Stock market integrity is important because of their function in the economy. Scamming of gambling addicts is tragic but not detrimental to society.
1) Dismissal: Feigning or having a profound misunderstanding of how statistics work by poking at the methodology like “N=200? That’s meaningless.”
2) Apathy: “So what if some people get addicted? We can’t babysit everyone.”
3) Rationalization: “Yeah but it helps Native American reservations, so...”
4) Downplaying: "Ok problem gambling is bad, but how prevalent is problem gambling really?"
I have had family members addicted to drugs and/or alcohol and friends that have been addicted to gambling at various times. I've seen similar reactions anecdotally, but that isn't societal or scientific.
I believe it increased it about 10%.
Creating a campaign doesn't prove in anyway the specific problems caused by gambling, especially at the societal level. It only shows that there is a group willing to fund programs against gambling addictions.
In no way am I questioning the intent or value of such programs, I hope it doesn't read that way. It just isn't necessarily relevant with regards to evidence.
My point absolutely wasn't that gambling has no known negative side effects. I was asking out of curiosity if there were studies someone could link to that actually tried to test it in a controlled way.
This isn't true.
each 10 per cent increase in gambling expenditure in NSW results in more than
4,500 additional assaults
2,800 additional home break-ins
1,300 additional break and enter (non-dwelling) offences
1,400 additional motor vehicle thefts
2,300 additional stealing from motor vehicle thefts
3,800 additional fraud offences each year
> Stock market integrity is important because of their function in the economy
Some might argue that people - including gambling addicts, and those impacted by their addiction - might possibly be more important than one of many possible financial mechanisms for free enterprise.
The part the article OP linked to would be based off the line:
To put these percentage changes in terms of interest to policy makers, a 10% decrease in gambling expenditure in NSW would result in 4579 fewer ASS offences; 2867 fewer BESD offences; 1380 fewer BESND offences; 1398 fewer MVT offences; 2361 fewer SFMV offences; and 3793 fewer FRD offences 2 each yearThe search this led me down was quite illuminating, so source or not I do appreciate your comment.
Second, these markets are generating new gambling addicts, which is wildly and provably detrimental to society.
It certainly is at scale.
I used to believe that. With the legalization of all the sports betting and how fast it can drain a gambler which can then affect the gambler's family, I'm now pretty much on the other side of the fence.
Just like we banned public smoking because of the effects of secondhand smoke, I'm pretty convinced that the secondary effects of gambling means it needs to go back to being banned. I don't see an obvious way to legislate gambling to prevent the auxiliary victims. It doesn't help that getting maximum profit as a bookie means being part of a group of the scummiest people on the planet who will stoop to anything to drain people of their money as fast as possible.
> "We've done so much experimenting at Zynga with VIP. We know what's the frequency of contact. We know what call types work. We know what times to call. We know exactly who to call and when. We know who has a higher propensity to be more susceptible to our call."
You're encouraging people to waste their money just so that you can use the Wisdom of Crowds to predict something completely worthless.
If a huge enough portion of the population try to solve the statue quo of their economic problems by betting all on red, that's not gonna be great for society, including those who don't gamble.
What is the societal benefit provided by it?
Same as beer or any other drug - just a way to have some fun and not destructive provided you can control yourself.
Though, the one time I opened a CSGO gun case and felt the dopamine rush, it was way stronger than any drug I've done. Not that I'm a "highly-experienced individual", but alcohol, weed or adderall don't come close to a CSGO case. Gambling feels much riskier.
The costs to society due to alcohol and the like are massive for essentially no real benefit.
Yes, I know what happened during prohibition. That still doesn’t mean alcohol is good for society.
How would you like it if people who didn't care about your hobby started questioning the social benefit of allowing you to do it?
In this hypothetical scenario, is my hobby actively harmful to society?
Some people would enjoy killing people but we don’t let them do that.
If some people who like gambling are harmful to society in other areas of their life, that's on them.
I've personally witnessed domestic violence from a gambler taking heavy losses as they realize they're about to be in a really bad place financially. I've never seen someone get violent over messing up a few rows of knitting.
In a counterfactual where someone was doing some gambling and not doing some domestic violence, would you be still upset about the gambling in and of itself? Who does it harm?
And sure, the same could be done with lots of things. But gambling is incredibly addictive.
I've watched family members gamble themselves into homelessness before. Isn't this a harm as well? Aren't the kids harmed when they lose their home and have no college savings despite the household having a net value of several million dollars a few years before?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not 100% against all forms of gambling. I gamble from time to time myself. What I'm against is this current wave of constant, relentless push of gambling into damn near everything, all the time. Back when gambling meant you'd have to go to the riverboat or fly halfway across the country or you're only dealing with small stakes poker between friends, its radically different to apps on our phones pushing notifications all the time, every sports game spending a significant amount of screen real estate to showing betting odds, news outlets talking about polymarkets all the time.
Could one have still been a problem gambler back before smartphone betting? Sure, one of those family examples I know about related to flying out to Vegas a few times a long time ago. But the rates of that happening were far lower before.
Perhaps society should continue to restrain such hobbies.
Yes, you should be allowed to do those things as long as you do it without harming others.
>How would you like it if people who didn't care about your hobby started questioning the social benefit of allowing you to do it?
Gambling? Is people questioning gambling a new thing? Seems like the opposite is the case. Again, this is where being purposefuly obtuse gets us.
Yes, of course.
Selling drugs is also a private transaction between two people that does no harm to anyone else.
If the people buying or selling drugs are harmful to others in the rest of their life, that's on them. It shouldn't be used as a fig leaf to negatively impact people who can buy and sell drugs responsibly.
It's also the only vice you don't have to ingest an outside substance for.
to name a couple: gaming, prostitution (okay you might incidentally ingest an outside substance but YOU DON'T HAVE TO)