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Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

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Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

#231

Post by throwaway2037 »

thrance wrote: post #195
keiferski wrote: post #67

The legalization and popularity of gambling is more than just an immoral activity that has negative societal effects. It’s reflective of people losing hope in the system’s ability to make their lives better. Gambling thrives in contexts where a ladder to success doesn’t exist or is perceived as not existing. If hard work or time doesn’t make your life better, then fate is just chance, and you might as well throw your…

We already live in a country where owning capital generates more income than actually working. And this is rapidly getting worse. The GOP has sold the country on blaming minorities, and so things will get much, much worse before they can be better.

    > We already live in a country
The context is unclear. What country?

Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

#232

Post by LexiMax »

hollerith wrote: post #190
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling is addictive because it gives you a dopamine rush. That’s why people gamble because it’s actually enjoyable. I personally don’t see the argument for categorising it as immoral on the basis that’s it’s not useful. The same could be said about plenty of other enjoyable things. However exploitation is clearly immoral. That’s where I have issue with gambling. Gambling operators don’t get rich thanks to the avera…

Most Americans regard as immoral any substance or activity to which ordinary people become addicted at a significant rate. Addiction breaks social ties. For example, when an addict starts to struggle to continue to pay for his addiction, he often starts to steal from friends and family members. The average view on this on HN is quite different from the American average. Personality psychologists have observed that pe…

> Maybe HNers are more tolerant of addictive substances and activities than the American average because addictive substances and activities tend to be interesting experiences.

I think the more accurate lens would be that Hacker News likes money.

On the surface at least, it seems like running a gambling or sports betting company would be a dream job. You get to systemically rip off your customers through your house edge, you retain the right to back off skilled players that can bypass your house edge, your expenses go to infrastructure as opposed to creating anything of value, and you get to externalize the wider societal consequences by blaming nebulous mental illness.

"This guy wants to pay me for the privilege of gradually losing money to me, why should I stop him?"

Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

#233

Post by axus »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #119
keiferski wrote: post #67

The legalization and popularity of gambling is more than just an immoral activity that has negative societal effects. It’s reflective of people losing hope in the system’s ability to make their lives better. Gambling thrives in contexts where a ladder to success doesn’t exist or is perceived as not existing. If hard work or time doesn’t make your life better, then fate is just chance, and you might as well throw your…

I would say gambling in itself isnt immoral. The problem is that a small % of people get addicted and end up spending all their money and more on betting. And that the industry makes almost all their profits on those that are addicted.

Selling a product or service to its addicts is immoral. Consumption isn't, its just stupid

Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

#234

Post by inerte »

bruce511 wrote: post #13

Is it bad for society? It's certainly bad for individuals, and by extension their families. I guess if it scales up such that a serious chunk of society is affected, then yes its bad for society. Let's start with the obvious- in all forms of gambling the gamblers make a net loss. The games are hosted by very sophisticated companies, that have better mathematicians, and make money. $x is pumped into the system by the…

> The games are hosted by very sophisticated companies, that have better mathematicians, and make money.

Oh, it's worse than that. In sports betting at least, if the gambler consistently makes money, the companies will ban or limit their gains. It's a scam.

Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

#236

Post by throwaway2037 »

dist-epoch wrote: post #159
soulofmischief wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war on drugs should never have happened. It's been used a tool of foreign and domestic terror and control for a century. It was designed and popularized by corrupt people who stood to gain wealth from restricting the freedom of others. To your implied point, drug addictions similarly ravish communities, destroy lives, and in the case of drugs like fentanyl, legalization effectively makes it easy to acquire extrem…

I asked because I noticed this strange cluster (for me) of people which want to ban some things like gambling or social media algorithms because they are exploitative and addictive, but who also want to legalize drugs. I had a feeling you might be in it. Stranger, some of them want to ban/make it harder to distribute drugs "legally" through doctors (OxyContin, Sackler family scandal) because doctors might be monetari…

I was reading this chain of responses. They are great. The two of you are very thoughtful in your world view.

