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The rising human cost of sports betting

nytimes.com

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Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#71

Post by jeffreyrogers »

throwawaynay wrote: post #62
PKop wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Prohibition is ineffective and often does more harm than good I don't believe this is true, though it is often parroted as so. Effectiveness of prohibition is determined in large part on severity of punishments. It is imperfect, and will always be. But it can absolutely work to minimize the behavior being targeted.

Drug dealers are routinely executed in countries where the death penalty exist for drugs, it doesn't seem to stop them. People were sentenced to 20years in prison for a joint in the US, that didn't stop most people from trying it. And you really can't deny the "do more harm than good" part. "don't take a very small risk for your health or we will hang you" doesn't exactly seem like harm reduction.

Seems like it is much harder to get drugs in Singapore than in Seattle. Prohibition might not be absolute, but it seems effective at reducing the number of people using drugs. Is that a good or bad policy goal, and is it worth the costs? That a political question, but the answer to that is separate from whether prohibition works or not.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#72

Post by PKop »

thebean11 wrote: post #54
PKop wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Prohibition is ineffective and often does more harm than good I don't believe this is true, though it is often parroted as so. Effectiveness of prohibition is determined in large part on severity of punishments. It is imperfect, and will always be. But it can absolutely work to minimize the behavior being targeted.

> Effectiveness of prohibition is determined in large part on severity of punishments. The punishments for drugs are pretty severe in much of the US (multiple years in prison). Are you advocating for even harsher punishments than that?

Well, yes I am. But is that relevant to the question at hand: if the punishments were more severe, would they decrease drug selling/use?

How about if we banned Narcan, do you think that would affect the total number of opiate addicts long term?

What if we cut off the hands of drug dealers? Or applied the death penalty to drug dealers?

What if we rounded up all the addicts that commit so many crimes in cities today, and degrade the quality of life with tent cities strewn everywhere, and threw them all into the ocean...do you think that would decrease drug use?

Of course it would. What I'm pushing back against is the absurd claim that the problem is intractable in terms of "decreasing some behavior through disincentivization", which isn't true.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#73

Post by babypuncher »

vgeek wrote: post #68
slap_shot wrote: post #46

I'm pretty Laissez-Faire about things, but a recent interaction with gambling is making me reconsider: My friend got a lot of free credits from the major sports books and wrote some code that he felt could generate a profit. We all threw in a little bit of money and let the program do what it does. Within a month we started doing 1k a day in profit on 3k wagered. Right as we approached 30k in profit, every major book…

https://www.theringer.com/2019/6/5/18644504/sports-betting-b... This is a long read, but is really insightful on how the industry really works. If you're a consistently winning bettor, you're going to get blocked pretty quickly when you're betting against the house. Why would a casino want to play a game where they don't have odds in their favor when they can just ban the sharps and feast on the casuals? With parimut…

I think that should be illegal. If we are going to allow casinos to operate at all, then we shouldn't allow them to discriminate against potential customers on the basis that said customers are better at the game. If that means their business model is no longer viable, then that is their problem.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#74

Post by wolverine876 »

philwelch wrote: post #23
ben7799 wrote: post #18

I think it's just a matter of time before we see a Super Bowl or World Series thrown due to the legalization of Sport betting... We have been here before and seen all of this before and it's really hard to believe history won't repeat itself. It's stupid all the way down.

Sports betting has been legal in Europe for a very long time and we have yet to see a UEFA Champions League thrown.

That you know of. How does anyone know?

Edits:

Imagine the NFL learns that yesterday's NFC Championship game was fixed. What would they do? Make it public and destroy their entire enterprise? My guess is that many would hide it if they could, and the people involved certainly wouldn't want to talk about it.

And imagine if they learn about it in 6 months, long after the Super Bowl. Just in terms of on-field results, how do they fix the problem? Take back the trophy from a team and city that thought they won it six months ago? Replay the game in August?

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#75

Post by optimalsolver »

323 wrote: post #35
mensetmanusman wrote: post #9

Gambling is like drug use, some people are clearly addicted to it and will ruin their lives over it. How does society respond to this fact? War on drugs, war on gambling, etc. Hmmmmm

No, we just legalize gambling, just like we should legalize drug use. People should be free to use drugs, drink alchool, or gamble.

