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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

#341

Post by sigwinch »

singlepaynews wrote: post #306
sigwinch wrote: post #286

Earlier 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?

If you’re a bookie, and an adherent of these Iron Age religions, then you might be instructed to Render upon Caesar. If being a bookie means feeding your family, you can relax so long as you realize that your responsibility is to slightly nudge the right players to win.

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

#342

Post by ryandrake »

fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #320
ryandrake wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a stock or mutual fund is the very definition of gambling: placing a monetary bet on an unknown future event. Just because this activity has historically had a +EV, doesn't make it any less gambling.

By this definition prime loans are also gambling. When you bet on something risky then you are gambling. When you bet on something not risky you are not gambling. Also consider that not investing will generally lose money over time due to things like inflation. If we define the goal to be holding as much value as we can, holding dollars is more risky than investing in many stocks (or bonds, which also have a risk of…

I'm not sure I buy any definition of gambling that depends on the outcome. If you lose money or tend to lose money, then it's gambling, but if you win money or tend to win money, then we change the name to "investing?" Risk includes upside and downside risk.

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

#343

Post by SoftTalker »

ineedasername wrote: post #309
Retr0id wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the 13yos doing? Is there some fake-money sports betting platform or are they able to burn real money on it?

My son has mentioned friends whose fathers let them place bets. “Hey, who do you like for the wildcard game tonight, I’ll put a tenner ($10) on it for you.” It’s not seen the same way as a parent giving giving their kid alcohol or other age-gated things like that. Interestingly, considering the role that sports have in day to day social discourse & self-identity with teams (“we” need to win this game), I’ve heard a f…

When I was 13 my parents would let me have a (small) glass of wine with dinner.

I'm sure many parents place proxy sports bets for their kids. Maybe to teach them how to use betting as a form of entertainment and learning how your money can also just disappear. I can see it being a good thing if done carefully. I can also see it going wrong.

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

#344

Post by sd9 »

daymanstep wrote: post #115
thaumasiotes wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most individuals are going up against these very sophisticated statistical models created by teams of quants working with huge datasets that you have to pay substantial amounts to access. There are two things you might do as a bookmaker: (1) Perceive the truth of who is likely to do what, and set odds reflecting that perfect Platonic reality, but with a percentage taken off for yourself. (2) Adjust the odds you off…

Strategy (2) doesn't tell you how to come up with the initial prices, and bookies can potentially lose a significant amount from giving "bad" initial prices. If an individual is winning a lot of money from a bookie repeatedly because of these bad initial prices, then it is a sign that they might have a better model than the bookie, and so it is in the bookie's interest to ban them, since sports betting is a zero-sum…

I worked for a gambling syndicate. We often made money from bad initial prices. Many bookies tolerated us because they wanted to know what we thought was mispriced and rapidly adjusted their odds after we started betting.

It was a balancing act though. They really wanted to know what we were doing, but didn’t want to lose too much to us. So there was some give and take / bartering around the fair value of our information in the form of our accounts being banned and limited or bets being voided. But they definitely didn’t want to eradicate us.

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

#345

Post by watwut »

SoftTalker wrote: post #343
ineedasername wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My son has mentioned friends whose fathers let them place bets. “Hey, who do you like for the wildcard game tonight, I’ll put a tenner ($10) on it for you.” It’s not seen the same way as a parent giving giving their kid alcohol or other age-gated things like that. Interestingly, considering the role that sports have in day to day social discourse & self-identity with teams (“we” need to win this game), I’ve heard a f…

When I was 13 my parents would let me have a (small) glass of wine with dinner. I'm sure many parents place proxy sports bets for their kids. Maybe to teach them how to use betting as a form of entertainment and learning how your money can also just disappear. I can see it being a good thing if done carefully. I can also see it going wrong.

There is a out zero chance it is done carefully or done to teach them "money disappears". Be serious. It does not even make sense as a lesson.

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

#346

Post by watwut »

Theodores wrote: post #239
bhc wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Regar…

> relatively few chronic gamblers end up homeless and destitute.

They rank up unpayable debts and their married partners end up being legally obligated to pay half of that even after divorce.

Getting life together after gambling is super hard to impossible. It is literally easier to get back on track as alcoholic, as those have much smaller debts.

And it is easier to avoid keep alcohol out of house then ... cell phone put of house.

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

#347

Post by [deleted] »

kriops wrote: post #308
Retric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about the Gambling, it’s the fact these businesses are collecting a large number of easy victims in once place. Imagine you’re a loan shark. Which of the following seems like a good place to look for customers: upscale restaurant, movie theater, random bar, theme park, baseball stadium, city park, or a sports betting venue.

Right. In other words, no one's God-given, negative rights are being infringed upon.

[deleted]

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

#348

Post by nekusar »

I remember when gambling was actually just illegal in most of the USA.

In my state, it was the state run lotto that was used to sell the idea "Hey we'll take lottery proceeds and fund education with it!!!!!". Of course, state-run lottery was legalized, and yes, the proceeds did run schools.

The next funding session, they CUT the existing funding to schools and had the lottery run the bulk of the funding. They naturally never said that part out loud.

And riverboat gambling was a quazi-legal thing. Then casinos were legalized. Then normalized gambling everywhere. Even the local groceries have state-run lotto vending machines that gobble 20's and 50's for a chance to strike it rich, or more likely, get poorer.

I prefer when gambling was decriminalized individually, but not endorsed for the state or companies to run. I also don't want cop squads cracking down on the penny or quarter games in peoples' houses.

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

#349

Post by idopmstuff »

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…

> 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 punters, $y is extracted, $z is returned. The 'house' is the only winner.

This is incorrect, specifically with regard to sports betting. Sports betting and poker are both winnable games. Most people don't win in the long run, but unlike in table games (Blackjack, etc.) there are absolutely winners that are not the house.

To be clear, that doesn't mean they're good or should be allowed. I used to be a poker player and enjoy putting some bets on football now, but I've come around to the general idea that sports betting in particular is a net negative for society. Still, if you're going to make an argument against it, it's always going to be a better argument if it isn't built on a basis that's just factually untrue.

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

#350

Post by sethammons »

philwelch wrote: post #336
keiferski wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vulner…

That take feels lazy. Poverty isn’t primarily about irrationality, it’s about constraints. People make decisions that are locally rational given their options, but the system they’re operating in is tilted against them.

If rent eats half your income and your car breaks down, you’re not choosing between “investing” and “consuming.” You’re choosing between keeping your job and getting evicted. Behavioral quirks exist, sure, but they’re downstream of scarcity, and scarcity itself warps decision-making.

We’ve got decades of data showing that when you remove the constant pressure (through cash transfers, healthcare, childcare, etc.), people generally make long-term, rational decisions. The idea that “the poor are poor because they’re irrational” mistakes the symptom for the cause.

It is propaganda to "other" the poor. It is much easier to blame irrationality for people being poor rather than the systems we choose to keep in place. Those who convinced you of this falsehood, what are they gaining?

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