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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

#251

Post by throwaway2037 »

slumberlust wrote: post #185
RataNova wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think advertising is the lowest-hanging fruit here. There's no good reason we should be letting sportsbooks run ads during games that are watched by kids

Kids are the majority of people I know who bet a lot. Mostly teenagers on the ski lifts talking about parlays and long shots.

    > Kids are the majority of people I know who bet a lot. Mostly teenagers on the ski lifts talking about parlays and long shots.
Woah. What country? I cannot imagine this is happening in Sweden, France, Italy, Austria or Switzerland.

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

#252

Post by ta1243 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #250
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling has always been a part of football. You mentioned the football pools, is this not gambling? Horse racing, not going to mention that? Conflating fixed odds machines with sports gambling is deliberately disingenuous, it is like comparing a nice glass of water with super skunk weed. Sports gambling is known to have less harm because it is not possible to control many aspects of the experience, unlike with fixed…

You wrote: > Gambling has always been a part of football. You mentioned the football pools, is this not gambling? Did you read this part? > In the 90s the typical sports gambling in the UK was old men putting the price of a pint on the pools or in a fruit machine, where you guessed which team would win. The winning limit on the fruit machines was about 5 pints worth In short, I would say "scale matters".

Losing or winning a pint or two once or twice a week isn't the end of the world. The pools involved putting numbers into coupons and sending them off each week, it cost you £2 or whatever, and that was it for the week.

Modern sports betting seems (to my untrained uninterested eye) to be about extracting multiple bets of £20+ an hour, seemingly competing with the coke dealers which is apparently a very common part of football nowadays for the income, and using similar tactics.

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

#253

Post by thrance »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #231
thrance wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Know many countries with a political entiry known as "The GOP" that likes to blame minorities for everything wrong in society?

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

#254

Post by macinjosh »

You should be able to make a friendly competitive bet with your mates or coworkers or even strangers without getting in trouble. I am even fine with businesses facilitating this with apps or whatever. But I don't think anyone should be able to bet so much that it could make it hard for their social financial obligations to be met (taxes, rent/mortgage, utility bills, child support, etc). Otherwise society ends up having to help feed, house, clothe, rehab these people. You are giving people the choice to substantially wealth and at worst be saved by the social safety net, many people would take that bet.

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

#255

Post by keiferski »

oreally wrote: post #242
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'd like to present a different perspective, abeit slightly radical. I believe that there's a place for a time-efficient, minimal human approval, risk-reward system for a society in which jobs have been gatekept to ever-higher requirements and are even harder to sustain due to pressures of the people gatekeeping you out and around you once you've gotten in (ie. the bureaucracies of your co-workers and your boss's tem…

I think what you're saying is that society would benefit from a kind of lottery system that made it easy for people to earn a sizable amount of money randomly, without any sort of gatekeeping?

I agree with the premise, however, in actuality gambling systems are almost all designed to just extract money from people. Not function as a wealth redistribution system.

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

#256

Post by kqr »

tgv wrote: post #218
kqr wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is hard to argue against because you haven't defined what you mean by strict rules, but here are some positive outcomes of gambling: - Insurance prevents financial catastrophe by aggregating risk, yet it is nothing more than wagering you'll get into trouble. - Market liquidity is provided by people willing to bet on price developments, which smoothes out fluctuations in availability. - Large infrastructu…

What I mean by strict rules is (but not limited to): no profit for the organizer, loss limit for everyone across all bets, etc. But I don't know what set of rules would qualify to make gambling neutral. - Infrastructure is better off paid by taxation. That's much fairer, and more predictable. - I don't see insurance as gambling. It has a chance element, but that's not enough to qualify something as gambling. You buy…

> taxation. That's much fairer

Extortion is more fair than voluntary contributions? Maybe on arguments from regression but it's not obvious.

> You buy security against large losses at a moderate price

Flood insurance is literally saying "I bet my house is going to be underwater" and winning the big cash price if it is.

Sure, you made an offsetting gamble when buying the house, but I don't see how you can claim a gamble is no longer a gamble when a partially offsetting gamble exists -- that's just two gambles, and indeed prudent risk management when it comes to big gambling.

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

#257

Post by toasterlovin »

Gunax wrote: post #24

I happen to enjoy sports gambling and would be sad to see it disappear. I'm writing this because I want you to know what you're depriving me of. Because _other_ people make poor decisions, we need to take that decision away from everyone.

If you look at the budget, it becomes obvious that the main activity of the federal government is taking money from one group of citizens so that another group of citizens, who are otherwise capable of working, can enjoy a life of leisure for the last 15-20 years of their life. Given that we’ve collectively decided that the bar for when we will massively impinge on people’s freedom is apparently to provide for other people’s idleness, I think it’s completely justified to also impinge on people’s freedom so that we can prevent problem gamblers from totally ruining their lives.

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

#258

Post by ta1243 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #231
thrance wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Pretty much any country. If you have $1m in assets you can simply stick it in a passive fund and earn more than the average wage in the highest earning countries. You can certainly live like a king in low cost countries.

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

#260

Post by toasterlovin »

eggsandbeer wrote: post #25
Gunax wrote: post #24

I happen to enjoy sports gambling and would be sad to see it disappear. I'm writing this because I want you to know what you're depriving me of. Because _other_ people make poor decisions, we need to take that decision away from everyone.

What an incredibly selfish attitude.

It’s a completely legitimate question. It’s the same moral consideration behind whether drugs and alcohol should be legal. Banning them is good for people who can’t use them responsibly, but reduces the freedom of people who can. Given that we’ve flip flopped on the legality of alcohol, cannabis, and sports betting in the last 100ish years, it’s clear there is ambiguity about what is the best tradeoff.
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