The rising human cost of sports betting

Post by PKop » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

throwawaynay wrote: post #108

PKop wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 addictio…

Post by stickfigure » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 7:30 PM UTC

PKop wrote: post #72

thebean11 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, a…

Post by paxys » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

jpthurman wrote: post #2

I’m glad to see a report on this - I hate to see the NFL actively promoting gambling with their biggest stars lining up for the commercials. I’m sure in their eyes it will “promote” the game but it will ruin the lives of many. My grandfather had a gambling problem and was an easy mark in his latter years - something like this would have been a dark pit of cyclical losses and broken relationships

Post by robrenaud » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

throwawaynay wrote: post #77

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by nikcub » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

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…