think this would lead to the various odds and payouts all converging as price discovery becomes much simpler through one app. This would make OSB less profitable as an industry, right? I see this as a good thing, but then I think you’d run into issues with getting (the bigger) OSB companies pulling their API access from you so that they can’t be compared and bet on as easily.

Disappointed that YC helped with this.

Here is a wild idea:

Reshape the entire industry to be a decentralized/house-edge-free form, where any one player has a net 0% gain/loss outcome over time. Regulate what bets can be placed and their payouts so that winners win less amounts and losers lose less amounts (i.e. you don't get wiped out).

It will feel like gambling, but overtime is no different than coin flipping for lunch money with a coworker every day. Essentially math away the "house always wins" part.

Hot take: The entire goal of the gambling industry is to act as a one-way function for money (ie, laundering).

Thus, your proposal might actually work, except what's in it for the rubes?

One way to look at this is it is already sort of the dividing line between traditional "Fantasy Sports" and modern "Sports Betting". Fantasy Sports involves finding a like-minded group and winnings are often as much "bragging rights" and camaraderie as it might be any actual pool of money. Sports Betting is certainly not that.

A problem is infection. As Sports Betting is more legal and profitable, Fantasy Sports gain more Sports Bets and pseudoanonymity and lose some of their community spirit for "micro-transactions" and other "extreme gamification" and the line between each blurs. (Including to the point where groups looking for one might be easily confused into doing the other.)

I idly wonder if there is a way to shore up Fantasy Sports against the tide of Sports Betting profit.

There are such attempts, e.g. Smarkets. The general approach is called a "betting exchange" where you buy and sell bets with other people to set the market price for the various games / events going on. It's too complicated, though. Most people just want to bet on the Pats winning. They're not rational financial actors.

great but who is funding that at %0? is it non profit? like website, company and math people there will have wages. so even 1% is impossible without incredibly big volume and liqudity.

If Americans are spending 1B per month and you capture 10M per month (1%) of the market, charging 1% gives you 100k / month for the business.

I think you could raise money and then sustain a lean business.

Sports gambling should be regulated like we do day trading (basically another form of gambling) — require a some minimum threshold of money in the account to deter those without disposable income from gambling away their savings (for day trading it’s $25k).

Legalizing things only for rich people is truly awful government.

Is it? The role of government is to clean up individuals who cause trouble for the population at large.

Poor people who trade their grocery budget for gambling undeniably cause trouble for a population. Do rich people who trade their luxury handbag budget for gambling equally cause trouble for a population?

What about legalizing losing money?

Only poor people can lose money, rich people get bailouts.

I think it's reasonable to carryover retail investor protections to the gambling world. One market has much more history in taking advantage of the average Joe and as a result there are many sensible protections in place. If you can't withstand losing your entire investment, you probably shouldn't be able to place that bet in the first place.

Unfortunately, since gambling is only recently more accessible/prevalent, I think it's going to take a few mishaps to produce similar regulations.

Are you somewhere not-America? Day trading has zero requirements here.

America's requirements (https://www.finra.org/investors/investing/investment-product...):

> pattern day traders must maintain minimum equity of $25,000 in their margin account on any day that the customer day trades

> pattern day traders cannot trade in excess of their "day-trading buying power"

> If a pattern day trader exceeds the day-trading buying power limitation, a firm will issue a day-trading margin call, after which the pattern day trader will then have, at most, five business days to deposit funds to meet the call.

That link supports your parent, not you.

> Day trading, as defined by FINRA’s margin rule, refers to a trading strategy where an individual buys and sells (or sells and buys) the same security in a margin account on the same day in an attempt to profit from small movements in the price of the security.

(emphasis original)

There are no restrictions on trading with your own money, whether you can afford it or not.

I think a lot of the recent trading apps marketed to consumers give you a margin account by default though, I know Robinhood does. If you request a cash account you lose instant deposits and trading and have to wait for everything to clear normally.

The way trade settling works means that if you buy/sell the same security in the same day it will, by definition, be on margin. Even if you have cash balances backing that trade.

I don't think so, investors have the capital in order to afford to deal with regulations. Over regulating and making it expensive/hard to gamble legally, would just send people over to organised crime. I'd be happy if we forced gambling companies to hire addiction-psychologists in each of their shops for people to talk to, for one we could shrink the amout of gambling shops, as they wouldn't open one every 10 meters, and we would bring help directly to those who need it on the spot

Gambling is terrible, and I'll never do it, but unless casinos are holding people at gunpoint and coercing them to play, they aren't depriving anyone of anything against their will. Marketing needs to be truthful of course, and sane regulation is OK, but anything pleasurable can be addictive.

The whole puritanical notion that anything pleasurable is dangerous and needs to be strictly regulated/outlawed is not a good reality, doesn't really do anything except make people lie about what they really want to do (which causes obssession and addiction), and honestly needs to be buried with all the other outmoded concepts.

I'm getting tired of "addiction" being used as a justification to reduce freedoms. If you want to fix addiction, fix the underlying causes instead of banning shit. This involves designing societies where everyone's basic needs are easily met, where people who run into problems can get help easily, where people are encouraged to treat each other equitably, and lowering anxiety and panic. It's hard and doesn't make anyone any money which is why it's not the default state in many societies, but it does prevent these societies from collapsing

But all this howling in this whole topic about how gambling hurts the poor, yet no one is actually talking about how to stop creating poor in the first place - is just sanctimonious virtue signaling. Even if you have a poor friend or relative who got bit by a gambling loss - why is he/she addicted - what did you or society do to address that?

This article doesn't address it for whatever reason, but any discussion of sports betting in the US is going to have to deal with the actual reason PASPA was struck down. It was found to be unconstitutional. That doesn't mean sports betting needs to be universally legal across the entire country, and it isn't, but if you're going to make an argument that it should be legally banned, that has to be done on a state-by-state basis. The US Supreme Court, as an institution, changes its mind over time, but I'm not aware of any notable instance where exactly the same court only six years later reverses its own decision. Likely a few of these justices would need to die and be replaced by someone with a different legal opinion before change was possible.

You can make these kind of consequentialist arguments anyway. It's worthwhile discussion. But the legal decision itself wasn't made on a consequentialist basis. The court didn't decide PASPA was illegal because it was socially bad and we'd have a better world without it. The proposed "just ban it outright everywhere" can't happen under the current legal regime. It's fine to propose things that can't happen but we should acknowledge this becomes a hypothetical discussion.

The reason the PASPA was unconstitutional wasn't because the federal government can't regulate sportsbetting. It was due to the specifics of how the PASPA implemented the ban. In particular the authors of the PASPA wanted to "grandfather in" certain states so rather than making sportsbetting illegal nationwide/federally they made it illegal for state governments to pass new laws legalizing sportsbetting in their states (which meant that states which had legalized sportsbetting already could continue to allow it).

It was this "commandeering" of the state legislature's right to legislate that was found unconstitutional, not the federal government's ability to regulate sportsbetting. So if congress wanted they could pass a law that made sportsbetting illegal at the federal level and put a federal agency in charge of enforcing it.

Its similar to the legal weed situation. States can't be forced to enforce federal laws, but the federal government itself can enforce those laws even if the state governments are unwilling.

I've commented about sports betting a bit of HN in the past, but it's such a tricky situation for me.

On one hand, this is actively bad for people. You can make the argument that some people win, but the vast majority do not (over any extended period of time). People are hurting themselves and the people around them. I personally know so many young guys who have lost thousands of dollars that they really didn't have the opportunity to lose on sports betting in the last few years.

On the other hand, why would I restrict someone's freedom to choose to make a poor decision?

I find this so hard to make a personal judgement on because I see myself going both ways in my own life. I drink alcohol despite it being bad for my health, but I scoff at smoking cigarettes for the same reason. You can actively justify either of these, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. I just don't know where we begin to restrict people's choices when it primarily affects them - the obvious exception being their friends and family who are affected as well.

Do we step in and prevent this transitive negative effect? I'm really not sure.

I've seen some other comments mention having heavier regulation. That idea makes sense as a middle ground to me, I guess (although I'm really not sure).

The some people win argument isn’t even really true for sports betting. Casinos just ban anyone that wins with any regularity.

Of course any individual bet can win but casinos stack the deck by only taking action from players they know will lose over the long run.

> On the other hand, why would I restrict someone's freedom to choose to make a poor decision?

Ok, let's ignore the individual. But gambling losses that lead to bankruptcy hurt creditor, for instance. Since creditors can't really easily separate out gamblers from non-gamblers, those defaults get spread across society as costs.

The linked article asserts that a large proportion of government welfare funds in Brazil are gambled away.

The linked article asserts that losses inspire domestic abuse. Consider that net winners may only win 51% of the time-- that's a lot of losses even if the individual makes out better in the long run.

> why would I restrict someone's freedom to choose to make a poor decision?

Because there's a societal cost that goes beyond just the individual

Sure sports gambling ruins some lives. So do alcohol, fast food, you name it. Does this mean all of those should be forbidden?

In the end these things are a trade-off: a very large part of the population has no problems with them and enjoys being able to gamble/drink or eat. A small portion does have serious problems.

Should these people be protected against themselves, at the price of forbidden most people their little pleasure? Personally, I think not.

Alcohol is definitely regulated and fast food is too a broad term to mean anything.

But yeah, gambling should also be heavily regulated (as alcohol) and it is far from a "little pleasure", it can easily become an addition even without throwing around ads, free first bets and gamification.

Regulating gambling is a good idea, but most people here seem to be talking about forbidding. I find that odd, compare it with the general opinion here about soft drugs, there HN seems to be pro-legalization.

I don't understand why there couldn't have been a middle ground where we legalized it but restricted the advertising so that it wouldn't be shoved down our throats so aggressively at all times whiched has ruined sports altogether.

I don't necessarily think legalizing the gambling was a mistake. Vices are notoriously difficult to manage whether they're legal or illegal.

But legalizing advertising for sports gambling was definitely a mistake.

