Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

orchidfiles.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 238 posts

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#211

Post by [deleted] »

adrian_b wrote: post #146
embedding-shape wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While the porn industry has issue, at its core it isn't constructed to extract money from you. For what purpose do you think that industry was indirectly created for, if not to make money from people? Even if it might not have been created with that intent (although I'd still argue it was), today it surely is mainly driven and maintain with the (at least) implicit purpose of extracting money from people, that's lit…

Like others have said, any industry has the purpose of extracting money from the customers. The original poster has not expressed this correctly, but I assume that the intention was to say that the gambling industry is different from all other industries, not because it extracts money like any other industry, but because it does not return a product or service for that money. The porn industry is no different from an…

[deleted]

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#212

Post by conception »

itake wrote: post #193
b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between betting between your friends on FF versus creating a system of gambling that takes advantage of the least fortunate among us.

This is the same thinking that governments are justify the age verification and ID tracking: the system makes an opportunity for old people to get scammed, so everyone needs to give up their privacy.

Well… I think you’re conflating the stated reason for solving a problem versus what these “solutions” are actually trying to do.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#213

Post by AnthonyMouse »

BreakingProd wrote: post #202
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an incentive to commit a crime when the benefit of committing the crime exceeds the penalty times the chance of getting caught plus the cost of measures taken to avoid getting caught. This is why increasing penalties have extremely fast diminishing returns. As the penalty goes up, the relative cost of measures to avoid detection goes down, and the penalty needed to counter them becomes exponentially larger.…

That seems like the only sensible path forward, if you assume that the only lever a society can pull to make punishment harsher is “longer prison sentences”. What if the penalty for selling drugs to kids was death? It seems like that would change the risk/reward calculation pretty substantially.

Would it though? How different is that than life in prison without parole? There are plenty of people who, given the choice between ~$1M and a ~1% chance of the death penalty, are going to pick the money.

You could hypothetically try to make the difference in the penalties larger by making the penalty for selling to adults smaller, e.g. a $10 fine, so that there is minimal incentive to pay for countermeasures when selling to adults and thereby have them already paid for and in place when selling to kids. But then you're just de facto legalizing selling to adults and trying not to admit it.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#214

Post by egorfine »

schubidubiduba wrote: post #109
egorfine wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These questions sound very rational until you realize that sugar, performance cars, military technology and history lessons can tick all those boxes.

Not sure if the history lessons are a joke, but sugar is rightfully taxed or otherwise disincentivized in many countries, because it is highly harmful to society as a whole. Sports cars definitely get some yes answers, and are also rightfully taxed in several countries. Military technology may be an exception as "necessary evil", but also is a bad example because it id not consumer-oriented.

As a Ukrainian I can tell you that deaths from history lessons are pretty much not a joke.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#215

Post by 3form »

itake wrote: post #195
3form wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure - what comes to mind: - helps in managing sexual needs, which can be difficult to handle otherwise, and especially replace - educational: whether it is about workings of sex, ideas to improve your sex life with a partner, or something to discover about yourself I suppose there's more to it, but most other things I can think of are an extension to meeting sexual needs.

> helps in managing sexual needs There are plenty of "sexual needs" that society says "no, you can't satisfy them." (for example, Nguyễn Xuân Đạt). I don't think sexual needs are needs that can't be managed without media. > educational: whether it is about workings of sex I find when a partner characterizes porn, the sex is worse... Maybe other people enjoy the sounds or behaviors seen in the videos, but not for me.

>I don't think sexual needs are needs that can't be managed without media.

Of course they can, but it still helps - that's why I used that wording.

Also replacement of one sex need with another feels more viable than with other needs, given how the chemical machinery of the body seems to work.

> I find when a partner characterizes porn, the sex is worse... Maybe other people enjoy the sounds or behaviors seen in the videos, but not for me.

I can't say that the content isn't majorly bad, or that the field is not rife with abuse. That's a real problem, but I think u related to the original question of "does it address a real need".

In this case I think the main takeaways are the ideas, techniques, and what you can learn about body from some of the more realistic videos. Somewhat unfortunately, many people pick wrongly, but I do believe right choices exist.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#216

Post by subscribed »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #177
egorfine wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These questions sound very rational until you realize that sugar, performance cars, military technology and history lessons can tick all those boxes.

Ok, so add "is it easy / quick / cheap to acquire?". Performance cars (I take measured risks at the race track) and track days / race tires aren't cheap. Not in any sense of the word. Unsafe driving in ANY car? Yes - but that's already illegal.

Performance cars are very cheap to acquire temporarily.

I can literally book right now, for 4 long laps, for £99 any of the following (and that's a a very small subset of 30 similar cars): Lotus Evora / GTR 1200bhp / Lamborghini Gallardo / Dodge Viper SRT VX / Huracan... Unless you'd say these are not performance cars?

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#217

Post by subscribed »

radicalbyte wrote: post #119
jmkd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cars can come in the form of ambulances, narcotics can come in form of morphine or cocaine (note the early use in medicine).

You don't just exclude / include entire class by giving a few examples.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#218

Post by subscribed »

malfist wrote: post #69
egorfine wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of food sold in the US satisfies the criteria you have laid out here. Is the line still clear?

My neighbor got robbed the other day walking home from work. That means it's okay for me to rob them too, right?

You're trying to make ad absurdum but this been in effect decriminalised in many countries.

In the UK for example the police got so defunded, damaged and wrecked, that they will straight out do their best to refuse investigating most crimes, eg robbery, burglary, assault, theft, even if you literally hand them evidence ("I saw my neighbour Tim doing that and I have CCTV", "my stolen bike is literally in that garage, I have tracker and I made it make a sound").

Police is so defunded and demoralised that they focus on arresting disabled and pensioners for opposing genocide and throw people into the jail for having a peaceful protest planning zoom call - for longer they would serve for rape.

So you tried to joke but in fact many crimes have been decriminalised.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#219

Post by gzread »

mcmcmc wrote: post #118
jmkd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you diabetic? If you aren't diabetic, your body can manage its own sugar.

Re: The operating cost of adult and gambling startups

#220

Post by subscribed »

mcmcmc wrote: post #118
jmkd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Does your brain necessarily *need* HFCS/sucrose, or will it work with wholegrain diet, fruits, vegetables, legumes?

It just seems that you're arguing that without added, pure sugar in drinks/foods your body and brain would break down, but that would be factually incorrect*

*unless you're also suffering from some exceedingly rare genetic conditions affecting certain metabolic paths but it's unlikely you'd live to tell the story.

Post reply on HN