Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> Are you the arbiter of human morality? This kind of response is toxic to intelligent discussion. > people who don't know shit, don't know it and talk Hi, kettle.
[deleted]
Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
331–340 of 525 posts
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
This argument doesn't account for the inherent, drastic power imbalance between the average participant of gambling and the average owner of a gambling center. Gambling between people, a basement poker game, that's fine, that's no one's business. Handing your money over to rich people operating black boxes that are designed from ground up to mesmerize and mind control you into emptying your wallet is a totally other…
It absolutely does account for that. Your entire comment is a strawman. If that is not intentional (which I suspect it is not, so no offense intended), then I believe a quick search on “God-given rights” should help you make whatever case you want to in a logically consistent manner. It is a well-defined concept that has a specific meaning over a specific domain. I get the feeling “negative rights vs. positive rights…
The Judeo-Christian god does not exist, nor any other god, so I'm not sure what rights you're referring to. Are you referring to human rights? We don't need a religion to justify those.
Anyway, you said your argument accounts for it, but didn't actually follow through and demonstrate why that is. How does your argument take into account the aforementioned power imbalances?
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the Abrahamic tradition, seeking benefit by avoiding labor is sinful. I don’t think it needs to be widespread to serve as an example. One data point that widespread gambling was eroding norms was that professional gamblers could not give testimony.
OK, so what is to be done when access to labor is gatekept? If you can't have a job, or can't benefit from a job beyond "give a man a fish, he eats for a day", are you not meant to look for an opportunity to generate income outside of working?
> OK, so what is to be done when access to labor is gatekept?
The unemployment rate in the US is 4.3%.
Before you say anything, the U-6 rate is 8.1%.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#334Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just gambling. Influencer and VC culture incentivize this same 'hit it big or die trying' ethos. I have seen '5 million is too little to retire on' type of messaging on HN too. The only way to save more than that is to take on an irrational amount of risk (ie. Gamble). For genZ, the squeeze comes from 3 sides. On one side, few professions promise long term stability. There is a feeling that the ground can va…
I agree with this 100%, it's not just gambling it's that the idea there's a steady path you can follow to success has basically disappeared. In a survey[1] asking how much money was required for financial success, Zoomers averaged $10MM, almost double millennials and 10x boomers. A lot of people online took the opportunity to criticize zoomers as out of touch and financially illiterate, but I think most people under…
Shouldn't you expect Zoomers to be more than double millenials? They're 20 years younger, which means money is 4x cheaper.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, seems likely in a lot of cases. But if the starting point is talking about someone who makes chronically irrational decisions then life is going to seem a bit hopeless. The issue isn't as much they're giving up as it is that they aren't making rational decisions. Thread ancestor was saying "Gambling thrives in contexts where a ladder to success doesn’t exist or is perceived as not existing". And I think that th…
Your opinion seems to be that poor people are poor because they're irrational, and that systemic things like billion-dollar corporations deliberately feeding them addictive behaviors in order to extract as much money from them as possible, is not actually a factor at all. I'm sorry but this comment is so out of touch with how poor people (or even people in general) actually function, I don't know what else to say.
I think you’re establishing a false dichotomy. By and large, poor people are poor because they’re irrational. The businesses that prey on poor people—shady used car dealers, payday lenders, bookies—are exploiting this very irrationality. If we lived in a society where everybody was competent and responsible, none of these businesses could survive.
Alas, human beings sometimes have imperfections that leave them vulnerable to these predatory businesses. What’s more, the very irrationality of patronizing these businesses obviates any objection to restricting consumer freedoms by prohibiting and regulating these businesses.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, so what is to be done when access to labor is gatekept? If you can't have a job, or can't benefit from a job beyond "give a man a fish, he eats for a day", are you not meant to look for an opportunity to generate income outside of working?
> OK, so what is to be done when access to labor is gatekept? The unemployment rate in the US is 4.3%. Before you say anything, the U-6 rate is 8.1%.
Okay, so 30 million people, or more conservatively 16 million people. Same question, and before you say anything, don't be condescending.
ETA: Maybe most conservatively, let's use only the % uniquely included in U-6 and excluded in standard, or 14.4 million people. I'll claim these 14m people are the "gatekept from full employment" in that they don't qualify as narrowly unemployed unless you include "all people marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons"(1)
Same question. 14m people who are being excluded from labor, are they not free to attempt to generate income via means other than labor, lest they suffer the judgement of Abraham?
In other words, is Abraham hiring? If not, are the people he refuses to employ meant to accept serfdom to preserve their soul?
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 thi…
Well, advertising as a concept is fine, but the industry is steeped in advanced, refined yet old-as-time-itself psychological manipulation tactics.
When addiction is intentionally engineered at a high level and wrapped in the Trojan horse of self-sufficiency or emotion, deceit, or the power of suggestion, we have a problem. Imagine Taylor Swift doing an ad for crack cocaine.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hardships do come from high screen time, definitely. The poor job market is not one of them. The “screen” effect doesn’t exist. But the percentage of students enrolled in cs programs grew a lot of the last few years, and I’ve seen the passion difference have an effect. Two friends of mine graduated last year. Both had zero offers out of undergrad (this is the norm right now, again, completely irrelevant to screen tim…
> Hardships do come from high screen time, definitely. The poor job market is not one of them. This times a thousand. I wouldn't have the jobs I do today if I didn't spend probably on balance an unhealthy amount of time in front of my own screens in the 90's. I got into programming because I loved screens and wanted to make them show me different things. The difference today is two-fold IMO: * The job market, as stat…
I took the ancestor comment to be more about the "3-4 hours a day on social media" than time on a screen doing something like learning/improving programming skills.
Now, if you're spending three hours a day writing your blog and promoting your reputation as a skilled developer that's possibly going to help you. If you spend it surfing TikTok that's almost certainly going to do nothing for you. Though back in my 20s I could waste hours just watching stupid shit on TV.
It's possibly harder now to get a great job offer right out of school, but getting a lot of rejections as a new graduate isn't new either. It used to be a thing for seniors near graduation to paper their living room or hallway with all their rejection letters.
Most people are average. They will end up with average jobs and earning average money. One negative thing about social media is that it makes the top overachievers seem normal, and when you compare their lives (at least as they portray them) to your own it can make you feel hopeless.
Re: Americans increasingly see legal sports betting as a bad thing for society
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're clearly having different views on society. Yours seems through a strict financial lens, but correct me if I'm wrong. > potentially huge if you do. No, it isn't. You've just incurred a (probably larger) loss, elsewhere. There's no pay-off. Insurance makes large losses bearable for the individual and society. That's unlike gambling.
“I bet you $500 a month I’ll get cancer.” Insurance absolutely has a societal benefit. It is also absolutely gambling.
If you made this bet, then got cancer, would you say "hooray, I'm rich!"?