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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

#431

Post by SoftTalker »

watwut wrote: post #345
SoftTalker wrote: post #343

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.

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.

Give your kid $50. Place bets for him as he wants. When his balance hits zero, discuss.

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

#432

Post by [deleted] »

1659447091 wrote: post #170
keiferski wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this distinction is not actually useful in real life, where 99% of the money problems are from certain types of gambling and not from others. When people discuss gambling, they aren’t talking about bingo games and school raffles, they’re talking about the thing most people mean by the word gambling.

If the root problem is greed how is making that distinction not useful in real life? What does the type of gambling matter? If we focus on the core issues: greed and money problems -- over trying to "protect" [my emphasis] others from the bad gambling -- we end up helping them with adjacent greed/money problems. Labeling outside things as the problem is the problem. Help the people learn to master the inner compulsio…

[deleted]

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

#433

Post by throw0101d »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #163
tgv wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling (without very strict rules) has a net negative outcome. You're not doing anything valuable, nor neutral, by gambling. So it could well be viewed as immoral.

Gambling is addictive because it gives you a dopamine rush. That’s why people gamble because it’s actually enjoyable. I personally don’t see the argument for categorising it as immoral on the basis that’s it’s not useful. The same could be said about plenty of other enjoyable things. However exploitation is clearly immoral. That’s where I have issue with gambling. Gambling operators don’t get rich thanks to the avera…

> Gambling is addictive because it gives you a dopamine rush. That’s why people gamble because it’s actually enjoyable.

Cocaine also gives one pleasure when taking it, but at some point the enjoyable part is surrounding by suffering.

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

#434

Post by thfuran »

SoftTalker wrote: post #339
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>If you spend it surfing TikTok that's almost certainly going to do nothing for you.

On the contrary, it's likely to substantially misinform you and wreck your attention span. That's not very helpful though.

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

#435

Post by HaZeust »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #395
jwilber wrote: post #321

Earlier 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…

The hard job market drives more screen time. Less jobs, less money to spend at bars or any other third place that has become paid, less money to network. You aren't spending time honing your craft now, you spend times on hustles trying to launch your social media account or by doing gig work on deliveries and rides hating. You spend more energy than ever making less money than ever and probably under more stress than…

>"Anyone who can do that is extraordinary, but I hope that isn't how we expect our future generations to operate."

Although I'm roughly half the age of the median HN user, and don't have a lot of life experience, one thing I've learned over the last few years - particularly during covid - is that people will accomplish success after a difficult circumstance, and will come out one of two ways (which often decides their core values, political leaning, empathy towards people in other difficult situations, etc.):

1. "I got through it, so anyone else can, too"; or

2. "I got through it, and believe no one else should need to".

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

#436

Post by Retric »

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.

Rights are merely a simplification of complex interactions. Societies are more focused on what benefits themselves than such simplification.

The minimal effectiveness of enhanced interrogation plus the desire of the population not to risk being so interrogated means people are generally apposed to such. Tracking down a nuclear threat is considered something of an exception to this stance by the average person.

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

#437

Post by blonder »

byronic wrote: post #361
ls612 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling is addictive for some , in the same way that alcohol is addictive for some, yet blanket alcohol prohibition is not considered a great idea in hindsight.

I don't know how we could put limits on gambling that would make sense, though. There's a huge difference in bets that I used to make (which were all black-market sports bets, usually on 'game winner' or over/under) ~ once a week during the NFL season vs. the shit going on with FanDuel and all these phone-based gamified services. And that stuff absolutely encourages you to make bets that you can't afford and can easi…

I think banning or severely limiting advertising similar to cigarettes would be a good start. Stop having sports broadcasts be so intertwined with gambling, seeing odds on the screen when watching sports is gross.

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

#438

Post by linehedonist »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #291
keiferski wrote: post #67

The legalization and popularity of gambling is more than just an immoral activity that has negative societal effects. It’s reflective of people losing hope in the system’s ability to make their lives better. Gambling thrives in contexts where a ladder to success doesn’t exist or is perceived as not existing. If hard work or time doesn’t make your life better, then fate is just chance, and you might as well throw your…

> It’s reflective of people losing hope in the system’s ability to make their lives better. I think this passes the buck. It's not the addictive apps and ads, it's society! Don't regulate us!

Yeah I tend to agree with this. People have always bet on sports. Wodehouse wrote a story about bored rich guys in the countryside betting on children’s church games. The real question is, what has changed to allow this betting to occur legally?

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

#439

Post by DiscourseFan »

Spooky23 wrote: post #429
DiscourseFan wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that hard work is often a pre-requisite for being successful, but it is not key to being successful by any means. Like I wouldn't agree with your definition because most people wouldn't claim that, say, getting into bitcoin early and then working like 10 hours a week max trading and setting up mining rigs is "hard work," even if it made some people extremely wealthy, just because they got on the trend early.

That’s fair, you make a good point. I guess people win the lottery too. Life is complex, there’s no one answer. And tbh, if I reflect on my own life, my comp is much higher than it has ever been, my peeps are very happy, and I’m not grinding by any means.

People who win the lottery often can't turn that money into a reliable investment vehicle. Like, if I won the lottery, I would probably become a VC or start building GPU farms. But that would probably still take a lot of work; I'm just saying some people have found a way to maintain wealth long term without doing a considerable amount of work.

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

#440

Post by cindyllm »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #439
Spooky23 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fair, you make a good point. I guess people win the lottery too. Life is complex, there’s no one answer. And tbh, if I reflect on my own life, my comp is much higher than it has ever been, my peeps are very happy, and I’m not grinding by any means.

People who win the lottery often can't turn that money into a reliable investment vehicle. Like, if I won the lottery, I would probably become a VC or start building GPU farms. But that would probably still take a lot of work; I'm just saying some people have found a way to maintain wealth long term without doing a considerable amount of work.

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