I would argue that they are the same thing.

It's more that gambling is now in the pocket and they have expanded what you can gamble on, like 12 year olds playing baseball

Brazil took long to allow it and now its spreading like wildfire!

In September, the central bank released a report revealing that in August, 20% of Bolsa Família — the largest cash transfer program for Brazil's poorest citizens — was spent on betting.

Out of the 20 million recipients, 5 million placed bets during that month, amounting to 2 billion reais (approximately $450 million) spent in just one month by the most vulnerable Brazilians.

Every day we are reading reports of family loosing their cars and saving because kids were betting, which is crazy.

https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/business/2024...

So, gambling can ruin lives, sure, but the only reason lives are ruined is that money is so essential to everything in life. The problem isn't that our brains love to take risks and get immense pleasure from winning against the odds, it's that society is set up so that we can easily destroy our lives by doing otherwise harmless things that feel good. It very much reminds me of that Iain Banks quote: "Money implies poverty."

The sooner we get rid of money, the sooner people will just bet their imaginary internet points on internet gambling instead of their real life right-to-live-points, and everybody will be better off.

Money is not the issue here. If something different, call it 'X', had a similar impact on life, then people would gable with 'X'.

If 'X' had a similar impact on life to money, it wouldn't be 'X' it would be 'money'. Not to mention, the claim that people will only gamble for real-life money is absurd. I've found gambling in various video games is just as enjoyable as gambling in real life, the only difference is the reward for winning is video-game-points and not money.

Why not get rid of unhappiness while you're at it? Just do it man, I'm sure you can figure out how.

Two interesting things that I noticed from the betting industry:

1) In Brazil there's an entire industry of athlete's from lower divisions and agents that sells transient results that is taken in consideration in the bets.

For instance, number of corner kicks, number of fouls, yellow cards and so on. It's hard to trace it back the intention and there's a player from the National Team being investigated due to betting patterns [1].

With 80% of players earning less than USD 300 [2] when someone have the offer to take USD 10000 to receive 3 yellow cards in 5 games, it's hard to say no for those guys.

2) The problem that I see with the regulation is that not only in the sporting and social aspects (that is bad) but the money laundering and the lack of tracing in the money that goes in bet houses.

For instance, Germany has some regulation around the topic [3] but the reality if you go in some Tipico or some small bet house you can carry EUR 10000 and bet in anything, no questions asked; that's the reason why a lot of people around the world come to Germany for sports betting [4].

Anecdotally speaking, an old colleague used to manage some players in Brazilian 3rd division and he had some connections with folks in places like Germany. Before the game he already knew the bets and then just told to the players what needs to be done (e.g. I want a penalty kick after 80min, or a yellow card before 70 minutes) and after the bet being payed the agent just passed the money to the players (more or less 30%).

[1] - https://onefootball.com/de/news/fa-want-to-ban-lucas-paqueta...

[2] - https://g1.globo.com/trabalho-e-carreira/noticia/2022/12/04/...

[3] - https://cms.law/en/int/expert-guides/cms-expert-guide-to-onl...

[4] - https://n1info.rs/biznis/fatf-nemacka-raj-za-pranje-novca-go...

https://archive.is/FeAy9

There are literally thousands of ways someone can be self destructive and ruin their lives or blow up their family.

I’ll never understand the mentality of “please govern me harder daddy”. If someone wants to self destruct they’ll find a way to do so. Taking away something that millions of disciplined people also love while simultaneously setting a precedent to let the government tell you what to do seems like a foolish and slippery slope.

It really seems insane to me (in Canada specifically, but also generally) that alcohol ads and sports gambling app ads are not only legal, but possibly the most common form of advertising, the latter of which only recently becoming legal under our "progressive" government as though having our teeth kicked in during the pandemic wasn't enough. Seems like an almost deliberate effort to screw as many lives as possible

First of all, the federal sports gambling ban was struck down as unconstitutional, on the grounds that governing sports betting is outside the purview of the federal government. States have every constitutional right to impose sports gambling bans of their own. Even if you support such bans, you should not advocate imposing them unconstitutionally, by a federal government that was not delegated the power to impose them.

Those who support unconstitutional overreaches by the federal government are perhaps not considering the unintended consequences of eroding the principle of governing in accordance with such constitutional limits. They ought to consider a type of government restriction that they oppose and find harmful, and consider how much worse it is when the federal government can nationalize it.

Second, once someone reaches the age of consent, they should be able to do things that run a high risk of ruining their lives. The only type of restriction that I could possibly see being justifiable for activity like this is on advertisements for such activity, which could be required to disclose risks and/or not communicate falsehoods.

Let's be honest. A person who would habitually loose more than half of their monthly income to betting or other things they would do better without is mentally disabled and should not be given money in the first place. Instead they should be given professional care like senile elderly people and underage children receive. The rest can invest their money whatever the way they see fit.

Every time I watch SportsCenter and hear the word “parlay” I vomit a little.

They sold their souls.

Gambling has zero societal upsides. We pretend sometimes it does, but it's always trading a limited benefit for a substantial harm.

Sports Betting was supposed to create jobs, and it did. But for every job created, several other people's finances were ruined. The vast majority of this revenue is going straight to the people at the top, so it doesn't even create all that many jobs.

Likewise, the lottery is one of the most insidious parts of our society. We dangle the carrot of unfathomable wealth in front of people, and let them spill huge amounts of money into a system that is so unlikely to produce a win that one can realistically conclude that it is a 0% chance. We act like it's beneficial because it funds things like scholarships, but those things could just be offered using public funds without destroying countless lives with gambling. In fact, if we just funded those scholarship with public funds, the impact to taxpayers would be substantially less than the impact on gamblers.

Even when someone eventually wins a huge jackpot, there are tons of stories about how those wins ended up hurting, or in some cases even killing, the recipient. The actual reward of winning isn't what people think it is, because most people who gamble enough to have a chance at winning are not prepared at all to handle that windfall appropriately.

The price paid for gambling is always too high, and dangling immense unearned wealth just serves to bait lower-income Americans into flushing their limited income down the drain in hope of a free ride.

Whatever notion people have about individual responsibility doesn't apply here. This form of exploitation is well understood, and it should not be legal to deceive people this way. The vast majority of gamblers don't understand the math behind it, and vastly overestimate their odds.

I've done my share of casual gambling, and personally understand that it can be a form of entertainment that can be enjoyed responsibly. Unfortunately, that is like saying that you've used cocaine a few times without overdosing or getting addicted: you're the exception, not the rule.

One thing I always struggle with is how any of this is different from the stock market. Most people aren’t smart savvy investors just like most people aren’t smart savvy sports betters. Companies have good days and bad days (wins and losses), and people just invest their lives away hoping for a big change. The only thing I see being a major difference is that the industry around the stock market is too engrained in the world to be ever be removed. I dunno, this article made me really unhappy in a “shine the light on things you don’t think about daily” kind of way.

The stock market has no house. Every winner is an investor.

Granted, retail investors lose more often than they win - but there’s no incentive of the market that ensures this - merely asymmetry of information. In contrast, commercial gambling can _only_ work if the house always wins.

This isn’t belied by peer-to-peer gambling (save for non-commercial instances, like a poker game among friends), since in these cases the facilitator will take an exorbitant cut.

Moreover, the stock market serves an ethically legitimate purpose - the efficient allocation of capital. Not so gambling.

For me, this topic is prototypical of a larger conversation which goes something like, "Should individuals be permitted to slip between the cracks of society?" For the first three centuries of the Industrial Revolution, the answer in the West was, "Yes, of course." c.f. indentured servitude, honor duels, and debtor prisons. By the way, this way of life was, for certain, a shining improvemnt for the average person who would have previously been trapped in serfdom under Feudalism.

The Progressive ideal, which started as only a faint glimmer in the US at the turn on the 20th Century, has grown to dominate our social mores over the past 50 years. For most people reading HN, it's all they have ever known. But there is a serious cost. We infatilize our adults and produce generations of new citizens paralyzed by anxiety and (to a large extent) incapable of tolerating the faintest hint of discouragement.

But at least fewer of them slip through the cracks.

I don't think those two things are connected. The US coddles children more than any other country, yet more people slip through the cracks in the US than in any other rich country, and witnessing the streets of SF and other major cities, that problem is getting worse, not better.

Many are coddled, and I'd argue many are literally caged, and come into adulthood with all the behavioural issues you'd expect of a dog that spent its formative years in a kennel.

This seems like a false dilemma. Are you suggesting we need to bring back indentured servitude? Or should we keep trying to find a middle ground?

Indentured servitude is like voluntarily assuming an income tax obligation in a society without an income tax, in exchange for an upfront payment.

Thanks, that helps clear things up.

you make absolutely no argument for why strengthening protection of individual rights requires living in a shithole where people are free to exploit well-known vulnerabilities in the human motivation system.

"prosperity required permitting unregulated sale of fentanyl!"... sounds nonsensical, because it is.

> We infatilize our adults and produce generations of new citizens paralyzed by anxiety and (to a large extent) incapable of tolerating the faintest hint of discouragement.

I played poker professionally for seven years. I've seen the full gamut of responses to gambling on the human brain. Gambling absolutely hijacks the neurocomputational circuitry of some people in a way that it doesn't others. Infantilized? I managed my risk of ruin carefully and rationally, others didn't. They invariably got ruined. Period. Those people should not be gambling. There was no safety net, which you falsely imagine exists. I wish there had been. The consequences to their lives outweighed, by far, the prosperity gained by permitting large-scale high-stakes gambling (which is at best a zero-sum game if the house is included). I do not think my former profession should be openly legal to everyone. Participating in it was an act of willful evil on my part. I am glad to have it regulated, for the sake of the families of the people whose lives I helped destroy.

There was absolutely nothing and nobody "infantilizing" me to induce "anxiety". There was a largely unregulated free-for-all into a brutal, unforgiving world, in which you can lose a fortune in the blink of an eye if you elect to wager it and lose. Sure, I thrived in that environment, but it was at the expense of vulnerable individuals.

