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Addiction Markets

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Re: Addiction Markets

#161

Post by phainopepla2 »

ux266478 wrote: post #144
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do all of these occur with equal proportion in every country/culture? I am not sure what you are saying with homelessness...it isn't some massive baffling issue, someone who doesn't have a house, needs a house so build a house? School shootings...I don't understand how anyone can believe this is normal? The US has fairly obvious social problems, these essentially inhibit the functional resolution of most of these pro…

I'd rather we actually deal with the issues causing these things than sweep them under the rug and pretend like it's an actual solution. > Build houses. That doesn't solve homelessness, as we build many houses in America but they aren't being filled with the homeless. You need to apply social services in a complex systematic approach to provide housing that people can afford sustainably, and rehabilitate and integrat…

> thousands of incidents were suppressed from the media cycle

Where can I read more about this?

Re: Addiction Markets

#162

Post by rufus_foreman »

asdff wrote: post #95
nekusar wrote: post #30

People are also leaving out stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and Magic The Gathering. All of them also introduce rarities (arbitrary exclusiveness), hidden cards in a pack, and extreme gambling gamification. The only non-gambling MtG packs are the preconstructed commander decks. All 100 cards are published. But the packs and boxes? Pure gambling, especially for the chase rare cards. And before anyone asks, yes, my usern…

I feel like it only became rampant in recent years. As a 90s kid no one cared about the card packs. We all assumed they'd be junk cards and a waste of $7 or whatever. No, the move for card people back then was to wait for the card show and just buy the cards you actually want from a card dealer. The thing is now people are marketing the pack opening. You have social media accounts of them pulling cards from packs and…

>> the move for card people back then was to wait for the card show and just buy the cards you actually want from a card dealer

That's still the move. Unless you want to gamble.

Re: Addiction Markets

#163

Post by rockskon »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #159
shipman05 wrote: post #142

It feels like banning advertising for gambling would be a sweet spot between harm reduction and maintaining individual liberty. Sports gambling ads have ruined sports media. State lottery ads are even worse. The government should not spend money to encourage its own citizens to partake in harmful activities.

>> It feels like banning advertising for gambling would be a sweet spot between harm reduction and maintaining individual liberty No. If you want restrictions on gambling, on advertising it, on participating in it, on making money from it, you want to restrict individual liberty. I want to restrict individual liberty, I have voted against gambling when it has come up for a vote in my state over and over. You want to…

Gambling vs advertising gambling are two different things.

Equating them as exactly the same doesn't serve your argument justice even if you do have a point with respect to the OP's "have their cake and eat it too" rhetorical flourish.

Re: Addiction Markets

#164

Post by edot »

only-one1701 wrote: post #120
Humorist2290 wrote: post #118

But if you want to outlaw this harmful activity [licensed gambling], you have to find a way to replace 6.4% of Maryland’s budget, which is slightly less than the entire amount the state brings in from corporate taxes. A fraction of the proceeds of losing bets from a fraction of Maryland's citizens contributes almost the same to state services -- EMS, education, road maintenance, etc -- than the total corporate taxes…

Incredibly damning, yes

Damning which way, though? Are gambling taxes too high, or are corporate taxes too low? And since corporate income is surely higher than gambling income, I’m inclined to think that gambling taxes are too high AND corporate taxes are too low, creating this odd fact.

Edit: and I know it sounds weird to say that gambling taxes are too high, when one could argue that high taxes are meant to disincentivize a thing - but if that thing is highly addictive, and if no other state action is taken to disincentivize that thing, then it’s actually a really sticky income source for the government who now doesn’t want to get rid of their cash cow. Tobacco ads are outlawed, which did more than taxing tobacco. Gambling ads are absurdly common.

Re: Addiction Markets

#165

Post by rufus_foreman »

rockskon wrote: post #163
rufus_foreman wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It feels like banning advertising for gambling would be a sweet spot between harm reduction and maintaining individual liberty No. If you want restrictions on gambling, on advertising it, on participating in it, on making money from it, you want to restrict individual liberty. I want to restrict individual liberty, I have voted against gambling when it has come up for a vote in my state over and over. You want to…

Gambling vs advertising gambling are two different things. Equating them as exactly the same doesn't serve your argument justice even if you do have a point with respect to the OP's "have their cake and eat it too" rhetorical flourish.

