If your interesting in more about this check out the recent HBO Real Sports episode
The rising human cost of sports betting
101–110 of 337 posts
Re: The rising human cost of sports betting
#102An interesting question (to me) is how legalization of gambling happened politically? For a long time, there was a strong political consenses against it. Where is the religious right, for example?
Re: The rising human cost of sports betting
#103Earlier 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.
The harm we are reducing is decreasing the amount of drug users, and the attendant crime and degradation that comes with them, within the environment that non-drug users have to live in.
We'd be reducing the harm to them and in a subjective way, to the overall community. That some people's "harm" will increase is obvious but this is a price many are willing to pay to achieve a better society for themselves.
In summary, "we will hang you" isn't "harm" but justice, and the solution to the "harm" that needs to be decreased.
> it doesn't seem to stop them
Sure it does, it decreases overall drug use, where it is harsh enough.
>that didn't stop most people from trying it.
Did it decrease overall drug use vs when these laws were relaxed? Yes. Mostly though the penalty for drug dealers needs to be harsher. Additionally, there is a hierarchy of drugs, and in US the biggest problem is hard drugs / opiates. We should focus enforcement and punishment efforts at those, while also not enabling the addiction of users.
Re: The rising human cost of sports betting
#104> 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.
Are you saying the volume of gambling hasn't and won't increase? My impression is quite the opposite, but I could be wrong.
I don't think it's inevitable at all. We could make it illegal again; it was that way for a long time, until very recently, and the change was due not to politics but a court decision.
Re: The rising human cost of sports betting
#105History will I believe judge the Roberts court harshly for all the negative effects and misery it has caused in the 2010s. The gutting of campaign finance reform means politicians are effectively owned by PACs and corporations now. Gutting the Civil Rights Act because "we don't need Federal preclearance anymore" (followed quickly by 20+ states quickly enacting the kinds of voting restrictions the Civil Rights Act was…
>The gutting of campaign finance reform means politicians are effectively owned by PACs and corporations now. Whoah now, you're saying that documentaries critical of Hillary Clinton shouldn't be able to be legally distributed? Because that was the origin of Citizens United
It’s a non-sequitur to lead from the cause of the case to the decision handed down. The Court always has the ability to moderate its opinions. One can simultaneously believe that a documentary should be able to be distributed within range of an election and also that money is not a form of speech, or that corporations do not have the same speech rights as people.
Re: The rising human cost of sports betting
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Found it amusing reading this thread, thinking of gambling companies paying their lawyers to argue that gambling is "skilled based". Then, after gambling is legalized, they'd ban all of the skilled players so we'd go back to "luck based" gambling that their lawyers just argued was skilled based.
Re: The rising human cost of sports betting
#107I can confirm that sports betting is also slowly eating away at what is left of the game of football (soccer, for US HN-ers) over here in Europe. We’ve got the English Premier League and the Champions League that are (maybe) still free of this cancer, as in (maybe) their results and general play are as close to 100%-fair as one can get, but outside of that it’s the Wild West. The second leagues in most of Central and…
I don't think the it's all because of betting. Celebrity culture is another major factor. Players are now becoming famous for being famous soccer players, like the Kardashians. It's irrelevant if they can play or not. How many followers you have on Instagram is now more important than how many goals you score.
Name a famous footballer that cannot play.
The comparisons to the Kardashians is quite a stretch.
Re: The rising human cost of sports betting
#108Earlier 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.
The harm we are reducing is decreasing the amount of drug users, and the attendant crime and degradation that comes with them, within the environment that non-drug users have to live in. We'd be reducing the harm to them and in a subjective way, to the overall community. That some people's "harm" will increase is obvious but this is a price many are willing to pay to achieve a better society for themselves. In summar…
>In summary, "we will hang you" isn't "harm" but justice
Most of the harm coming from drug use is coming from prohibition.
Hanging drug users or drug dealers is not justice, it's a bigger crime than any type of drug deal.
>Additionally, there is a hierarchy of drugs, and in US the biggest problem is hard drugs / opiates. We should focus enforcement and punishment efforts at those, while also not enabling the addiction of users.
And this have absolutely nothing to do with drugs dealers. This problem was created by the likes of Purdue Pharma. Jailing drug dealers does absolutely nothing to stop Americans from getting hooked on opiates
Re: The rising human cost of sports betting
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying that players are throwing games due to sports betting? Can you give an example? I'm not doubting you, I have never followed football so I have no idea, I'm just curious. Especially about your statement "...if you know where to look and how to look at things it all becomes clear(er)".
> Can you give an example? It's in Romanian, because this is the league I follow, but something like this [1], maybe Google Translate can help, basically a player (incidentally, playing for the team I follow) letting in a goal just because (the goal on YT in here [2]). Maybe that was still because of a genuine mistake, but searching for "pariuri site: https://liga2.prosport.ro/ " returns many other articles related t…
>[2] https://youtu.be/Gl4gkgL25wE?t=237
oh muh gawd! i've done that very thing myself. i didn't know i could make money doing it.
Re: The rising human cost of sports betting
#110I 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.
As always, Hollywood has already shown us the results with The Last Boyscout