In no way is it better now that we have online gambling. The entire industry should be illegal and barred from participation in the traditional banking system.
I guess being able to scan each and every cell for the cancerous mutation is also a possible solution, but also a tall order.
- make detection easier and cheaper (e.g. with less invasive biopsies)
- make treatment easier and cheaper (e.g. more precise targeted treatments, making chemo a last resort instead of the only option)
Among other things. There's even emerging research that certain types of cancers could be "vaccinated" against: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02612-3
How is this different than scanning every cell in the body? You can get rid of the cancer cells you can (easily) detect, but the lengthy chemo/immuno therapy is to catch the few cancer cells that might have gotten away, even though it will harm the body in other ways.
The vaccine possibility sound pretty cool, but my understanding of cancer is that it is a ton of different diseases with different pathologies that require different solutions.
Therefore “a” solution to cancer is not really realistic.
Prediction markets are a way of effectively placing a "bounty" on something you would like to happen. Or capitalizing on one of these existing bounties because you're able to affect the result. It's a way to commodify power (and information of course, which is what these platforms bill themselves for), converting it into money, which can you can build further power with.
Good luck getting all these countries banning gambling companies too. (Maybe Brazil did with Lula, but still).
So it's not surprising someone would be against restricting gambling. The hard part is to how the gov should do it. But it's not government's job to please every single person.
Online gambling was literally illegal in most of the US a decade ago, even on the modern post-social-media internet. You could still do it by jumping through hoops like using a VPN to access foreign gambling sites, but you couldn't get it in the App Store on your iPhone, and you weren't spammed with ads for it every time you watch football.
It's not hard to imagine going back to that world; it wasn't that long ago. I used to support legalizing online gambling back then, but we've run the experiment and seen the results and it's past time to shut it down.
You may not be aware of how rapidly and historically unprecedented gambling has spread in the US in the last few years. More than half of all men aged 18-49 participate in some form of online sports betting (https://futurism.com/future-society/men-aged-18-to-49-hooked...)
10 years ago I had some friends who were into online sports betting. It required getting a VPN, accessing offshore servers, signing up for sketchy websites, and linking an online bank account. It was enough hoops to jump through that the average person wouldn't bother. Back then I would have agreed with you: let the people play! But I'm only 33 and I've watched online gambling cripple peoples' lives in just the last few years. It's a huge problem and should be made illegal again. You should not be able to access it in one click from the App Store.
There is data from the past 10 years showing a direct spike in bankruptcies, divorces, foreclosures, suicide, and domestic violence (yes, really) as soon as DraftKings-style gambling is legalized in a state.
> despair, desperation and hopelessness
These are certainly factors, and yes we should have better mental health treatment and job opportunities in the US, etc.
But it's an incomplete picture of what's happening. There are billion-dollar companies with teams of advanced psychologists crafting the most addictive experience possible, and specifically targeting problem gamblers, with these new apps. It's industrialized and predatory. People with happy fulfilling lives and careers are still falling for it, not just hopeless impoverished people. Saying it's only about mental health and despair is framing it as an individual failing and ignoring the huge industry creating it this way.
The apps and the companies behind them really brought in a dangerous paradigm shift and the data is already here to show it.
Sorry, I thought this was a discussion about gambling, not Facebook and TikTok and YouTube and Whatnot and OpenAI and EA and Roblox and every other company that invents a problem (oh no, your hair isn’t shiny!) and uses psychological manipulation to sell you a solution. :-)
Jokes aside, the fact that this sort of predatory behaviour is showing up in multiple industries with broadly similar characteristics (giant corporations with immense wealth concentrations who are not part of the communities they serve and whose only interest is in sucking up all the money) suggests that there are some deeper problems here, and that focusing on the gambling industry is focusing on a red herring (or perhaps the most obvious canary to date, to stick with bird metaphors).
> Saying it's only about mental health and despair is framing it as an individual failing
Not at all! Despair is the outcome of a broken system.