Seriously, what the actual fuck are you talking about. If you'd ever taken actual, life-altering financial risks in a society without a real financial safety net (the United States), you'd know that there is absolutely nothing between a foolish series of decisions while drunk (or much worse, in the thrall of a persistent gambling addiction) and complete financial ruin.

We can do better as a society, and we should.

While we're at it, gosh, you know what would have improved the poker economy? Unregulated firearms at poker tables. Hell, let's just make homicide legal if the other person bets their life. Or maybe even if they don't! That would have really let us demonstrate our fully-enfranchised individual wills to power. No one would be confused as an anxious man baby! We could have thrived like real manly men! Letting people blow each other's heads off at a whim during a gambling free-for-all ("between consenting adults!") would surely improve prosperity. Great idea! Agreeing as a democratic society to regulate that behavior would only produce a society of emasculated degenerates incapable of expressing the full range of the human spirit! Think of the sacrificed business opportunities! /s.

You don't have a good handle on the problem.

It's not "individuals slipping through the cracks of society", it's society and the people who run it consuming people (or animals) as fuel. Progressive politics might only be as old as the Roosevelts but they have surprisingly deep historical roots[0].

The improvement in material conditions from, say, the 1500s to 2024 is a function of changes in the law that made it worthwhile to produce those improvements. Or, in other words, nobody is going to innovate in phone apps when they have to give 30% to Apple and Google. Back then, the "30%" would have been indentured servitude, debtors prisons, and so on. Innovation increased when serfdom ended and more people were able to innovate.

Innovation in an economy is a function of how many people have access to appropriate levels of capital. Which is itself a function of the distribution of wealth. An economy in which five people own everything is one where nobody can innovate outside of that system. An economy with redistributive effects - whether that be through government action or otherwise - is more productive at the expense of the growth prospects of the ultra-wealthy. Economies built to make one participant fatter are eating their seed corn.

I have no clue what you're going on about with infantilization. That seems like something downstream of several social trends.

[0] e.g. western feminism is older than the Declaration of Independence; abolitionism is at least as old as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lay

What on earth does any of this have to do with sports gambling?

The impact of problem gambling on families can be devastating and we see it first hand in the financial counseling that we do. (Disclosure: I'm the founder of MoneyStack and we run GamFin.org)

Since many of you have commented about regulation, check out the SAFE Bet Act https://tonko.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=...

Also, the GRIT Act may bring much needed federal funding into the prevention and treatment system across the US. https://www.ncpgambling.org/advocacy/grit-act/

> A small number of people place the large majority of bets—about 5 percent of bettors spent 70 percent of the money in New Jersey in late 2020 and early 2021, for example.

By this logic, we should ban cars because 5% of drivers experience collisions every year. Or maybe we should ban Free to Play mobile apps (5% of users result in 70% of the profits). Or maybe we should ban firearms, because a small number of users harm people.

There are always risks with every industry in regards to the safety of those who participate. What is the "acceptable" number of problematic cases for a billion-dollar industry to be legally acceptable?

No, you should regulate driving so those 5% stop colliding with things all the time and the gambling 5% gamble a bit less.

What the fuck do you have against people "ruining their lives"?

I've made a ton of bad decisions in the course of my life. And I'm all richer for it. Don't take that away from me.

I despise the nanny state policies of my homeland Finland. I've been a nomad for the past decade and a half due to it because I don't want to settle down in a place where people think they should be able to force other people to not make what they (or "the majority") think are stupid decisions.

You will always find justifications once you start going down the rabbit hole of "what's best for them".

I believe that making mistakes is an integral part of learning and the way our society views failure is totally wrong. When you’re failing as often as you are succeeding this means you are operating at or near your limit, absolutely something to be proud of.

None of that applies to gambling though. Not only is there nothing to learn from failing that you couldn’t have learnt before placing a bet, but success could mean addiction and the eventual ruination of your life and the lives of those you love.

> None of that applies to gambling though.

Are you sure about that?

> Not only is there nothing to learn from failing that you couldn’t have learnt before placing a bet

Just look at investing with fake money portfolios vs. making decisions with real money. Or playing poker with play money. It's a whole different game mentally and some lessons you just don't learn unless you got a real stake in it.

> but success could mean addiction and the eventual ruination of your life and the lives of those you love.

In my case my success (in poker) led to a prosperous career playing professionally. No lives ruined. YMMV.

Poker, or sportsbetting, is not gambling any more than investing in the stock market is, or choosing a spouse. Sure, you can gamble and YOLO your life savings on either of them. But you can also learn to make better decisions, the hard way. Or try and fail and lose money in the process. Rather than having a small set of "safe" pre-chosen options laid out for everyone.

Disclaimer: Games where you play against the house (that has an edge) like slots or roulette is gambling. But again, just because there are people playing slots to make a profit doesn't mean that we should ban being an idiot. Life is dangerous and you will eventually die from it. This is more of a personal philosophical opinion than a "what's best for people" one (which I think is wrong).

Poker involves skill, I was not talking about poker. Unless you’re unskilled, in which case it’s gambling. Poker done right is a process in which safe failure can lead to skill growth.

Yes, investing on the stock market can be gambling, unless you have inside information or are extremely knowledgeable, you’re not going to beat a monkey. Investing in a diverse portfolio where you’re basically betting on the entire market growing is different.

I know people who got burned with bets or risky investments and stopped doing that.

I also know plenty of failures who are addicted to gambling and drugs.

Gambling, like all drugs, is a mental health / attitude problem.

Life is shit for most people and they think winning big is the only way they'll escape that - and if I lose some money, oh hey, I was poor before, I'm still poor.

We need to put the blame on education and society raising mindless zombies good only to be employees for 40 years and pay off their mortgage (in the best case scenario).

Banning is the wrong way to go. It just moves everything to black market.

Regulation, however, might be OK. In the UK we are now at a stage where bookmakers have to do Know Your Customer (KYC), checks to do identity validation, you can't gamble with credit cards (debit cards are fine), and "VIP Schemes" to incentivize those who gamble the most to gamble more are not allowed. All sites have voluntary limits for players on deposits or timeouts, and a lot of TV ad spots are about staying in control of your gambling.

What's interesting is that most of this (except KYC and CC deposits), are not government-mandated - the industry has gone down a path of self regulation to try and keep the government out of it.

There's expected to be some announcements in this space in coming months, and there is a fear of "affordability checks" being mandated - to bet above, say £100/month, you'll need to show bank statements that indicate you can afford a higher level of betting. The fear is that this will just mean rich business for the offshore black market guys on WhatsApp and Telegram who are ready to move in.

I think what might actually be a better solution is for us to talk more widely about "value", and educating bettors. There is little value in slots or casino games - you will rarely, if ever, be in a place to get +EV on those, and when those situations do arise it requires an incredible amount of expertise and insight to exploit them, far more than Hollywood or the books you may read suggest you need (Ed Thorpe invented the World's first wearable computer to get +EV on roulette).

However, sports betting is different. Value is often there, waiting to be found. Particularly on prop bets. If you're prepared to do the work in figuring it out, you will either win, or lose more slowly.

As such, I'd argue more education and more controls around bad habits seems a better way to go than banning it outright.

But then, I'm happy to do that work, I enjoy it, it's fun. Most people don't, and they're losing money to me and people like me via a commission agent (the bookmaker).

In Argentina, they recently legalized internet gambling, and now there's a 'pandemic' of teenagers facing serious problems. It's ironic to see gambling ads during football games alongside state ads promoting support for gambling addicts.

Poor people from low socioeconomic families will always find a way to ruin their lives.

Gambling, smoking, drinking, drugs, risk taking behaviours, crime.

We can either ban everything, or accept that certain groups of people will just abuse literally anything

Do they find a way or are the ways engineered to squeeze every Cent out of them?

Both. Even when illegal they still do it far more often.

Yeah those dumb fucks should have just been rich.

Let adults be adults.

The hypocrisy is amazing, many states ban gambling, but have scratches. Online scratchers, state owned digital slot machines. How is that fair when online casinos are banned.

The State has a much lower Return to Player.

We go through periods of liberalization, and then it's opposite, as the ills of each regime become salient. For example, in the US, Oregon abandoned its legalization of hard-drugs, and I expect to see a national push to restrict and regulate cannabis more heavily, for example, regulating THC content more stringently, etc.

With so many things, finding the right balance takes trial and error, and what the right balance is may change as other variables change as well.

It is crazy to think that many countries ban cigarette advertising but not sports betting. The same moral and social arguments can be made for both, so why different rules?

Gambling ruins lives.

We could solve that by banning/restricting gambling.

But it seems that's just a patch on the bigger problem: That our citizens are insufficiently educated to see what is ruining their life and stay away from it.

Sure, some people waste all their money on gambling. But others waste all their money on drugs. Or theme park rides. Or model trains.

Would it not be better to have better training not to waste all your resources on something that doesn't benefit you?

I believe things would improve if we raised kids explaining them that the house always wins. It's a rigged game. Most people can't predict outcomes better than picking randomly and that way they are guaranteed to lose money because of the margins the bookies have. So if you know that you can play for fun from time to time, but not get in over your head.

But then I remember that so many are counting on the fact that people will stay uneducated so they can rip them off.

This is a good argument against lotteries but not as good an argument against sports gambling. If you are better at sports prediction than the bookmakers, you can make money. Nobody gambles as an "average person", they gamble as themselves, and convincing an individual that they personally are bad at predicting outcomes requires more than saying "most people can't do it".

People see it as a game of skill where they win money from people who are worse at that skill than they are.

Except if you are actually better than the bookmakers, the platforms will kick you off as soon as they detect that.

You can't be better or beat the bookies because you don't play the same game. Their game is to get the money placed evenly on all outcomes so that their payout is the same no matter what happens. And people betting are in the business of predicting the future which is a fool's errand. You might think you're above average, but once you realize the game is setup so that the house always wins, you realize it's tough to get out of the hole.

addictions are not cured by teaching people that they can play for fun from time to time but not get in over their heads.

do you think heroin addicts and cigarette smokers never heard that it was bad for them?

