Hacker News Reader

This less wrong piece by a libertarian who examines the numbers and struggles to reconcile them with his beliefs is one of the best indictments on sports betting.

There is a small proportion of the population who cannot handle this. And they become prey to the predators in the sports betting industry. These guys make money off destroying their lives.

View on HN

Good read, thanks! I was surprised that the author brushed by restrictions around marketing while concluding that limited access would be an improvement. The normalization of betting and odds via inclusion in broadcasts, celebrity endorsements, etc strikes me as a narrow precursor to harm that would be relatively easy to target and puts the onus and focus on the providers to find a sustainable business model.

The author approaches the topic from a libertarian perspective with some prior beliefs about the futility of regulation. These restrictions are not permitted within their ontology, which in my opinion makes the damning conclusion more powerful.

I strongly disagree with the authors political stance, which makes the fact that we agree on the problem / solution a nice bipartisan result

Reply on news.ycombinator.com