About your last paragraph: How do you feel about other OECD (highly developed) countries that do not allow personal gun ownership (except for hunting and sport shooting (clays, etc.)? Take Japan for example: Except for hunting and sport shooting, ownership of guns is not allowed. How do you feel about it?

Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

#237

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

keiferski wrote: post #67

The legalization and popularity of gambling is more than just an immoral activity that has negative societal effects. It’s reflective of people losing hope in the system’s ability to make their lives better. Gambling thrives in contexts where a ladder to success doesn’t exist or is perceived as not existing. If hard work or time doesn’t make your life better, then fate is just chance, and you might as well throw your…

> > It’s reflective of people losing hope in the system’s ability to make their lives better

On the contrary all epicenters of gambling are extremely rich areas populated by people who have mastered such art.

The proximities of the stock exchanges of every country are basically the richest zip code in the country

Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

#238

Post by throwaway2037 »

soulofmischief wrote: post #120
XorNot wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly okay with legalizing everything but absolutely banning advertising it. Which is what we should be doing with gambling: no advertising, as opposed to now where everybody ad break has a celebrity endorsing the intelligence you clearly have when you choose (betting platform).

The emotional manipulation of paid celebrity endorsement of harmful, engagement-hacking products and services is downright sickening, just the thought of how normalized it's become makes me sick to the stomach. I'm very pro gun, pro freedom of consumption, pro crypto, etc. but once emotional manipulation comes into play, self-determinism goes out the window and people are no longer making free choices.

    > I'm very pro gun, pro freedom of consumption, pro crypto, etc. but once emotional manipulation comes into play, self-determinism goes out the window and people are no longer making free choices.
To me, this is a very mature response. The whole idea of you do what you want as an adult and you own all of the consequences. Why do you make an exception for "emotional manipulation"? To be clear: I am not trolling in this post. I want to know why you think these things can be legal, but advertising about them is "morally bad".

Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society

#239

Post by Theodores »

bhc wrote: post #217
victorbjorklund wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say gambling in itself isnt immoral. The problem is that a small % of people get addicted and end up spending all their money and more on betting. And that the industry makes almost all their profits on those that are addicted.

The gambling industry has funneled a ton of cash into academic researchers producing papers that gave credence to the idea of "addictive personality," which in turn was massaged by PR experts into the notion that some people are just born addicts, and the gambling industry can't help it if they become addicted to gambling too. "Addictive personality" itself is on very shaky grounds statistically, and the derived PR m…

"Addictive personality", now there is a deprecated phrase!

In drug rehabilitation, the phrase is no longer used. Instead people have a bingo card of disease, conditions and syndromes to go with addiction. Once people have been pigeon-holed in a dozen ways then the die is cast, these conditions are no longer imaginary, you have to hold yourself up in life because X, Y and Z prohibit you from even giving it a go.

Regarding the article, I detest organised gambling, however, relatively few chronic gamblers end up homeless and destitute. You need a good dose of class A drugs and a smorgasbord of childhood trauma to guarantee the truly negative outcomes.

I don't object to gambling amongst friends, even if it is on a card game. I might bet someone that they can't beat me on Scrabble, but I would be getting the dopamine hits from laying some massive, high-scoring words on the board to devastate my fellow players, but winning that £10 just ups the stakes and my competitive drive. If I am just betting on a sport (or even a Scrabble game) played by others, then it isn't quite the same.

What does amaze me about modern day gambling is that you know it is rigged. I don't trust an app to honestly flip a coin for me. My version of the app would be 'if heads show tails and vice-versa most of the time'. Yet people pour their life savings and some more into apps that are black boxes with no way of peeking inside to see how it works. The seasoned gambler must know that every game is rigged and that the house always wins, but they still queue up for another spin.

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