It's quite a complex issue. How do politicians regulate games without infringing on players' freedom? How do they discern lawful play from illegal play? Treatment, prevention and awareness is the only practical solution.
You don't seem to understand that addicts aren't free.
If, as downandout suggests, the industry can't exist without the addicts, then the choice isn't one of freedom versus tyranny. It's a choice of which infringement on freedom we find worse: a predatory industry ruining people's lives or the state saying, "Sorry, you can only play games for fun, not money."
Yes they are. Quit trying to overload the term. Are they slaves? No. Are they in prison? No. Freedom means the freedom from the tyranny of others, not from yourself.
That's your own completely arbitrary definition of freedom.
On the other hand, I am in favor of regulation sufficient to make the worst-case-scenario equal to the worst-case-scenario of unemployment. The real social problem is only externalized beyond individual and dependents when the stereotypical problem gambler starts seeking lines of credit to further their addiction; This is to be avoided at considerable cost, because not only are their incentives compromised in a manner associated with addiction, but also in a manner associated with fear of whatever private sticks their patrons have to get them to repay the debt, and they have no legal means to do so.
I don't necessarily think we should ban anything that people could get addicted to. But I'm generally in favor of stopping people making money off of addicts. And I'm thoroughly in favor of banning people from trying to create new addicts. As an example, I think the cigarette advertising bans, mandatory on-pack warnings, and high cigarette taxes are swell.
I also think there are things to do other than "intervene [...] against participants with no desire for an intervention", so I think that's a bit of a red herring.
Your use of "freedom" is one meaning, but it's not the only one, or even the main one. Note, for example, that the phrase "freedom from addiction" has 129,000 hits, and there are dozens of books with titled related to the phrase. Similarly, people talk of slavery to their addiction: E.g.: http://www.thehopeline.com/17-lows-of-addictions-part-2/
If you talk to actual recovering addicts, their experience is one of freedom. And they're not misusing the word; Webster's first definition is "the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action". That is distinct, in their view, from your definition, which they have next: "liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another".
Also, I don't know that we have to ban gambling. I don't think people having the occasional poker game is a big problem. It's industrial-scale exploitation of addicts that I take issue with. I think it would be sufficient to ban profiting from gambling.
My experience is with 3rd world countries, specifically Thailand, where gambling is illegal. I know you're not advocating for a ban on gambling but I think it's worth a mention that due to its illegality, there are widespread issues that stem from it: corruption, cops being in on illegal gambling dens, and mafia / gangs that sprung up to run these under ground dens.
Aside from the more organized underground gambling, there are also smaller village style gambling where within a village / town / city, there are bookies that will collect your bet (and people bet on anything: soccer being the main one.) Basically addicts will find a way to gamble whether it's banned, discouraged, organized, or legalized.
In the case where it's illegal, the creditor who the addicts borrow money from are usually loan sharks or gang members that take extreme means to recover any money they can. Many families lose homes, life-savings, or even get killed. So it gets pretty bad, IMO it's worse than a legalized gambling system.
People who wants to gamble prefer to go to the legal means as it pose much lower risk of extreme repercussions... but if it's not legal, some of them would still find a way to gamble. This may mean that the number of people who do gamble reduces... but I'm not sure by how much and whether that ends up tipping the scale in favor of a ban.
So as far as I'm concerned, gambling should be legal, as I don't want addicts to ever worry about coming forward. And if somebody wants to be the office bookie as long as he pays out every dollar he takes in, hey, have fun. But the moment somebody has a profit incentive to hook people and keep them hooked, I think we've created a very dangerous situation.
This part, though, I take issue with: "Basically addicts will find a way to gamble whether it's banned, discouraged, organized, or legalized." That's somewhat true for addicts not in recovery. But I think it ignores people in recovery, those getting started on recovery, and those with addictive potential who aren't yet addicts. For those people, availability all matters a lot.
We've managed to reduce smoking a great deal without black-market tobacco farmers springing up. There's no reason we can't do something similar with other addictive products.
I do think that eliminating the profit incentive is something that could work. The profit from gambling is cited as a redeeming quality, however, as a reason for legalized gambling to exist. The overwhelming idea, at least in the US, is that if people are going to have a vice (or fun, depending on your perspective), their activities should be taxed so that others (corporations and the government mainly) can profit from them. Perhaps if the money actually went to fund schools and other things that benefit society, I could get behind this viewpoint, but regardless of the claims of governments that have legal gambling, it doesn't. This John Oliver segment about it is pretty interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=789&v=9PK-netuhHA
I definitely agree with you that the society-benefit line is mostly a sham. With cigarette and alcohol taxes, the general goal is to discourage consumption. But many US states actively promote gambling, so I think it's a very different thing.
However, It's not only about the slot machines. You can find the underlying model in many other products, like freemium apps. There's much more subtlety than closing down casinos. Illegal businesses – which don't employ workers nor pay taxes – would likely exploit the new prohibition and its victims.
> "Sorry, you can only play games for fun, not money."
Addiction-prone individuals will still be unable to function normally in day-to-day life. That's why I believe that treatment, prevention and awareness trumps other obvious proposals.
[citation needed]
> That's why I believe that treatment, prevention and awareness trumps other obvious proposals.
That's a couple of different kinds of false dichotomy. Nobody is saying one can't have treatment, prevention, and awareness while also, say, placing such heavy regulation on gambling that the amount of addiction is minimized. As a comparable model, look at cigarettes.