It's only an addiction if it becomes one. If you prevent it, you've solved the problem before it became one, which is usually the most effective way of solving problems.

For instance, Portugal had a crisis 25 years ago with sky high number of drug related deaths, HIV infections etc. The solution was decriminalization and education, e.g. about sharing syringes. And it worked, they went from the worst I drug related deaths to best. Heroin is still bad for you and I guess people still use drugs, but at least the outcome is not catastrophic anymore.

So yes, I do think education cures a lot of problems.

"Because some people are irresponsible, responsible people should be prohibited of taking risky actions responsibly."

It's the same with the prohibition of alcohol.

No one is being forced to bet. The crime is not teaching people self sufficiency and good decision making. If heroin become suddenly legal I would not start using heroin. It’s a choice and it takes self control. It is no one’s responsibility but one’s own to make good decisions. “A fool and his money are easily parted” holds true here. Don’t be fools.

I think the issue is that at some point the heroin and gambling leads to desperate situations for the fools, the fools start mugging people and stealing your property, then you feel like a fool for letting them get into that situation when it feels preventable.

I see your point. How far do we go to protect the fools and is there infringement upon the non fools when everything has to be scoped down for the lowest common denominator?

Only need to look at Australia as to where this ends up. It's a disgrace. And yes it ruins sports broadcasts. Kids can't watch without getting hammered about odds anymore.

In Australia a huge push is on to get it banned from tv.

A secondary effect is also a new venue for money laundering. In some EU countries it's pretty much an open secret.

I don't want to stop those who enjoy it from enjoying it for the sake of those whose decision making doesn't interact well with its legalisation. I think others care more about preventing people from acting in ways that have negative consequences than I do, so I don't expect many to agree with me.

I think the majority of people who are against these changes, like you, don’t want to ban people from gambling. The situation before was that bets between individuals on sports events was totally legal, but no businesses were allowed to profit from it.

It’s not that casual bets between friends should be banned, but this insidious industry that spends 100s of millions on marketing, and uses every tactic available to lure people and then get them addicted. That is such a far cry from not wanting people to gamble at all. Those who want to be a nanny and say boo hoo gambling bad are in a totally different category to the people who reasonably think that there’s a serious issue with this industry.

I think you are right that most people who want to ban such activities want to go back to the former situation where people could only bet on sports with friends. Their position is different to mine.

Is allowing people to follow an active investment strategy in various markets also a mistake? I understand the need for CME weather futures contracts for a farmer, but anyone is allowed to do this. Hedge funds have rules regarding who can participate.

Yeah its weird to me that gambling is regulated at the state level while investment contracts are regulated at the federal level and therefore have nothing in common, despite the user experience of throwing your money out the window being the same

This is a motte-and-bailey fallacy that got brought up a lot by gambling proponents early on. The biggest difference is that by design investments on average will return a zero or net positive potential for return. Gambling will always return an average negative return by design.

EDIT:

There was a study that came out a month ago that showed that state by state when online sports betting became legal, there was about a $20/month reduction in retirement investments. Considering only ~12-20% of the population has taken part in sports betting, this is not an insignificant reduction in retirement investments.

One fascinating aspect is that gambling addicts are basically paying for my podcast listening habit.

So much of advertising is pushing stuff that is exploitative of some hope -- wealth, health, etc. -- the makes people susceptible to things with questionable efficacy.

The elephant in the room is that there are a small percentage of people (1% or so) who just can't function in the modern hyper-optimized, complex and competitive world. The state should take over the management of the finances of these people.

I'm of the opinion that gambling as a whole should not be regulated.The only restriction should be on using other people's money instead of your own.

It makes no sense, it is the person's money and life, and it is theirs to ruin as they wish. We are not properties of the state. If a person cannot be allowed to do what they wish with their own money, because they might harm themselves or others as a result, then how can you trust them with driving a vehicle, flying a plane, operating weapons in the military, or even owning a personal weapon?

Every gun sold to a person is a gamble on whether they use it to cause harm on others (same with the things i listed above).

This same logic applies to regulation of drugs in general as well in my opinion. Regulating other peoples lives is not the purpose of the government, especially when they're not harming others or being a nuisance to the public.

> how can you trust them with driving a vehicle, flying a plane, operating weapons in the military, or even owning a personal weapon?

Comparing Oranges to Potatoes. People involved in gambling are not stupid. They are either 1. Not quite smart or mathematically smart, so they don't understand the odds or 2. Addicted to gambling in the same way someone is addicted to Tobacco. Of course, there is 3. Having a little fun with a little money; but this is not the audience that's making money for gaming.

> People involved in gambling are not stupid.

I agree.

> Addicted to gambling in the same way someone is addicted to Tobacco

Addicted people are still responsible for their actions. case in point: drunken driving. I agree with punishing gamblers that cause harm. but gambling itself should not be regulated. Tobacco, alcohol, hard drugs,etc.. they should all be allowed. But to balance that, punishment for crime needs to be severe when you're an addict.

> I agree with punishing gamblers that cause harm.

The first people gamblers harm is their own family - long before any formal crime has been committed.

That's not right, many gamblers don't even have a family. Are you saying people's lives should be regulated so that they don't spend their money in ways that their family wouldn't want it spent? I mean, last I checked, divorce, emancipation is still allowed.

How can we regulate what a person does with their hard earned wages from their labor and precious time and then still claim that person has liberties of any kind? If you think about it, this is the one and only fundamental liberty that is foundational to all other liberties.

Even slaves get food and shelter as well as some freedom of movement and expression. What they don't get is to be able to buy what they want and own it.

> vehicle, flying a plane, operating weapons in the military, or even owning a personal weapon?

3 of these require significant training or at least licensing and the last one is banned in the majority of western nations.

I'm with you that personal responsibility and freedom should be the norm, but active predators (Drug dealers, bookies, social media companies) should probably have limits put on what they're allowed to do.

I'm not against requiring training on math and statistics for gamblers.

For your last statement, I agree, "active predators" should be restricted or punished because their intent is to cause harm at the cost of others for profit. but if they're just selling the "drug", why should that be restricted? You can force them to inform their customers of the harm,but that's about it.

> "active predators" should be restricted or punished because their intent is to cause harm at the cost of others for profit.

This is the entire gambling industry! Do you think they don't know that their best customers are addicts who are blowing their kids' college fund?

You're probably right, so regulate and restrict the gambling industry, not individuals.

> how can you trust them with driving a vehicle, flying a plane, operating weapons in the military, or even owning a personal weapon?

These are all fairly strongly regulated. Did you choose bad examples on purpose?

No, but gamblers are allowed to do all those things. and I am not against requiring a license for gambling either, so long as the barrier for entry is reasonable.

Oh ok, I thought you were saying it shouldn't be regulated at all.

So like,what about making gambling work like credit cards: you get a license that allocates a monthly cap based on a combination of credit score and income. It starts very low and scales up to, I don't know, 10% of income?

I wouldn't like that either. Instead, maybe issue licenses to gamblers and like with a credit score, the fact that you have a gamblers license can affect things like getting loans, renting things, what you can buy,etc.. Let others who suffer an increased risk based on interacting with you refuse to do so, or incur additional penalties. Your monthly cap idea still nannies citizens.

We should be free to ruin ourselves if we so wish, but if we are set on a track like that, others should be made aware so they can react as they wish.

Same with drugs, if you get a drug use license, then employers can deny you jobs, you may not be allowed to drive, be trusted with loans,etc..

You get rights, but they come with responsibilities and restrictions.

The thing is when people around me are "ruining their lives" it does affect me.

Crime goes up, bankruptcy goes up, corruption in sports goes up, etc.

I agree that people should be given freedoms, but we live in societies and people aren't independent, disconnected, autonomous units.

Too bad, that still doesn't give you authority over other people, before they do something harmful to you. You can policy sports corruption and crime, regulate bankruptcy more,etc.. but you don't have the right to police people as a whole "just in case". I did not suggest allowing gambling to be used as an excuse to cause harm. You prevent crime by punishing it. You reduce bankruptcy by adding costs to it. (no comment on sports, since I don't think it is a net positive in society to begin with).

drug addicts and people who lose all their money gambling are a nuisance to the public.

punish the nuisance then, so long as actual harm is involved instead of simple visual displeasure. not the perceived cause. Stay out of people's lives. Society is also a nuisance to drug users and gamblers. The foundation of liberty is the protection of rights for even the most disagreeable individuals.

You don't deserve any rights or liberties if you can't accept the rights of the drug addicts,gamblers, homeless people and many more types of people out there.

It is a fundamental aspect of the human experience to self-determine one's fate.

libertarians are so incredibly cringe its unbelievable. rights don't exist. they are not a law of nature. rights are a human invented concept. rights are both created by and enforced by government. generally speaking we do try to opt for giving people as much freedom as possible, that said if certain things have a high probability of negative externalties the government both can and does make those things illegal.

This isn't about libertarianism at all. it's about justice.

It is unfair and unjust to punish someone based on probabilities. A innocent person should not be treated like a criminal. A free person shouldn't be treated like a prisoner or a slave.

The government has no authority to punish citizens because they might commit a crime. Citizens are subject to the rule of law. But in exchange for compliance to the laws, we expect a fair and just treatment under that law. That is the contract.

>The government has no authority to punish citizens because they might commit a crime

you are either being hyperbolic, you are irrationally ideological, or you haven't thought about this enough.

surely you don't think that people should be allowed to have nuclear explosives in their house because until they have actually used them they haven't actually committed a crime yet. different people can have different ideas on where that line is but you must acknowledge that it exists.

A nuke or a weapon of any kind except knives have one use, which is to harm people, they're built explicitly for that purpose, which is to harm others, so regulating their ownership and use is not a good analogy.

