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U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

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Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#81

Post by Pica_soO »

LitFan wrote: post #69
andruby wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lotteries are reverse solidarity: a lot of people pay to make 1 person rich. Lotteries are my prime example when I want to highlight that humans don't act rationally

A possible explanation for why one would participate in a lottery: What if $5 per week for the rest of their life doesn't impact an individual's standard of living, but $10 million would drastically improve it? Does it then make (more) sense to participate?

You would sacrifice - average lifeestimate 72 years times 52 weeks times 5 dollars - 18.7200 sparrows - aka a brand new car - for a pidgeon on the roof?

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#82

Post by tkxxx7 »

leetcrew wrote: post #70
MRD85 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Australia, which has very relaxed gambling laws. I can walk into most pubs/bars in my city and find poker machines for example, as well as a sports/horse betting facility. There are huge social consequences to gambling. If you look at an entire society you have some people that will have problems with it and some people that won't. You may fall into the "won't" pile but surely society benefits if we prevent…

> surely society benefits if we prevent a large number of our members from falling prey to addiction. how does society benefit from prohibiting people from doing things that only hurt themselves?

what do you mean by this? those people are a part of society too..

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#83

Post by lozaning »

ska wrote: post #74
LitFan wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A possible explanation for why one would participate in a lottery: What if $5 per week for the rest of their life doesn't impact an individual's standard of living, but $10 million would drastically improve it? Does it then make (more) sense to participate?

Not in a strictly expected value sense, no. It's never going to be a rational choice from an financial point of view (i.e. there is always something else you can do with the $5 with better expected returns). But if you get some other value out of it you place at least $5/wk utility on, sure. Maybe you get more utility out if it than a movie a month, or whatever.

I'll buy the occasional $10 scratcher, and then wait like a week to scratch it all off. The $10 is worth getting to ponder what I'll do with my massive windfall for that week!

Already maxing my ROTH and 401K so I figure it's like $80 a year well spent to entertain the phantasy.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#84

Post by andrewla »

andruby wrote: post #68
scottlamb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also online, state-sponsored lotteries. I'd consider lotteries (in general, not just online) more significant in terms of taking wealth away from people who can least afford it, and for no inherent legitimate purpose. (Lotteries fund education, but there are better ways to do that.)

Lotteries are reverse solidarity: a lot of people pay to make 1 person rich. Lotteries are my prime example when I want to highlight that humans don't act rationally

Lotteries are rational for the same reason that insurance is rational.

Insurance on the face of it is irrational -- insurance companies make money, therefore buying insurance is paying a premium above what the expected reimbursement is over the lifetime of the insurance. It's a reverse lottery; the expected outlays exceed the expected returns.

What you pay the premium for in insurance is to reduce downside variance.

What you pay the premium for in a lottery is to increase the upside variance.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#85

Post by tkxxx7 »

shkkmo wrote: post #64
cdumler wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of insurance is such that individuals share the burden to cover random, life-impacting events. From the consumer side, insurance is the purchase of a service to cover any a future debt falling under the category of the service, ie. an unforeseeable, unintentional act of damage by or to the consumer. I have no intention of burning down my house. I pay so that if it were to happen, I am not stuck paying off…

So how is that different from hedging your bets? Insurance is gambling. The servicer is the house and always wins (unless they screw up). That is not to say that gambling can't serve purposes other than entertainment, because it can. That doesn't make it not gambling.

> So how is that different from hedging your bets?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the difference is, no one is betting that you actually do have an unforeseen incident, so there is no bet to hedge against.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#86

Post by clavalle »

leetcrew wrote: post #67
joobus wrote: post #32

Except for stocks, bonds, options, futures, and forex. Wall St is the only authorized online gambling establishment.

is literally anything with a risk-reward tradeoff gambling?

No.

Gambling is a useful analogy but what is missing is that a person creating a business or buying a house, fixing it up, and flipping it are taking a risk on /profit/ but fully intend on creating real value whether they end up losing money or not.

That's quite a bit different than laying a bunch of money on red at a roulette table. The only value created -- the fun of the gamble itself -- is completely intangible and immediately destroyed.

Of course, there's a spectrum there, too. How much value is created by the efficient allocation of capital in our markets? Lots, it can be easily argued. Well, what about the marginal micro-transactional allocation in HFT? Well, maybe not so much.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#87

Post by Ajedi32 »

jrockway wrote: post #22
techer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a raffle not gambling out of interest?

How is insurance not gambling?

Insurance is the precise opposite of gambling; instead of concentrating reward, it distributes risk.

When you buy insurance you're not betting that something bad will happen to you, you're hedging your otherwise implicit bet that something bad _won't_ happen to you.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#88

Post by gjs278 »

jarsin wrote: post #27
diminoten wrote: post #23

I see this as a bad thing, but I've still been able to place sports bets in the US online for years, and I logged into ACR today and played an hour of NL holdem, and my computer wasn't seized by the FBI. No one has yet described the actual consequences of this, and as far as I can tell, there haven't been any.

Those offshore sites are scams. The scam is they take your money but if you ever win big you will never see it payed out (deposited in a real bank account belonging to you). You will then become one that post on forums on how you can't get your money out, until they finally close shop and run once enough people have been scammed.

untrue. many of these sites have been active for nearly a decade and operate with crypto currencies just fine.

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#89

Post by andrewla »

Here's the updated opinion [1] referenced but not linked to in the article. They link to the old 2011 opinion [2] that said that only sports betting was covered.

[1] https://www.justice.gov/olc/file/1121531/download

[2] https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/201...

Re: U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets

#90

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

coralreef wrote: post #75
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except those things actually fuel the economy and reward entrepreneurs vs enriching a "house" that contributes very little.

An underlying stock market is useful because it allows companies to raise capital to take risk. But many of those trading tools are just vehicles for speculative trading. When I buy options contracts as a trader, I'm speculating the price will go up or down. I'm not adding anything productive to the economy. For me to win, another trader must lose.

You're sending price signals. The market needs active traders not just investors to function properly.
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