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Addiction Markets

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351–360 of 479 posts

Re: Addiction Markets

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whereas gambling taxes disinventivize gambling. Do they, though? The vig is 10%, very transparently shown in the odds, and paid immediately. It proves very little disincentive. The tax is paid annually and only if you win; for most people, it is 0%. Are we really going to argue that the tax is a serious factor in discouraging the behavior?

Yes, because if the tax were 100% then people would still bet, they would just move it off platform. Just like every other sin tax in existence.

Every other sin tax is levied on the consumer, unlike gambling taxes.

Re: Addiction Markets

#352

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.

That seems wild since exchanging “bet” for “stock trade” results in a very different result…

Re: Addiction Markets

#353
post #298

What happened to America. Maybe 70's or 40's were it's peak. Every activity has become a betting. Investments, sports, relationships, home-buying. Addictions are a symptom of having an excessive amount of free time, floating money and lack of fear of reprisal from family and society and lack of basic wisdom. Excessive prosperity breaks social rythm. It removes dependencies and relations across individuals. It's like…

> Addictions are a symptom of having an excessive amount of free time, floating money and lack of fear of reprisal from family and society and lack of basic wisdom. Sure, or any of the other million reasons people get addicted, like despair, or other healthier activities being too expensive. Super weird take.

Explain why there were hardly any addicts among peasant communities in rural third world countries back in the 70's or 80's.

Re: Addiction Markets

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you lose (most people, most of the time) For modern gambling (not including some prediction market setups) its actually all of the people (still allowed to play), most of the time. Because if you win regularly they limit or outright ban you from playing. If they keep letting you play they have determined algorithmically that you're statistically a loser over time. So not only is this easy access to online/app-…

Do you have proof to back up this claim? I know there are professional people and organizations (companies) that are heavy into prediction and sports betting, they are not getting throttled.

This might not be the case for crypto market because crypto, but all the centralized sports betting platform do it.

Otherwise they wouldnt be able to give out "free bets money" for marketing purposes all the time as you could just play opposite bets on multiple platforms.

Re: Addiction Markets

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA absolutely does things to reduce alcohol consumption. Most famously our high drinking age, but also high taxes, rules about public consumption, and various local laws. Most countries will let 18 year olds drink beer in a park.

Until 2004, Massachusetts banned alcohol sales for off-premise consumption on Sundays. Still in effect is a ban on sales for off-premise consumption after 11:00pm and before 08:00am. Also, the number of stores that can sell alcohol for off-premise consumption is restricted by a quota system.

Your premise, that a premise is a premisis, is incorrect.

Re: Addiction Markets

#356
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sales taxes are regressive too for example and bring much much more revenue. That's because "tax the rich" is actually pretty bad tax policy because the rich really don't make a lot more income than the upper-middle to lower classes. If you look at countries with robust social safety nets, they don't get there by taxing the rich.

They do on the other hand hold a significant portion of the wealth. Unfortunately wealth tax is complicated, both because actually measuring the wealth for tax purposes can be hard, and the rich can (and will) just move away from any sufficiently effecient tax scheme. So upper middle class ends up paying the bill.

The really bad part is that the middle/upper-middle class is the real cash cow, the top ~75%. These people are incredibly numerous and have good to incredibly good disposable income.

But since they are such a large cohort, you cannot form a policy around increasing the burden on them. And after all, the tech family pulling $450k/yr are still a "working grunts".

So it's all eye's on the top 1%, but a true wealth gap fix would actually come mostly from harvesting the wealth of the top 20-30%.

Re: Addiction Markets

#357
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? Theres too many moving parts in your very short paragraph, to actual engage with without any substantial engagement being minced into woodchips, I fear. Theres many things that have happened since the 40s, just to name ONE thing that has resulted in this - we have much better psychological technology than we did ever before. Skinnerian conditioning, reward schedules, their results - we never had that. MS Excel al…

In the din of industrial strength siren songs, you may have not noticed the rot that is accumulating in the society. MS Excel exists only because you have some data that you think you should care about and you can't fit in your mind. As an individual, you shouldn't need that much data to handle. The accumulated social rot is not compensated by Excel sheets or any gadget toys, you call as tech.

[deleted]

Re: Addiction Markets

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until 2004, Massachusetts banned alcohol sales for off-premise consumption on Sundays. Still in effect is a ban on sales for off-premise consumption after 11:00pm and before 08:00am. Also, the number of stores that can sell alcohol for off-premise consumption is restricted by a quota system.

Your premise, that a premise is a premisis, is incorrect.

I do not catch your meaning.

Experts sometimes spell it "off-premise":

https://www.nabca.org/covid-19-dashboards-premise-retailers has "While there are several different retail channels permitted to sell alcoholic beverages for offsite (off-premise) consumption".

https://www.parkstreet.com/states/california/ has "Retailers [c]an sell product directly to consumers for on or off-premise consumption".

"Off-premises" is also used.

Re: Addiction Markets

#359
post #107

There has recently been many looks at the epidemic in gambling. Wonder how all of the focus seem to happen at the same time Off the top of my head: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-31/great-bri... https://kyla.substack.com/p/gamblemerica-how-sports-betting-... https://www.ft.com/content/e80df917-2af7-4a37-b9af-55d23f941... https://www.dopaminemarkets.com/p/the-lottery-fication-of-ev... https://www.inve…

I find it odd that almost nobody ever refers stock trading as gambling. While for most persons it is nothing else.

Hmm perhaps you haven't been reading money stuff? He has pretty consistently noted that Robinhood is specifically a gambling app

Re: Addiction Markets

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your premise, that a premise is a premisis, is incorrect.

I do not catch your meaning. Experts sometimes spell it "off-premise": https://www.nabca.org/covid-19-dashboards-premise-retailers has "While there are several different retail channels permitted to sell alcoholic beverages for offsite (off-premise) consumption". https://www.parkstreet.com/states/california/ has "Retailers [c]an sell product directly to consumers for on or off-premise consumption". "Off-premises" is…

Check on that in a dictionary of repute.

My own folk etymology of this infelicity is that it started with the mispronunciation, which is actually hard to avoid in rapid speech, and bled over to people simply writing the wrong word.

Edit: [in reply to your edit]

It is indeed a rather common malapropism.

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