Maybe cars are sane analogy. You need to pass all kinds of testing and regulation to be allowed to drive a car or build and operate your own car, but only on public roads. You can in fact buy any kind of car you want or build one and operate it as you wish on your own property without any license. Even though cars can be used as dangerous and deadly weapons (terrorists use them on crowds all the time).

Yes, a line exists, that line is when you are engaging in privileged activity like driving, flying on a commercial plane or train, entering school property and such.

Maybe it might be productive if you used specific scenarios where you think allowing gambling would cause harm to others in and of itself, not as a side-effect (your nuke example is a direct effect).

maybe it would make more sense if i framed my perspective differently. i think as a default laws should offer as much agency as possible to the individual. if someone wants to smoke cigarettes even though it literally does nothing but kill them, i'm fine with that. i think that there is a threshold that can be passed whereby *on average* it starts creating serious externalities on society. if the externalities get too high i'm fine with them stepping in and making regulations restricting and potentially banning them. there are plenty of weapons and chemicals and materials that fall into this area. i think that when it comes to stuff like drugs and gambling if you do a blanket ban on them it might actually make the problem worse because it creates a black market and demand will just go there. this will be make it impossible to regulate and impossible to even know what is happening in these markets. i would suspect that a better answer is to have specific types of gambling and a form of drugs that are legal that is hopefully less damaging that people with propensity for this sort of thing could be funneled into.

I think you have a very good point, and I agree to the most part.

My overarching objection is that such laws are simply lazy. That laziness is infringing on people's liberties. Cigarettes are a good example, they shouldn't be outright banned as we both agree, but second-hand smoking should be banned as it affects others. I would even go as far as to say smokers should have higher premiums for the rest of their lives (I was one myself) when it comes to health insurance and such deliberate mishandling of your body might even cost you priority treatment for anything subsidized by the public. I am not against consequences at all.

I think like many legal issues, it boils down to what is "reasonable". If a "reasonable" person would find that possessing a nuke is an immediate danger to the public then of course possessing one doesn't amount to the government interfering in private lives. That is not the same as gambling and drug use, where the reason for restricting them is not an immediate concern of danger but an indirect and probabilistic anticipation of harm to others, which even if true, there are many other steps that can be taken to disincentivize or punish potential harmful interactions without outright restricting those things.

For example with drug use, it should only be allowed under medical supervision, when used outside of your own property. And as I stated earlier, gambling is bad financial decision making, so the fact that you are gambling and the details of your gambles should be made very public, so that others can steer clear of you as needed. It shouldn't be possible for a person to use a joint bank account to fund a gamble (to protect spouses and families), spouses should get notifications when their other half is gambling,etc.. That's hard and specific law making, instead of the lazy and unjust law making we have today.

_Sports_ is not some basic fact, moral good in the world. It's just games. If you want to argue against something you need to find some other reason than it's inconvenient to professional sports.

Article is correct. We should probably also ban government-run gambling (lotteries).

Yes. Lotteries always seemed like the thin side of a wedge that made other gambling seem less bad. It's also kind of evil for a government to prey on its own citizens' innumeracy.

if you accept that people are going to gamble no matter what the government does, a state run lottery may not be considered predatory if it siphons money off of organized crime numbers games.

the predatory part is the siphoning money off from the lottery to pay for "shools,etc." but if there is inelastic demand for lottery gambling, that also makes rational sense.

So complete prohibition seems bad: it drives activities underground, makes them the purview of organized crime, and is ultimately an insult to the freedom and agency of adult human beings to make their own choices.

But turbocharged advertising and online “engagement” and “monetization” hyper-optimization by unscrupulous growth hacker types who heavily optimize for excessive and reckless gambling by targeting, with malice aforethought, people with issues and aggressively try to recruit new people into a risky activity seems maybe even worse?

How about door #3: keep it legal to avoid most or all of the downsides of prohibition, and absolutely fuck up the profitability of hyper marketing it?

So many problems have plausible if not compelling solutions if you always care more about the welfare of the vulnerable than anyone, anywhere, who is getting shit rich by doing harm.

It took a long time, but we finally took the gloves off with Big Tobacco. You can still buy cigarettes, but you so rarely see them anymore. Even I gave up (which I swore I’d never do) because it’s just impossible to smoke most places, they’re not sold everywhere anymore, and it’s expensive as hell.

There will always be diehard smokers, but it’s not the crisis it once was and you still don’t have drug dealers involved.

How is this not the playbook?

There are various comments about fixing matches.

There’s a meme/“theory” in retail options trading about “max pain”. Wherein, the stock price will move as to maximize the total amount people lose on options.

I don't think legalizing it was a mistake.

I think allowing the betting houses and websites to advertise as prolifically as they have been (with very little restrictions) was a massive mistake. Advertising for sports betting is fucking EVERYWHERE.

And athletes, such as LeBron James, who while already a billionaire, decided to take the money and advertise for betting companies. When you've got enough money to convince a billionaire with a pretty good image to advertise for you, something is amiss.

Having it unregulated as fuck was, I can go bet anywhere anytime and get drunk there too. It should be way more serious, then people wouldn't go there to chill.

like a lot of libertarian experiments in the US, we seem to have done it in the worst possible way. implementation matters.

if it had been up to me, sports gambling should have been restricted to physical locations, and marketing prohibited or highly restricted (perhaps only print advertisements in local markets informing people where they can gamble). perhaps also allow an existing customer to place bets via a telephone call.

the way I think about it is, the main reason you want to legalize a vice is to prevent criminals from selling it.

so you want legal operators to have an easier time doing business than the criminals, so they can outcompete them -- but just barely.

app on your phone and unlimited marketing on the internet and primetime television goes way too far.

They eliminated the "friction" associated with sports betting, threw in some easy credit and the result was exactly what you'd expect.

The biggest argument in favor of sports betting is that it's a prediction market.

Prediction markets are the best way we know of to synthesize the opinions of many parties. They should be protected as a class of economic free speech, but in the US there is an effort to eliminate prediction markets on the most important issues (like the outcome of an election).

Think about what it implies for the government to be against a kind of organized assembly that causes citizens to become more informed and allows individuals to de-risk the outcome of events.

Predicting the outcome of a sporting event is pointless.

There is zero risk associated with the result.

Gambling in general is not addictive unless you have adhd and are extremely impulsive. That leads to other problems. There’s people without adhd that think it’s fun and sports betting can be a winner not much different poker. They have computer models that are profitable funds a lot of stuff in a world where people think controlling inflation is a good idea. Most people here sounds like they have Parkinson’s or something. Go play catch or lift some weights

Maybe they can stammer like the swift compiler on type annotations or that Bachman turner overdrive song you ain’t seen nothing yet

They legalized online gambling basically. It's a online casino, using sports as the random medium. Casino for all.

It's shocking to me that the very same groups that want you to think drug legalization is a good idea are pearl clutching over gambling. In the grand rankings of vices, drugs are significantly worse.

Gambling is a vice, no doubt, but honestly Americans are too puritanical about it.

You all sound like you have adhd. If you can’t budget you will never get a corporate job and youll be odd about panhandling and asking for money. Gambling is fun when budgeted, sports gambling can have a positive expected value, unlike the games, but they can be fun. There’s people that don’t have money anxiety you live in a money bubble. Go play catch. Most people here need to see a doctor about getting perscribed adderal.

This is one of the most Reddit comments I’ve ever read on hacker news.

Why? If someone loses all of their money gambling they’d have to ask everyone for money anxiety free. That’s what a CEO does in general idk what to tell you what do you think y combinator is if guys all want to be a millionaire you can ask 1 million people for a dollar and then gamble and then do it again

Your account is 9 mins old. You started an account to defend sports gambling? Ok. Corporate sports gambling thanks you for your service.

You’re probably naricistic and miss the point of freedom and what the community wants. If everyone wants to gamble all jobs would be at the casino because that’s what people want to do.

Anyways life more about the time budget

Most people here need to be put on a stimulant because they can't control a gambling addiction?

Why, yes, that's a marvellous idea.

Adhd is executive distinction, that’s where attorneys will tell you gambling addiction isn’t real, but they’re brain is malformed and need a stimulant, yes, because they don’t understand what normal is and will hyper focus on money and won’t be able to budget, and won’t able to raise money due to fear of rejection. Most people that raise money don’t care they ask a million people some say yes some say no. For people like that, the casino isn’t great for them they’ll get there felling hurt…that doesn’t mean it should be banned attorneys think it’s funny I think you guys miss the point on certain things.

Stimulants are scientifically shown to cure adhd symptoms, so cigarettes can help too…they just tend to be dirty

There’s a difference between science, computer science, and engineering. A lot of people miss out on that too that’s the point of “non-logic” and the left side of your brain

looking at wallstreetbets is it any different than allowing people to speculate in the stock market with options and derivatives. Its sad when it comes to sports people took notice that oh its ruining their sport but why dont they see how this same gambling is ruining their own countries and world economies.

I don't understand why the free speech rules everyone wants aren't also trying to be applied to these platforms.

While betting may be harmful the cash rich industry has helped many to escape poverty by enabling money laundering.

What do we do in general with behavioral addictions that people can't seem to handle broadly?

I personally love sports betting and I’m glad that it’s legal to do and I don’t have to send money to the Caribbean to do it. For me $10 is enough to get me interested in a game and I don’t gamble compulsively.

The cat is out of the bag with sports betting, any teenager can open up a Bovada account with no verification.

I’m happy to talk about advertising and reasonable regulation but banning sports betting at this point seems silly.

Let's say it like it is, it is the legalization of profiting off of an addiction that is the mistake.

I think the best equilibrium is probably when gambling is illegal but unofficially tolerated as long as it doesn't cause too many problems.

Some people are going to gamble, but it should be dangerous. You should have to deal with the mob. It should reflect the risk inherent in gambling. It should be understood as a kind of shady and degenerate thing to do, not like a normal hobby.

I place the lottery in the same category. Punitive on those who least likely can afford it.

