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Comment by nekzn | Hacker News Reader

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> to ban something we must be able to construct an argument that does not hinge on morality. For example, theft is bad because it deprives you of your possessions. No need to invoke morality.

Ok, I'll bite. Why is it bad to deprive you of your possessions?

And given that the house always wins, is it not depriving the gamblers of their possessions?

Gambling creates addicts, and addicts are more likely to act in desperation. They might steal, default on debt, or kill themselves and are less productive members of society. I bet societies with lots of addicts are much less likely to thrive because they carry a ton of dead weight. Thus we should ban or at least curb gambling because it hurts us all in general.

We legalized online gambling, the end result is more and earlier addiction and the added tax does not outweigh the societal cost due to loss of jobs, added crime and secondary effects of broken families on monetary, let alone ethical grounds. And they had to change the law to have more bite due to gambling sites mostly ignoring the required checks on addicted and heavy usage players, because profits have to be made. At least they got rid of the insane commercials since that's what most normal people complained about.

> For example, theft is bad because it deprives you of your possessions. No need to invoke morality.

This assertion also hinges on morality. Why is being deprived of your possessions bad. You ultimately have to reach for an ethical framework to justify it.

To deeply simplify - why do we ban things?

I'd say, because we as a group decide they are "bad".

Not sure how you can remove moral judgments from any discussion of banning

Which human law does not ultimately hinge on morality?

That literally is a type of morality, utilitarianism. Kantian deontology is not the only form of morality structure there is.

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