Addiction Markets

Post by dghlsakjg » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 6:00 PM UTC

LPisGood wrote: post #150

snuxoll wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is this: the house always wins. Casinos, online sports books, the lottery, all of it is designed such that all but quite literally a lucky few will lose money. If you understand this properly, then, yes, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it being a form of entertainment , but that means you need to go in thinking about cost per hour instead of any notion of leaving with more than you began with. This…

The house does not always win in online sports books. I personally know some quant minded people that have been banned or backed off from a dozen or more online sports books because they are crushed by any nontrivial understanding of price/probability and arbitrage. They do make a lot of money from people who bet for fun or based on their perceived knowledge of the particular sport.

Post by jonahbenton » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #399

Humorist2290 wrote: post #118

But if you want to outlaw this harmful activity [licensed gambling], you have to find a way to replace 6.4% of Maryland’s budget, which is slightly less than the entire amount the state brings in from corporate taxes. A fraction of the proceeds of losing bets from a fraction of Maryland's citizens contributes almost the same to state services -- EMS, education, road maintenance, etc -- than the total corporate taxes…

I think this is a pretty good approach actually. Give people the freedom to gamble, but discourage it through taxes. It's best to tax things you want to discourage. So it's preferable to tax gambling rather than productive economic activity. Related concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 6:21 PM UTC

Epa095 wrote: post #289

parineum wrote: post #223

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.

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

premisis wrote: post #360

hollerith wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by daseiner1 » Sat, Nov 01, 2025, 6:58 PM UTC

greggh wrote: post #422

markdown wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They never said it was Sicilian Mafia.

Multiple articles and interviews have said it was the Sicilian Mafia / La Cosa Nostra. "The Five Families - the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese - have ruled the city's Italian American mafia since 1931." "The Five Families are part of the larger American-Sicilian mafia operation known as La Cosa Nostra" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpv1rkxjyyno