You don't say.... something banned for decades was not a actually banned by accident!

If you don't legalize it, it will still happen, just in a more clandestine way.

ban the advertising around it

I worked briefly building sports betting software after being a part of an acquisition at a major brand.

The biggest surprise for me was that the people running the company were gamblers too. If someone beat them, then they wanted to beat them back (which made no sense to me… given that the statistics are running over the group, not an individual). If someone beat them badly, then it was okay because it’s good marketing (and the player would always bring that money back, they’d say). They would also say “all gamblers are addicts”. Rivalry with their players high, respect low… Except perhaps for their “Whales” where the social contract between the two parties was more explicit. Also worth noting that from what is saw, 80% of revenue comes from <10% of players.

There is no differentiation to the company between sports, slots, lotteries and other games.There are no noble games, just ways to extract money from confused or vulnerable people. Crash games seem to be deluding people the most currently.

I don’t believe it’s possible for these companies to behave anything close to ethically. Regardless of regulation, the business model is corrupt.

At conferences anyone I spoke to would say “you can’t leave the gaming industry, the money is just too good”. Which is why I promptly left.

Maybe there could be some sort of identity based limit on how much anyone can gamble in a month?

Couldn't fully read the article though.

If betting wasn't allowed it would be significant income loss for sports teams as well. Maybe you might think that they don't need that much money, but that is subjective.

hell, make it opt-in even!

I think the core of the issue is that, much like social media addiction or nicotine pouches, the source of addiction is instantly available at any time in your pocket. There is no barrier to initiate the activity, even with smoking/vaping at least you had to go outside to get your fix.

When I was going to college I had multiple friends that would compulsively gamble whenever there was down time. They wouldn't have lost half the money they did if gambling only took place at Casinos, or at least at dedicated terminals.

I like nicotine pouches because its just plant fibre soaked/sprayed with nicotine. Its convenient like gum.

That being said I only do the 4mg option and usually after work with a beer. I dont think I'm addicted to them because I dont do them compulsively.

I know some people use nicotine to deal with anxiety or restlessness or something. I kind of like the buzz, since nicotine is a poison sourced from a plant.

Sorry tangential rant lol

How do sports teams derive income from this? Is it just in the sense of increased viewership and the possibility of sponsorships from the gambling companies? As far as I understand they do not get any money from sports gambling directly and are mostly not allowed (through internal ethics rules) to do any gambling themselves.

"Miller says the NFL doesn’t get a cut of the amount wagered with these companies. But the NFL and its television rights holders, which pay the NFL more than $13 billion a year to broadcast games, have seen a boon from advertising by the legal gaming industry." (https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/10/business/nfl-super-bowl-sport...)

So we're talking about the indirect income from advertising.

The article is poorly worded -- yes, advertisers spend a lot of money, but were those advertisers to disappear, other advertisers would buy those spots. So the question becomes, to what degree does the induced demand raise the marginal profit for advertising spots. And how that in turn affects how much networks are willing to pay the NFL for licensing, and that in turn affects how much the teams get in kickbacks from the NFL. So likely marginal at best.

The flipside is also how much viewership increases because of sports gamblers watching that would otherwise not watch. Also difficult to confidently assert the value of.

Betting companies are willing to pay far more compared to other industries since they gain the most from this sponsorship as well.

I am not from the US and NFL could probably handle it, but I am from a smaller country with smaller clubs. If betting companies sponsorship was banned many clubs, even in the top league, couldn't play on the pro or even the semi pro level.

They gain the most, but in addition they benefit from the sport being popular so they are willing to help invest in making sure that would be the case.

I live in a smaller country and all sponsors pretty much are betting companies. These sponsors by far are most lucrative compared to your usual brands exactly because of how much they make from betting. Other industries wouldn't be able to pay as much for sponsorship since due to not so large viewership they wouldn't gain all of it back.

Negatives aside if you are fine with the losses it could be viewed a bit like donating to the football clubs.

Larger football clubs could be fine taking pay cuts etc, but there would likely be many smaller clubs that can't pay their players on the pro or semi pro level any longer.

Who is fighting against this veritable scourge? I'd love to join in!

I'm willing to lay 2-1 that it wasn't a mistake.

To what extent should society protect people from themselves?

I didn't even know this was legal. When did that change??

I think regulating or limiting ads is a decent direction

I would like to see this get legal traction just to see the industry panic and writhe.

I wonder if it would be possible to create an app that, instead of acting as the house, merely facilitates sports bets between friends. Post betting lines, let people propose and accept bets on those lines with their friends, take a nominal cut.

It's probably both illegal for some reason and unfeasible because it deliberately limits its own profits, but it would make for much healthier relationships with gambling than what we have currently.

We definitely need to pump the brakes on this...

Sports gambling ads have become so pervasive that it’s hard to watch a game without being bombarded by manipulative promotions that say stuff like "BET $5, GET $200 INSTANTLY"...

I became a recreational sports bettor in college through offshore books. I always felt like I was doing something extremely dangerous and so was very careful - probably in large part because of the societal stigma surrounding sports betting. I feel like I benefited from having instilled in me a greater fear of gambling dangers that I wouldn't have now if I just started gambling after seeing all these prominent sports talking heads discussions, social media influencer promotions, and constant TV advertisements.

Trying stricter regulations feels like a no-brainer before totally reverting to a federal ban.

At a minimum, we should match the intensity of regulations for other legal vices: - National min. age of 21 for any state that legalizes sports betting, matching drinking regulations that were set 40 years ago. - Restrict advertising to audiences where you can confidently report that >70% of which are adults >= 21 years old, similar to recreational marijuana advertisement regulations in states like CA. - More intense warnings should follow each ad, clearly emphasizing the risks of addiction and the likelihood of financial loss, similar to the mandatory disclosures in prescription drug ads.

Additionally, for the unique vice of sports gambling and it's associated societal dangers, there should be: 1. More intense restrictions on ads: a. Clearly disclose all stipulations. For example, language like ‘BET $5, GET $200’ should be accompanied by fine print explaining that the bonus bet can’t be withdrawn, and any winnings must be wagered multiple times before withdrawal. b. Transparent statistics of users' outcomes at specific sports book. Something like: "Y% of our customers who have accepted a bonus bet have successfully turned it into real cash in their bank account. The remaining (100-Y)% lose it all." 2. Regulations on sports book's social media accounts promoting individual bettors' winnings - i.e. Sports books shouldn't be able to promote a story about someone winning $100k on a $1 20-team parlay. 3. Roadblocks, at a minimum, on betting losses for vulnerable groups -- e.g. after a bettor has lost X% of their initial deposit/yearly salary/net worth/etc, the bettor's account should be restricted in some way unless they say to a real person on the phone: "YES, I AM AWARE OF HOW MUCH MONEY I'VE LOST. I WISH TO RISK LOSING MORE MONEY." 4. A requirement that all bets be placed with money deposited via debit card/check/cash. A ban on taking on any kind of debt (like using a credit card to deposit funds into betting account) to place a bet seems reasonable.

Touched upon in "The State of the Culture 2024" By The Honest Broker.

Many graphics showing how art was swallowed by entertainment which was swallowed by distraction which was swallowed by addiction which is what Silicon Valley wants.

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-state-of-the-culture-202...

Gambling is a stupidity tax.

Humans would be absolutely nowhere as a species without the gambling trait, we would never have left the trees, never mind the caves, we need a certain percentage of the population to be turned on by risk and uncertainty, because the majority are terrified of it.

If we are hell-bent on forcing people to play this artificial money game against their will, with no opt in or out, they're just born and told they now have to work all their life for this piece of paper that some apes printed, then they should at least have total control over that money, anything less and the entire game is unjustifiably immoral.

Not everyone has their cushy little tech salary like you, the majority of people hate their lives and gambling provides an escape just like drugs, and the slim hope of winning big - something that was taken away from real life. The masses have been drained of any hope of improving their situations the old-fashioned way.

If you want to reduce self-destructive behaviour, make a fairer game, make it a game worth playing, offer decent rewards, make it a level playing field instead of the 1% owning 90% of the game. The average shelter in America costs $500k and the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and you wonder why people are gambling? Fuck me.

As an aside, a lot of smart, high quality people are drawn to the puzzle of sports betting, and are skilled enough to get out of slavery with it, why should those people lose their out? Their intelligence and self-control to beat the game was their birthright, just as an expensive education was likely yours.

Fundamentally, it's an issue of freedom, the right to self-destruct, the right to throw your life away, as an act of protest or otherwise. I wouldn't want to live in a world where I'm not allowed to put everything I have on the line against someone else who's willing to take it on. The government has no business infringing on that basic freedom of exchange between individuals.

And you know gambling will only be the start, eventually they will come for something you like because when it comes to removing freedoms and rights, one thing always leads to another. Outlawing gambling does nothing to change the circumstances that are churning out self-destructive humans, it doesn't fix the root cause, our society is generating broken people and their needs for escape will always be met in any remotely free world.

This isn’t about outlawing gambling. In the US it was legal to gamble between friends on sports events but businesses weren’t allowed to be involved. That changed in 2018 and business were allowed to be involved and then everything went down the drain.

What if I told you that in Sweden, the state runs a gambling ring called Svenska Spel.

Couldn't read full article due to paywall but Singapore has a really ingenious system where family members can report you as a gambling addict which bans you from all gambling facilities in-person & online since you need your ID to enter/signup.

Almost any scalable activity optimised for making money is socially harmful. No doubt about it. Dwelling more on this matter risks leading us to outright Communism though which is more harmful than all of those petty harms put together.

Yeah, huge mistake. I see way too many people casually addicted to wasting their money and burning it for no good reason. I enjoy playing fantasy football, but gambling on it is a sad use of your hard earned money that will only impoverish people and keep them working for the man.

yes ,, this is not a good thing to gamble

You think?

betting is entrepreneurship for suckers. it can only exist in places with zero upwards mobility as a sort of firefly at the end of the tunnel for the eternal serfs. Any libertarian society tolerating it,proofs its no longer a libertarian society with chances for all just feudalism were the aristocrats play meritocrars to calm their consciousness.

you think a libertarian society solves the problems of unequal distribution of wealth? Or do you simply want libertarian gambling casinos to collect all the money from suckers, and the government should stay out of it?

