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The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

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Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#111

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #46
joosters wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the more relevant point is: But almost all social networks and search engines won’t let you advertise without a license from the required jurisdiction. Which is a good thing! This is an area full of scammers, if you can't set up your business legally, I'm very happy to hear it's more difficult for you to advertise it.

I mean, you also can't advertise illegal drugs either. Doesn't seem to curb demand though. It may actually be more beneficial to allow these things more broadly, because then social safety features can be wedged in between consumers and suppliers more easily and they don't have to deal with a gigantic shadow market that already gets stigmatised to death by the rest of the population. Just accept that a certain percen…

The argument you are presenting is recycled from debates about newly banning things that have been legal for forever, but doesn’t make any sense at all as a response to people bemoaning disasters caused by an activity being newly legalized.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#112

Post by theLiminator »

nickflw wrote: post #8
b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #5

You may have a cool product in the field of sports betting, casinos, or lotteries. But almost all social networks and search engines won’t let you advertise without a license from the required jurisdiction. Good . You should face social stigma for creating products that literally ruin people's lives.

So true. I wish alcohol, tobacco, gun and insurance companies and their employees faced the same stigma.

How about social media companies, or quasi-monopoly employees (essentially all of FANGMAN)?

What about pharma and for-profit healthcare employees?

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#113

Post by mcmcmc »

b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #5

You may have a cool product in the field of sports betting, casinos, or lotteries. But almost all social networks and search engines won’t let you advertise without a license from the required jurisdiction. Good . You should face social stigma for creating products that literally ruin people's lives.

Same goes for every Meta employee then no? They built a defective product that led to kids killing themselves

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#114

Post by mcmcmc »

watwut wrote: post #51
RHSeeger wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a problem with them actively choosing to break laws to protest the laws themselves; to try to get them changed. Civil disobedience is a long standing practice. However, part of doing that is facing the consequences of breaking those laws; being arrested, etc. Just because _you_ think the law isn't just doesn't mean it's not a law - it just means you think it should be changed. And the companies in questi…

Meh. What they are doing is NOT civil disobedience and protest. What they are doing is just normal breaking the law for profit thing. That being said, I also dont think that civil disobedience means you have to accept whatever harsh punishment whatever authoritarian is using. It is actually ok to avoid those.

Yep. This would be like saying illegal dumping of hazardous waste is the same as protesting environmental protection laws. It’s just for-profit crime.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#115

Post by mcmcmc »

derangedHorse wrote: post #95
malfist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why isn't the line so clear for you? We're talking about a product built to make people's lives worse while extracting wealth from them that get them addicted as well.

"Built to make people's lives worse" is an opinion. There are people who gamble without getting addicted and treat it as good fun. Why shouldn't I be able to bet a small amount on a team I like in Fantasy Football? I've never gambled more than I could afford to lose nor have I felt the need to do it habitually. I get that there are some people who are not like me, but you seem to think that there are only people who…

Why do you need a commercial service to do that? Gambling isn’t bad inherently, but for-profit gambling companies have too many perverse incentives

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#116

Post by PaulHoule »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #46
joosters wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the more relevant point is: But almost all social networks and search engines won’t let you advertise without a license from the required jurisdiction. Which is a good thing! This is an area full of scammers, if you can't set up your business legally, I'm very happy to hear it's more difficult for you to advertise it.

I mean, you also can't advertise illegal drugs either. Doesn't seem to curb demand though. It may actually be more beneficial to allow these things more broadly, because then social safety features can be wedged in between consumers and suppliers more easily and they don't have to deal with a gigantic shadow market that already gets stigmatised to death by the rest of the population. Just accept that a certain percen…

It's nuanced. When I was a kid I really enjoyed Scarne's books about gambling

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scarne

which were written in an era when most of the gambling in the US was illegal and run by organized crime, Las Vegas was small, Atlantic City new, and New Hampshire the first state to get a lottery. Like prostitution, gambling needs a rather sophisticated criminal network, a parallel system of law-and-order, to be a workable, safe and reasonably fair business. Scarne started out his career, as a magician and card mechanic, as a sort of consultant who could keep games fair.

Blacks in New York City, for instance, ran illegal street craps and ran a lottery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game

quite similar to the "Pick 3" games you see in many states -- the latter got taken over by the Italian mafia.

Gambling has a broad cross-cultural appeal and some people are going to do it no matter how you try to shut it down. In the US we went from having a few centers to widespread "riverboat" and tribal gambling to widespread casinos now to mobile gambling on sports and sometimes the equivalent of video slots.

Of course there is the matter of degree. It's not going to wreck your life to drop $1 on the lottery a week and probably gives you more than $1 worth of fun. If you're addicted though it may be no fun at all. I can totally see where Nate Silver is coming from but I can also see the degenerate who drops 20 bets on a single game on the weekend as well as the person who thinks he is Nate Silver and he isn't. I think the Superbowl is a fair competition by player who are playing their hardest, but it breaks my heart as a sports fan when teams are not playing to win and that's why I can't stand watching the NBA despite loving going to second-tier college basketball games in person.

And for drugs? I remember all the Lester Grinspoon talk about how prohibition is worse than the drugs themselves and that might have been true before 2000 but in the Fentanyl age I see people dropping like flies all around me -- but Marshall McLuhan said we are driving by looking in the rear view mirror and of course some people are going to be repeating things that were true in the last century.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#117

Post by gwbas1c »

Wow, I'm shocked at the negative attitudes in this thread. Porn and gambling are legit businesses, even if you don't like it. (And some people used to argue that part of the rise of the PC was because some people bought it as a "porn machine.")

It's important to keep these things (almost) in the open, because when they become illegal, criminals move in and people get hurt.

When I was an intern at a big-name, conservative company, one of my friends came from a porn website.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#118

Post by mcmcmc »

jmkd wrote: post #43
malfist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, why isn't the line so clear for you? We're talking about a product built to make people's lives worse while extracting wealth from them that get them addicted as well.

Okay sounds like we agree that sugar and junk food should be on the wrong side of the line, but turns out those industries have very little stigma. Who is standing outside the school gates protesting against big cola? My point is it's complicated, ambiguous, sometimes hypocritical, differs by jurisdiction and so on. None of it is clear.

Ah yes, the great evil of sugar… which our bodies require for energy. Seriously, your brain needs glucose. Ask a diabetic if sugar is evil

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#119

Post by radicalbyte »

jmkd wrote: post #10
b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #5

You may have a cool product in the field of sports betting, casinos, or lotteries. But almost all social networks and search engines won’t let you advertise without a license from the required jurisdiction. Good . You should face social stigma for creating products that literally ruin people's lives.

There are plenty of other products that literally ruin people's lives: alcohol, tobacco, sugar, pharmaceuticals, credit cards, firearms, timeshares, junk food. Society has them all on very different parts of a stigma spectrum. Honest question: why is this line so clear for you?

> pharmaceuticals

A large number of these literally save people's lives. Anti-biotics, statins, anti-depressives, anti-psychotics, insulin, anti-histamines.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#120

Post by Legend2440 »

nickflw wrote: post #8
b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #5

You may have a cool product in the field of sports betting, casinos, or lotteries. But almost all social networks and search engines won’t let you advertise without a license from the required jurisdiction. Good . You should face social stigma for creating products that literally ruin people's lives.

So true. I wish alcohol, tobacco, gun and insurance companies and their employees faced the same stigma.

One of these things is not like the others.

Insurance is a tool for spreading risk, and modern society could not operate without it.

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