Live data from Hacker News

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

pewresearch.org

381–390 of 525 posts

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

#381

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…

> Perhaps ban advertising

Yes. Ban the phone apps and had the ads. Advertising works people, that’s why they pay for it!

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

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It could be banned. Would that stop it? Probably not. Was not that big of a thing 15 years ago. The goal of a ban is not to reduce the consumption to 0, but try to lower it a significant amount. Although, since people are generally aware of it and participated in it, it might not be that easy to go back to beforetimes.

Yes, gambling was huge in the US before, you just didn't know about it. Illegal gambling market in the US was massive because you could go offshore. One of the issues with offshore providers is no taxes, no harm prevention, etc. Legalization allows you to generate tax revenue and implement harm prevention effectively for the very small amount of users that are gambling addicts (if you compare to some of the things th…

Yes it existed before. But Do you dispute that far more people in the US are participating now?

Ease of access and advertising matter.

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

#383

That's always an interesting thing. Where does autonomy end and the right of the government to intrude into your private life begin. The bottom line, that something is bad for you seems to be so logical. But when you think about it a bit longer you see that there are so many things that are bad for you that it would be next to impossible to regulate all of them. Ok, so you only do it for the things that are really ha…

No it’s really not that nuanced. Society should ban things that are obvious traps and cause massive costs to society.

Banning gambling doesn’t mean hunting down gamblers, it means stopping them from being in the App Store listings and showings ads in TV.

If you want to find sketchy websites on your own after that - that’s your freedom.

Having 20 year old men bombarded with gambling media is not freedom.

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

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If bookies want better prices they can pay for prices from places that have good models. Or they can buy / build their own models. What you're suggesting doesn't make sense from an economic perspective.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45483917 , sidethread.

Thanks! I definitely have more to learn in this area.

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

#385
post #300

Earlier 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…

> $10MM

Ah, so they are just basing their life decisions on falsehoods then? lol

I know the world is different now, but I graduated high school in the wake of the 08 financial crisis. A lot of this Zoomer doomerism sounds like what people said about millennials.

But I (and my future wife) just went to a state school with in-state tuition. Got tech/eng degrees with some debt (5 figures). Have worked in the industry with ups and downs (including layoffs) for a decade or so now. Paid that debt off. Lived in a high CoL city in a nice apartment. Got a nice house after 5y of saving (but not being super frugal, just savvy I'd say. e.g. drove the same 08 Civic the whole time). And now we have a baby and only one of us works at all (and the other WFHs).

We didn't get giant donations from our parents (although some reasonable college savings helped, which I am repeating for my kid). Didn't go to prestigious fancy schools. Didn't even exceptionally excel in school.

But the key was to not throw our hands up and say the system is fucked. It's waxed and waned since that 08 crisis, and not participating is the main way to have lost. So yeah, thinking insanely wrong stuff like you need 10 mil to succeed is just stupid and self sabotaging haha.

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

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I can see it being a good thing if done carefully. My experience with raising three kids is there’s a limit to the amount of messaging that gets through with any fidelity. So, the only financial teaching I did with them, was the stocks, bonds, diversification, risk and prudence schtick. I could see the attempted teachable lesson about gambling losses going sideways and crowding-out the rest.

I was pretty much the same way with my kids, with one more detail: Teaching a reasonable level of skepticism about advertising, marketing, and peer pressure in general.

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

#387
The problem isn't gambling. It's America's obsession with excess. There are always going to be people that get addicted but most people can enjoy it with limited downside if it's regulated properly, as it is in lots of other countries that have had legalised sports gambling for decades and more. Instead, sports in American have made gambling part of the broadcast and almost the point of playing the game.

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

#388
post #227
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just putting it out there that I have a better grasp of my opinion than you do. Let me try this a different way. Which part of your comment do you think I don't know about/disagree with and, with reference to something I said, why? Let's just pick one thing that you think is clearest, but be specific. EDIT You'll notice I haven't disagreed with anything you've said so far this thread, apart from where you have mischa…

> If someone has enough money that wasting it on gambling is a problem, then they clearly had no business giving up hope because "the system" doesn't have the ability to make their lives better. The system that makes their lives better is the money they just wasted, but invested in something productive. This seems to be pretty clearly saying that you think poor people only gamble with money they don't need and if the…

Well that is progress because now you're attributing something to me that is close to what I do believe, which is poor people who gamble probably are poor because they make terrible financial decisions. I mean, you linked an article earlier suggesting that there are people who spend more than 5% of their income on lotto tickets [0]. No mystery why they're poor, they make bad decisions with money. In percentage terms, 25% of income in savings is probably the magic line where suddenly the whole thing becomes financially self-sustaining. 5% is not an inconsiderable chunk of that. Someone who just donates that sort of chunk to a gambling company is not competent with money.

But that isn't "poor people", and it isn't reasonable to just assume that poor people are all incapable. Most are perfectly reasonable people who happen to be poor despite generally being responsible with what money they do have. And presumably not throwing away 5% of their income for no good reason. I suppose I might be over-estimating poor people, but that isn't any reason for you to start misrepresenting my beliefs.

> I say you don't have a good enough grasp of it to present it in an understandable way since this "misinterpretation" of your view seems to match pretty well with what you've actually said.

Bullshit. You claimed my opinion was "poor people are poor because they're irrational". That is both a ridiculous statement and a gross mischaracterisation of what I said. Realistically I probably should get an apology, although getting you to understand what I actually wrote is enough for me.

[0] If you read the article closely though, that isn't actually mathematically guaranteed. Means can be deceptive like that.

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they do it, it's gambling. When we do it, it's investing.

The difference is investing has a positive expected return. Betting against the house does not.

> investing has a positive expected return

Can you tell me more about this. I've never heard of it before. Is there a theorem?

Post reply on HN