I have nothing against gambling as a libertarian, but I don’t want to be liable for people who made poor life choices. I don’t want to pay for the welfare of people who ruined their financials or health, nor do I want to look at homeless people on my commute.

If what we’re going to have is a society where I’m paying for the housing and health care of other people, I’d like to be able to dictate with an iron fist what the other people are allowed to do and be.

How about alcohol consumption? That surely ruins a lot of lives as well and causes loads of health issues.

Yes, the exact same reasoning applies to my stance on alcohol and all self-harming behavior. Did you really have to ask?

This is a really great: You don't mind when companies optimize for making money even if a company makes other people addicted to gambling or similiar things but then you don't want to help these people because its the peoples fault.

You know why you think like this? Because you are, by accident, on the side which benefits most of libertarianism.

You really think a human becomes homeless because of 'poor life choices'? No. They become homeless because they never got a chance, have neurological issues, bad parents, bad upbringing, whatever.

Its a lot easier to be a libertarian when you won the birth lottery... Man you are ignorant

The company doesn’t make individuals do anything. You have power over yourself, and trying to shift blame is the most naive idiocy present in human nature. You represent exactly that.

Also yes, a large enough majority of homeless people got so because of poor life choices that the minority that didn’t isn’t even worth bringing up.

You’re also entirely correct that some people are destined for more success than others due to predetermined factors. That’s absolutely fine.

"Facebook didn't MAKE you use its services, it just employed an army of psychologists and coders to make the app as addictive as possible, so get fucked for being weak-willed."

You got it. Your worldview might next have you turn around and write about the poor job market for psychologists and coders in another discussion.

Props for sticking to your guns but also fuck you.

Yeah I might be getting a lot of excitement out of all these games now but I could do without the losses.

Maybe time to quit?

to hold the libertarian belief that “people will do it anyway so might as well make it legal”, you must believe marketing and ease of access have no impact on usage.

All the arguments here apply stronger to alcohol prohibition. Terrible drug. Banned in Islam for a reason. Source of domestic violence. Source of drink driving. Valueless. I am very libertarian but this drug must be banned.

Thanks for letting me decide.

This, along with innumerable other things like lifting the ban on usurious interest rates, is ultimately a consequence of the same phenomenon Nietzsche describes as “the death of God.”

We have forgotten the deeper reasons that certain things were prohibited or discouraged, assuming that these rules were only there because of a belief in a religion society doesn’t follow anymore. That was a naive view and it turns out that many “old” rules are actually pragmatic social codes disguised as beliefs. This isn’t limited to a particular tradition, either: pretty much every major religion has frowned upon things like gambling.

And so in the absence of any real coherent philosophy that aims to deal with complex problems like gambling, addiction, or excessive interest rates, you’re only going to get an expansion of what is already dominant: markets.

Don’t expect this to change until knowledge of ethics and philosophy becomes widespread enough to establish a new mental model for thinking about these issues.

What are usurious interest rates? Is some amount of interest ok?

Depends on whom you ask, but this case had a major effect on removing restrictions:

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

Prior to that, usury laws existed in most states that restricted consumer loans to something like 5-13%.

Personally I don’t have an issue with the concept of interest itself, but if you look at the huge amount of Americans in debt paying 20-30% on credit cards, it certainly seems excessive and usurious to me.

It depends (especially with inflation), and yes.

So it's ok to have high interest rates with the hope it will cause unemployment in the hope that reduces inflation?

Probably yeah, that's not usurious. Usurious is where you are basically using the loan to give you an excuse to repo / sell off the assets or collateral of the debtor.

>using the loan to give you an excuse to repo / sell off the assets or collateral of the debtor.

<cough> buy here pay here car lots <cough>.

People cannot borrow money from the central bank.

Also, the deflationary effects of high interest rates are not because it causes unemployment, but because it reduced the rate of increase of the money supply.

Of course, lowered money is recessionary, which leads to unemployment which puts downward pressure on wages; but wages aren't the reason for inflation - the increase in monetary mass is.

Overall, I like this post. Solid reasoning.

This part I have small nitpick about:

    > Also, the deflationary effects of high interest rates are not because it causes unemployment, but because it reduced the rate of increase of the money supply.

I would prefer to say: reduced money supply has an indirect effect upon unemployment. If it costs more to borrow money, corps will expand slower (fewer new jobs), or reduce costs (labour) to increase profits.

Right.

The Bank of England quoted reason is explicitly to suppress demand: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/how-do-higher-int...

It's hard to see how that's not synonymous with increased unemployment, particularly given the oft quoted Phillips curve and the NAIRU.

Although not directly interest, but in similar vein:

There was once a so called fair profit rate of 4% in the middle ages and early modern age, in Hungary. Greek wine traders operating there featured the number 4 on their seals and ornaments of their houses. (They were also often tried for violating this rule)

In those ages of course there was no constant inflation in the current sense, gold standard was used for payments, etc.

source, in Hungarian language, the site of the greek ethnic minority's cultural institute (the pictures feature one such ornament): https://gorogintezet.hu/kultura/2022/07/gorog-kereskedok-sze...

https://gorogintezet.hu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/15264.jpg

The entire concept of inflation comes from the fact that various Med. cultures figured out you could issue coinage with a high percentage of gold and then slowly drop the percentage over time to increase the purchasing power of the government. It got insanely bad at some points, with "gold" coinage being less than 50% gold. Inflation wasn't just constant, it was an everyday fact of life.

> The entire concept of inflation comes from the fact that various Med. cultures figured out you could issue coinage with a high percentage of gold and then slowly drop the percentage over time to increase the purchasing power of the government. It got insanely bad at some points, with "gold" coinage being less than 50% gold. Inflation wasn't just constant, it was an everyday fact of life.

I'm not an expert on this - how does this idea differ from that of 'seigniorage' where the sovereign can profit from the creation of money?

Your example only addresses the buying power of the sovereign; it's not obvious that it should affect the prices of goods between private parties.

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

Devaluing the new currency by adding lesser metals will also devalue existing currency that is "pure" as you aren't able to trust the value of the currency anymore, so the value of the existing pool of money will drop.

Its at a smaller scale, but it can be seen with counterfeit currency today. Cash-heavy businesses have to absorb whatever amount of counterfeits they accept, so they are really valuing your dollar at $0.99 if they might have to throw it out.

This is a fair question. It is arbitrary, but usually over 20-30%.

Depends who you ask. Historically, no amount of compound interest was allowed because it is immoral to receive what is not yours.

Then, in the Middle Ages, Catholic theologians added nuance introducing a concept of time value of money - ie when you lend out $100 you also lose the ability to use that $100 for the time of the loan. The concept of a small interest rate was adopted.

Which is fine, except it opened the flood gates until we eventually got the high interest rates we have today.

What makes our rates usurious? That they are issued with the issuer knowing the principal will never be paid off.

As others said, it depends who you ask. The Augustinian view was that usury isn't defined by the rate but when, and I'm explaining this rather poorly, interest is charged for the use of money. Hence "usury." So a typical American mortgage would be usurious in the Augustinian definition, even if the interest rate were, say, 1%.

The alternative non-usurious loan would require you to post some other kind of security to receive the money, such as giving the lender the use of some other productive land until the principal debt is paid. More like pawning something at a pawn shop and then buying it back when you get paid.

If you're curious, Martin Luther (of Lutheranism) wrote on this [1], summarized here [2] although the original is quite legible. Mercantilism (i.e. profit-making on the exchange of goods) was a very popular way of making ones' livelihood in his time and place, so it was a frequent question religious leaders were asked to weigh in on. Essentially, "how much profit is too much profit?"

[1]: (PDF) https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=501...

[2]: (PDF) https://history.hanover.edu/hhr/18/HHR2018-fergus.pdf

Gambling was already an issue 100 years ago, when we were closer to God, allegedly. "God" and religion also aren't particularly interested in gambling, or it would have been forbidden in those holy books. On the other hand, you can blame Protestantism directly for subverting individualism to greed, and hence for exploiting human frailty, such as gambling addiction.

The only working moral on this mortal coil is a dose of empathy for your fellow human (and if you can bring yourself to it: your fellow animal). It doesn't require a new mental model, just proper stewardship.

Well Nietzsche died in 1900 and was writing about forces he perceived as already under way, long before he was alive. So I don’t think using a hundred years ago as an example really works, and even then, gambling wasn’t the massive legal operation it is today.

And yes, most religions have weighed in on gambling as most societies have been shaped by religion. Secularism is a recent thing.

If you think Nietzsche's writing are representative, then we've never been "close to God".

> Secularism is a recent thing.

Sokrates and Buddha would like a word.

The death of God idea by Nietzsche is not about a real being actually dying. It is about the concept losing influence on society and what that means for things like ethics.

Socrates and Buddha were 2,500 years ago and I don’t think I’d describe them as being secularists. Secularism is something that came out of the Enlightenment, in the West at least. It is absolutely a recent thing for the purposes of the discussion.

To describe Buddha as a secularist would be projecting our modern values onto a man 2500 years ago.

Reincarnation, the soul, karma, etc aren't exactly compatible with materialistic secularism.

    > most religions have weighed in on gambling as most societies have been shaped by religion

Really? Except Islam, are there rules against gambling in Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, or Buddhism?

Yes, at least for Christians.

I don't know if it comes verbatim from the Bible, but there are many denominations that find that gambling is sinful. Direct prohibitions from the scripture aren't the only source of religious rules - especially for secular questions.

As another example, many denominations have strict rules against alcohol - despite the many positive stories about alcohol in the bible and the role of wine during communion.

Right, Gambling is an extension of greed and gluttony according to Christianity, which are both considered Sins.

