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Comment by laughing_man | Hacker News Reader

Certainly there are people who shouldn't gamble, but that doesn't mean gambling should be illegal. For a lot of people it's harmless fun.

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I think it’s worth reflecting on the baseline paradigm of our political system. Which is: we are perfectly fine taxing one group of people (the working non-retired) at very substantial levels so that a different group of people (the retired) can not work for 20 years at the end of their lives. Given that our backdrop is such an incredible impingement of the liberty of some for the benefit of others, I think it’s completely reasonable to likewise impinge on the freedom of people who can gamble responsibly to save people who are prone to gambling addiction from destroying their lives.

I disagree with the framing of your comment. For one thing, you get an old age pension for the extra taxes you pay when you work.

What do I get for restrictions on my liberties in this case?

> What do I get for restrictions on my liberties in this case?

A neighbor who is less likely to beat his wife because he gambled all the rent money on baseball

What does that have to do with me?

If you don’t see yourself as part of a system, a neighborhood, a community… I don’t think there’s an answer here that will resonate with you.

Oh, I do. But I see myself as part of a voluntary system.

Then restrict it to just programs that help the poor. Still an enormous share of the federal budget and, thus, a huge impingement on the liberty of people who are not poor.

A functioning society

Gambling is legal where I live and society functions just fine.

The industry can't survive on people who see it as harmless fun, that's the problem.

So is Russian roulette 83% of the time.

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