If you want to restrict advertising on gambling you want to restrict individual liberty.

I want to restrict individual liberty.

Do you want to restrict advertising on gambling?

Re: Addiction Markets

#166

Post by Karrot_Kream »

hshdhdhehd wrote: post #127
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #71

On a somewhat related note, there seems to be a huge interest in vice policing on social media. Gambling, sex, drugs, these are some of humanity's oldest vices. Why has it become so popular on social media to highlight these, along with a narrative of social or cultural decline?

Think of it in terms of public health not morality. Heart disease is one of humanities oldest killers but we still want to fix it. We also dont want to ban deep friers as we value freedom. Similar for gambling. We do want to discuss what to do when vice becomes no longer nice.

This is actually a good example of what I mean. Heart disease is meticulously studied. Its incidence is tracked tracked. It has longitudinal studies. Its mechanisms are explored. It has peer reviewed studies discussing interventions. Doctors talk all the time about the tradeoffs their patients can make to decrease their chances of getting heart disease.

What it has a lot less of is random public policy influencers writing polemics about it. There's some, sure, and that's exactly where RFK and the MAHA coalition come from. But professionals don't treat MAHA and their blogs as coda. So why do we do the same for anything related to money?

Re: Addiction Markets

#167

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

nicce wrote: post #107
cal_dent wrote: post #28

There has recently been many looks at the epidemic in gambling. Wonder how all of the focus seem to happen at the same time Off the top of my head: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-31/great-bri... https://kyla.substack.com/p/gamblemerica-how-sports-betting-... https://www.ft.com/content/e80df917-2af7-4a37-b9af-55d23f941... https://www.dopaminemarkets.com/p/the-lottery-fication-of-ev... https://www.inve…

I find it odd that almost nobody ever refers stock trading as gambling. While for most persons it is nothing else.

Stock trades with sufficiently gambling-like payout structures do on occasion get regulated as gambling, see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_option

Re: Addiction Markets

#168

Post by rufus_foreman »

lurk2 wrote: post #132
savanaly wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online I don't gamble at all in any form, but I still firmly disagree. Some people enjoy gambling in a way that never hurts them-- I've known countless friends and coworkers who talk about doing a bit of it in Vegas or what have you. You're saying every last one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from me? They know they're not going net positive on t…

> You're saying every last one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from me? A person can be generally responsible while still making decisions that are irresponsible. Gambling has a negative expected value, and so is generally considered to be irresponsible. Gamblers will often counter that they expect to lose their money and consider it to be a form of entertainment, but the whole of the entertainm…

>> Gambling has a negative expected value

Subscribing to Netflix has a negative expected value.

Ban Netflix.

Re: Addiction Markets

#169

Post by a123b456c »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #159
shipman05 wrote: post #142

It feels like banning advertising for gambling would be a sweet spot between harm reduction and maintaining individual liberty. Sports gambling ads have ruined sports media. State lottery ads are even worse. The government should not spend money to encourage its own citizens to partake in harmful activities.

>> It feels like banning advertising for gambling would be a sweet spot between harm reduction and maintaining individual liberty No. If you want restrictions on gambling, on advertising it, on participating in it, on making money from it, you want to restrict individual liberty. I want to restrict individual liberty, I have voted against gambling when it has come up for a vote in my state over and over. You want to…

> If you want restrictions on gambling, on advertising it, on participating in it, on making money from it, you want to restrict individual liberty.

No.

An organization's liberty to advertise is not individual liberty.

Let individuals gamble. Do not let organizations advertise gambling services. Organizational liberty is not individual liberty.

Re: Addiction Markets

#170

Post by SoftTalker »

only-one1701 wrote: post #120
Humorist2290 wrote: post #118

But if you want to outlaw this harmful activity [licensed gambling], you have to find a way to replace 6.4% of Maryland’s budget, which is slightly less than the entire amount the state brings in from corporate taxes. A fraction of the proceeds of losing bets from a fraction of Maryland's citizens contributes almost the same to state services -- EMS, education, road maintenance, etc -- than the total corporate taxes…

Incredibly damning, yes

There are a lot more people than corporations.
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