"Ancient Jewish authorities frowned on gambling, even disqualifying professional gamblers from testifying in court."

"The [Hindu] text Arthashastra (c. 4th century BCE) recommends taxation and control of gambling."

"The Buddha stated gambling as a source of destruction in Singalovada Sutra. Professions that are seen to violate the precept against theft include working in the gambling industry."

Instead of asking a lazy question as a challenge, you could have spent 3 seconds looking this up. It wasn't particularly hard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling#Religious_views

Baptists are strictly against gambling - GA introduced free college education funded by the lottery to legalize the state lottery (GA was losing a fortune to cross state gambling).

The largest Christian denomination, the Roman Catholic Church, teaches that, while games of chance aren't intrinsically evil (ie running an MC simulation), and low stakes gambling is allowed (raffle), gambling must be

- fair. That's obvious

- even odds for all participants

Presumably, no house advantage

- not be pathological

You cannot play if you're addicted to gambling, have an addictive personality, or often that an addiction could arise

- not involve very high stakes as the money would have been better spent on the poor

No $10 000/hand table.

Any claim a state in the US introduced "free college education funded" by a gambling measure is severely wrong. There is nothing "free" about collegiate education. US States simply reduce funding for education by diverting the money elsewhere then claim revenue from gambling is needed to fund education. In the event that gambling revenue is higher than expected, funds are furthered reduced until the status quo is maintained.

In GA, GA residents with B-ish averages get free tuition to attend GA universities.

Including GaTech, a top5 eng school, that requires an A average to get in.

Source: dealing with undergrads complaining about their grades and their effect on their scholarship.

EDIT: I agree with what you maybe claiming that "education" does not justify legal gambling. And you're certainly right that most states abuse this argument and the fungible nature of money to just slosh money around.

EDIT: the lotto money is put in a fund that goes to pre-K programs and scholarships. The average required to keep the scholarship is set by the fund's size.

But the other half of “God is dead” according to Nietzsche is that nobody has yet realized. I don’t think 100 years is outside the timeframe he’d predict the consequences to take shape.

Yes and I think that society at large still "hasn't realized," with actions like this removal of restrictions against gambling as a prime example of a consequence.

> "God" and religion also aren't particularly interested in gambling, or it would have been forbidden in those holy books.

The Quran, which id consider among those as a "Holy book" condemns gambling pretty outright multiple times.

To add a high level context, Islam forbids gambling and interest bearing loans (Riba) because they're considered taking people's money unjustly. Allah says in the Quran: "O you who have believed, indeed, intoxicants, gambling, [sacrificing on] stone alters [to other than Allah], and divining arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan, so avoid it that you may be successful." 5:90 "...But Allah has permitted trade [buying and selling] and has forbidden interest..." 2:275

> Gambling was already an issue 100 years ago, when we were closer to God, allegedly. "God" and religion also aren't particularly interested in gambling

No doubt it was. Workers were alienated before the industrial revolution too, and we were already emitting CO2 before the 1950s, but the scale of the problem changed in a very impactful way.

Of course I doubt we can get reliable statistics from 1920s, but I don't think you should disregard their argument just because it was happening before. Gambling is as old as numbers, and it's not going to go away, but we can still look for the factors that drastically increased the magnitude of the issue.

I have a trivial example: saying grace. As a lapsed catholic I found all manner of religious traditions extremely tedious as a child and especially as a teenager. I expunged all of them as soon as I turned 18. But recently we have been expressing gratitude before meals. This helps me slow down as I've always been a rapid eater and suffered indigestion; I also enjoy the food more as a result. The grace prayer is gratitude to God in whom I no longer believe. But I think acknowledging the enormous role played by pure chance in our lives is very important.

I am the opposite of you, a lapsed atheist I suppose. And I noticed that among the religious there is an openness to professing gratitude about everything. Amongst my secular friends, there is rarely a time anyone professes thankfulness (outside receiving something new).

It's not as if the latter are ingrates, but the social ritual of showing gratitude is not there among them, and maybe in some small way, that does breed less thankfulness in the long run...

What is for you the purpose (or result) of (undirected) thankfulness?

I find religious people passionate about following the rituals of their religion (for many more than the intention), in a similar way as atheists are passionate about other rituals (their sport, their eating routines, etc.).

For me the absence of thankfulness equals more with awareness. Should I be thankful I have a house? I prefer to be annoyed other people don't have, or that I can't do better (ex: have a house that generates less carbon, etc.).

I found this to be a good answer: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41667503

There's a major problem with having too little of a sense of agency. From that we see cycles of poverty and violence from people who seem unable to help themselves. I think this problem is widely recognized.

There's however also a problem with too much agency. It breeds anxiety, discontent, unhappiness. Not everything in your life is under your control, and expressing undirected gratitude is one way of acknowledging that.

The purpose? To remember that what we have was given to us. To be grateful we were given the gift of life. To be grateful that it was given with intention and not randomly.

The result? I definitely find it's helpful navigating the ups and downs in life. Like any other skill, if you practice gratitude you can be grateful even when you've had a significant loss, and it really helps you pull through that. Vice versa you can remain humble through significant improvements in life.

I think acknowledging the huge role played by chance in your home ownership (and elsewhere in your life) is very important to stay humble, and to have more correct beliefs and fewer incorrect ones. I call it gratitude.

Not a native English speaker, but when I hear "thankfulness" I kind of hear "to someone/something" (not that much for "gratitude"). Now "humble" I resonate much more with, but I don't see it connected to "thankfulness". People can be "thankful" to someone and feel very entitled at the same time.

Humans have been fighting against "chance" for the whole evolution (chance of starving if you don't catch something, chance of suffering if you take a bug, etc.). I fully agree, you should not feel responsible for it, but you should not like it (or thank it) either.

The older I get the more I wonder about how strange it is to be anything at all. How crazy it is to take it for granted.

I was dead for what we assume to be billions of years since this universe popped up, and soon I will be for what we understand to be far, far longer. These moment are precious, and those meals and the people we share them with are too. It makes so much sense to express gratitude for them.

That little moment to remind yourself that it’s all borrowed from the universe and will need to be given back is, I think, essential to actually living. Without that appreciation, does any of it really matter at all? Without it you’re only seeking the next thing to desire. Eventually there won’t be a next thing to desire, and you’ll have never had a chance to savour any of it.

That’s an interesting perspective, and it makes sense it works. Thankfulness is known to provide a lot of psychological benefits, such as greater appreciation of the thing you are thankful for.

Where it goes wrong though is if we take it too far and start connecting this to some non-existent deity, which in turn makes us construct an incorrect model of the world (such as if we’re not thankful for the food, then next year there will be a drought as a punishment).

I suppose codifying beneficial practices into religion or spiritual beliefs is just part of being human.

I think you're attempting to indict Christianity via a faulty understanding of its most basic precepts.

> (such as if we’re not thankful for the food, then next year there will be a drought as a punishment).

It's funny that you mention this, because two thousand years ago, a new religious movement came up that believed exactly that (Christianity).

Why not use a more suitable speech?

Also, I think it depends on how you come to these rituals. If it's just something you grew up with there's a good chance it's just some words you stumble through before a meal.

Try saying an Our Father before going to bed. As a therapeutic.

It has the advantage that it is compatible with most (all?) preligions, certainly the Abrahamic ones.

Try it as a therapeutic. To release all the angst and problems before going to bed.

(If you recall your catechesis, that's laying your your problems at the feet of the cross)

I'm not particularly religious, but I was raised catholic and I try to go to church with the kids every sunday. I view the ceremonies (especially church) as a meditative process. You train your psyche to associate the ceremony with entering into a particular mind state. Its not so much the specific words you are saying as much as it is the process.

In a couple of years people will feel the same way about college athletes being compensated.

I don't think it's the same though. College athletes don't get addicted to being paid for the work they put in to attract paying spectators, and they don't ruin their families lives with that addiction

There was already tons of money in college sports, having the same overall corrupting influence. Just that the students themselves didn't get any of it.

If we want less money around college sports there need to be a lot more rules all over the place to make sure there is less profit to be had. Or we could just let people get paid for labor even though they are also students, which is the fair things to do and it's something we do in just about every other context.

It's already ruined college sports, but the old regime was abusive.

Million dollar salaries for the coach, hundreds of millions poured into the administration all on the backs of kids who were ruining their health (bad hits, concussions) had no benefits, and nothing to show for it after the left [1].

It was abusive

[1] their college tuition was free, but they weren't given an education since they were expected to train 40 hr and TAs were expected to give free passing grades.

Can you explain more? not a huge sports guy but isn't this an entirely different thing? I've been looking at that situation (from a distance) as messy but overall good to see people compensated for their labor and the physical risks they take on

When the top player makes over $1M and 80% make nothing - how does that help with the point of sports.

What is the point of sports?

Sadly, I'm not sure there's a correlation here: a lot of these learnings and restrictions are newer than secularism.

I think this is honestly ahistorical. While many Christian (speaking about what I know) philosophies would certainly not label gambling a virtue, it's also not widely considered innately sinful. Yes you can do it poorly, but it was always a tolerated evil. I'm not aware of any place other than the puritanical places like America where it's even enters much into the legal discourse. As far as I'm aware, the 'old world' which you reference -- to this day -- has much laxer gambling laws than America. Imagine my surprise when I go to Europe and gambling is everywhere.

Most of Europe is more secular / less religious than America, so I don't know why it would be surprising that they have more lax gambling laws. That only supports my point. It has nothing to do with the geographical Old World.

Even in Europe's religious past, gambling was tolerated. The prohibitions on gambling are uniquely american. In general, America is very puritanical about a wealth of topics (and not just socially conservative ones), which is -- in my opinion -- a result of the descendants of the puritans losing their religion but not their genetic predisposition towards fanaticism.

this presumes everyone is going to the same conclusions about these things

"Of vices I am Gambling."

~Krishna, Gita

surprised pikachu face

and the gods of the copybook headings limped up to explain it once more...

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