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Addiction Markets

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Re: Addiction Markets

#241

Post by Ekaros »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #232
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.

Nah the sweet spot is to make the gambling companies pay for the treatment and recovery of the people addicted to their products, up to whatever amount they gave the gambling company.

I wonder could this be expanded to other areas. Say you run a ski-resort. Any broken bones and other issues are fully on you. To unlimited liability, piercing any corporate setup. Could really work for any sports too.

Food, tobacco, alcohol get more interesting... As there is bit harder time to assign blame of each meal. Maybe in those cases the claimants should be able to fully list everything they have ingested over say past 10 years. So that liability can be fairly and exactly distributed.

Re: Addiction Markets

#242

Post by [deleted] »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #232
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.

Nah the sweet spot is to make the gambling companies pay for the treatment and recovery of the people addicted to their products, up to whatever amount they gave the gambling company.

[deleted]

Re: Addiction Markets

#243

Post by csomar »

jerednel wrote: post #156
alphazard wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Polymarket is not even close to the same thing. Sports betting allows a blessed few corporations to run rigged markets and intentionally prevent price discovery by keeping the smart money out. Polymarket uses open orderbooks where you match against someone else who wants the other side of the trade just like the stock market. Prices are set by the market, as they should be.

It’s not that hard to look at lines at Pinnacle and Circa and make estimates about the fair value of a wager. Open accounts at every book and line shop and maximize expected value. Also you are ignoring platforms like Novig which are like the polymarket for sports betting.

There is no comparison. A quick search about Pinnacle: https://www.reddit.com/r/sportsbook/comments/kek5t8/warning_...

My experience (though I have never bet on these platforms) is that Pinnacle-like platforms almost never let you withdraw your "earnings". They are essentially a bookie.

Polymarket on the other hand, is just an exchange. And they use Defi to make sure you can always withdraw your bounty even if you get "front-end" banned from their platform.

So to affirm the previous poster: These companies are not in the same business.

Re: Addiction Markets

#244

Post by dns_snek »

asdff wrote: post #126
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's been interesting watching this become popular in secular, lefty circles rather than the historically religious right circles I see this from.

The mainstream left (really a centrist party) might be nominally secular but not really removed from conservative religious values. E.g. consider treatment of gay people in the media vs actual gay culture. In the media it is always a happy monogamous couple where one of the gays is clearly masculine and the other is clearly more effeminate. In reality gay culture is far more complicated than that, with many engaging…

> I'd hate to get all true scotsman but a true leftist would never preach for prohibition as a solution for vice.

That's what happens when you squash a multi-dimensional space of political beliefs down into a single dimension of left-right. You can't have a meaningful discussion about anything from this starting point.

Viewed from a 2-dimensional spectrum this problem lies on the social authoritarian-libertarian axis, not the economic left-right axis.

I'd consider myself a "true leftist" and while I don't think prohibition usually works, I also don't believe in absolutes of liberalism where everything goes - where corner shops can sell heroin and if you fall into addiction that's just your own moral failing.

I support individuals' freedom to use drugs in a controlled, responsible manner, but there need to be limits somewhere to protect naive individuals from getting themselves into something they'll regret and to protect society from collapsing.

Re: Addiction Markets

#245

Post by globular-toast »

agigao wrote: post #234

Personal choice is when it just exists, like Las Vegas in Nevada. If you really really want to gamble then go, travel to Nevada and do it. The problem is sticking their filthy ads and purchased propagandists into the faces of vulnerable people and society at large. Preying on victims over the phone, soc. media ads, bought manipulators so called influencers with no morale.

If you think this is bad, have you noticed fast food? It's engineered to be addictive, the cause of obesity and diabetes epidemics, and they're allowed to advertise everywhere.

What is it about gambling that people find bad while other advertising for harmful stuff gets a free pass?

Re: Addiction Markets

#246

Post by Ekaros »

banannaise wrote: post #217
squigz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a massive difference between card packs - which have been as you describe for decades - and the recent boom in sports betting. Most people don't even know what MTG is, or that there's even a market for those cards. Everyone now knows that you can bet on any sport you want - and if some reports are to be believed, a large percentage of people are participating. Anyway, this is why I play MTG online - s…

> I think there's a massive difference between card packs - which have been as you describe for decades - and the recent boom in sports betting. There is, until there isn't. MTG has been leaning drastically into tiered and ultra-premium products. Increasingly, it feels like Magic design and product is focused on extracting money from the whales at the price of hollowing out their playerbase. It's difficult to draw a…

I have never been sure if collecting is wholesome. I think Pohl did show it as one example of rampant consumerist addiction in one of the books(can't remember which of the ones with marketing guys).

I would guess that collecting goes beyond wholesome once finding the products comes really hard and there is very high prices and extremely low rates involved.

Re: Addiction Markets

#247

Post by csomar »

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.

In 30 years they'll be a huge liability for the state. In the past, they used to send them to meat grinders (wars). Somehow later it was figured out that a mandatory cut of their paycheck will give them a small payment later in their retirement years. But now that social security is broken (both in the US and Europe) and short-term thinking is the norm, every "business men" is salivating at the opportunity.

In a couple decades, they'll be a massive drag on society and could even collapse countries. France is kind of a good example of how that future will look like.

Re: Addiction Markets

#248

Post by Ekaros »

dbpcut wrote: post #117
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.

Because at the end of the day you are buying an asset. Whether that asset stays valuable or not will change. Gambling is the chance to have nothing at the end.

With stocks there is real chance to have nothing at all at end too. Lot of companies have failed. And stock holders are last on the list to get returns in bankruptcy.

Re: Addiction Markets

#249

Post by IlikeKitties »

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…

We should found the government via heroin and christal meth sales.

Re: Addiction Markets

#250

Post by [deleted] »

superfrank wrote: post #198
musicale wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you lose (most people, most of the time), you don't have to pay tax on winnings because there aren't any. But gambling itself seems like sort of a regressive tax that preys upon those susceptible to gambling. Edit: at least with state lotteries the state gets most of the money so it is more like a tax; in the case of corporate sports betting the corporation takes the money and then pays a small corporate tax on…

Federally, That's not even true anymore. In the BBB there was a tax code change that says you can only write off 90% of your losses from sports betting now. If you win $95 on one bet and lose $100 on another, you owe taxes on $5 of that $95.

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