Right. As long as we also we have hard measures to deal with those whose personal choices begin impacting their fellow citizens.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#76

Post by jaywalk »

wolverine876 wrote: post #31

> Wagering on sports is “endemic and acceptable and so mainstream that it is now a major pillar of American entertainment,” said Timothy Fong, one of the directors of the gambling studies program at U.C.L.A. A rhetorical technique: Make the problem seem inevitable, make any opposition seem powerless. Then make the question about the rest of society adapting to it - everyone has to adapt so the gambling industry can m…

Do you think sports gambling is not inevitable? Because until relatively recently, it was illegal in the US outside of Vegas and it still very much happened. Whether it was a local bookie or offshore betting websites, anybody that wanted to gamble already was. The only difference is that none of it was taxed.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#77

Post by throwawaynay »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #71
throwawaynay wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug dealers are routinely executed in countries where the death penalty exist for drugs, it doesn't seem to stop them. People were sentenced to 20years in prison for a joint in the US, that didn't stop most people from trying it. And you really can't deny the "do more harm than good" part. "don't take a very small risk for your health or we will hang you" doesn't exactly seem like harm reduction.

Seems like it is much harder to get drugs in Singapore than in Seattle. Prohibition might not be absolute, but it seems effective at reducing the number of people using drugs. Is that a good or bad policy goal, and is it worth the costs? That a political question, but the answer to that is separate from whether prohibition works or not.

>That a political question

That's not political, it's science, statistics, facts. Prohibition = more overdoses, more violence, more untreated addiction, younger users, richer criminals, more abuse from the police, more corruption, less incentive to educate yourself/learn a trade when you come from a poor area, more likely to be BORN addicted to drugs because your mom was terrified of getting help before/when she was pregnant, more likely to get aids, more likely to have your life completely and permanently ruined.

This whole debate can end in one word: Portugal. There is no debate really, only ignorance.

And btw it's not hard to get drugs in any city. I don't know a place on earth where you can't get drugs in an hour or two, besides rural areas.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#78

Post by slap_shot »

babypuncher wrote: post #73
vgeek wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theringer.com/2019/6/5/18644504/sports-betting-b... This is a long read, but is really insightful on how the industry really works. If you're a consistently winning bettor, you're going to get blocked pretty quickly when you're betting against the house. Why would a casino want to play a game where they don't have odds in their favor when they can just ban the sharps and feast on the casuals? With parimut…

I think that should be illegal. If we are going to allow casinos to operate at all, then we shouldn't allow them to discriminate against potential customers on the basis that said customers are better at the game. If that means their business model is no longer viable, then that is their problem.

This is exactly my point. I'm not against outlawing casinos (i think you should be able to do pretty much whatever the eff you want with your body and money).

BUT if we are going to allow them, should we allow them to only let people play when they lose?

The decision to let them exist is as arbitrary as the decision to allow them to only play when they when.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#79

Post by babypuncher »

shipman05 wrote: post #13
animal_spirits wrote: post #8

Promotion of gambling should be likened to promotion of cigarettes. It should be illegal to advertise gambling, but I don't think it should be outlawed to gamble. People should be able to choose how they live their lives, but we should do all that we can to prevent mass manipulation through adverts in industries that are known to be harmful. I also think that alcohol and e-cig advertising should be outlawed as well.

This has been my position for a while on so called "vices". Prohibition is ineffective and often does more harm than good, but allowing companies to advertise these products to young people and those who are susceptible to abuse is a net negative for society. Worst of all are government run lotteries. A state run lottery may be preferable to one run by organized crime, but running millions of dollars worth of ads wit…

State lotteries are a means to shift tax burden from the wealthy to the poor. Every time one is implemented to "support education", it is always followed by a tax break for the upper class, resulting in a net 0 increase in school budgets.

Re: The rising human cost of sports betting

#80

Post by Raidion »

animal_spirits wrote: post #8

Promotion of gambling should be likened to promotion of cigarettes. It should be illegal to advertise gambling, but I don't think it should be outlawed to gamble. People should be able to choose how they live their lives, but we should do all that we can to prevent mass manipulation through adverts in industries that are known to be harmful. I also think that alcohol and e-cig advertising should be outlawed as well.

I honestly agree with you, but am worried about the precedent it would set. If you start banning stuff because of addiction, does it apply to things like soda or fast food? Would it apply to things like baseball cards or other collectables?

This is a really tricky problem, as there is clear evidence that these things hurt society as a whole, but it's hard to draw the line who is making deliberate choices about their gambling/smoking/drinking, and who is hooked.

Is there a politician somewhere that will try to ban Facebook because of the 'addiction' potential? I'm usually not much of a slippery slope guy, but it does seem weird, especially since a lot of this would be done by regulation, not legislation.

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