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Addiction Markets

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201–210 of 479 posts

Re: Addiction Markets

#201

Post by cael450 »

wombatpm wrote: post #193
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.

Tax advertising for gambling? Require all advertising for gambling to go through a state agency? There is lots a state can do besides banning.

Yeah but banning them is the right thing to do. Why would you have a state agency review gambling ads?

Re: Addiction Markets

#202

Post by musicale »

belkinpower wrote: post #35
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…

The Pokémon card mania in particular is deeply weird to me. I play Magic at a local card shop a few times a month and it’s always full of people playing Magic, D&D, or various board games. I don’t think I’ve seen a single person playing the Pokémon card game. So who’s buying the valuable singles? What’s keeping the market afloat? It’s bizarre.

Pokémon TCG seems to have turned into a contest among opportunistic resellers to see who can buy up all of the cards and sell them to ... collectors? Other resellers? Who knows?

Which is a shame, since the game itself is actually fun. Or it would be if you could buy the cards easily and cheaply.

Re: Addiction Markets

#203

Post by tstrimple »

rurp wrote: post #196
asdff wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know, in the 90s a bunch of friends and I were into MtG and everyone bought packs. The idea of buying from a card dealer instead wasn't even on our radar. We weren't the most hardcore players but I think we were pretty typical; we went to Comic Con a few times in that era.

I distinctly remember the first time I was able to afford to buy a box from a new magic set release. Had a lot of fun opening new packs. It’s too bad I wasn’t aware of the draft format at the time or it would have been even more rewarding!

Re: Addiction Markets

#204

Post by kulahan »

gcanyon wrote: post #80
kulahan wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whales provide the most value? You don't say.

It’s not whales, it’s compulsives. The stories are horrific. People have moved to non-gambling states, and the casinos send them nice letters saying, “We miss you! Here’s a coupon for a free flight to our state, you don’t even have to promise you’ll gamble, just come and have a steak dinner in us”

Trust me friend, almost nobody WANTS to spend $50k on a mobile game.

The stakes probably aren’t as high in mobile, but it’s otherwise the same dance.

Re: Addiction Markets

#205

Post by precommunicator »

gcanyon wrote: post #16

This line from the ads always strikes me as darkly ironic: > if you need help making responsible choices, call… Like, the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online. What do they even think we’re supposed to take away from that line of the commercial?

I guess it depends on the person. I gamble away exactly ~$3 every month, never felt the need to increase that. I call it "randomness fund"

Re: Addiction Markets

#207

Post by laterium »

daemonologist wrote: post #147
nicce wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What it comes down to I think is that historically, on average, stock traders come out ahead while "gamblers" do not. (Of course you can still go all-in on one company, or buy insane options, or use leverage, etc., and thereby gamble on stocks.)

Investors come out ahead, not traders. The more "trading" it is (meaning more short term), the more like gambling it is. There's even a point where you go from positive to negative sum.

Re: Addiction Markets

#208

Post by recursivecaveat »

tayo42 wrote: post #109
mnky9800n wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to really enjoy magic. Then at some point I couldn’t keep up with the constructed meta. So I switched to drafting. But now it seems like everything is so gamified that playing the game isn’t enough anymore. Now you need to play all the time both in the shop and on mtg arena and it’s like designed to keep you hooked. I hate it. I really just can’t be bothered to play anymore. It’s no longer fun it’s just a grin…

Why does drafting feel like that?

I'm not that poster, but 4 times as many unique cards are released a year as 20 years ago (2X vs 10 years ago). The pace has greatly increased the commitment to keep abreast of the game.

Re: Addiction Markets

#209

Post by laterium »

michaelt wrote: post #27
brettgriffin wrote: post #8

The problem isn't the 70M people who placed bets, its the ~25M with broken risk aversion. These are mostly men, and a very specific type of men. You can try to curtail their access to gambling but we're missing the underlying problem.

Has society ever addressed an underlying psychological problem successfully? Because when it comes to the underlying psychological causes of homelessness and drug addiction and school shootings and violent extremism my impression is we don’t really do much.

Housing prices are the strongest predictor of homelessness. Therefore, homelessness is not a moral failure of homeless individuals but of the NIMBY vetocracy that is the housing market.

Re: Addiction Markets

#210

Post by nine_k »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #165
rockskon wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

To ban gambling would be to limit individual liberty (see also: smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, self-harm, suicide).

To ban advertising of gambling is to limit a liberty too, but the kind that substantially affects others. See also: dumping a bucketful of water on a passer-by, smoking in a crowded subway car, blaring super loud music outside at night time.

That second kind of liberty is and will always be limited in a society, voluntarily most of the time, because people want to be good neighbors, not harm each other.

Another problem here is the addiction. Advertising applesauce is one thing, advertising cocaine is another. For some people, gambling is more like cocaine, hampering their reason and forcing their hand in making choices. The freedom to advertise cocaine (and tobacco, alcohol, etc) inevitably gets limited in a society; if it does not, the society likely unravels.

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