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Addiction Markets

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Re: Addiction Markets

#431

Post by daseiner1 »

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.

Good video on this:

https://youtu.be/XZvXWVztJoY?si=to8qYcXuBT2xAaIz

Re: Addiction Markets

#432

Post by jerednel »

csomar wrote: post #243
jerednel wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not that hard to look at lines at Pinnacle and Circa and make estimates about the fair value of a wager. Open accounts at every book and line shop and maximize expected value. Also you are ignoring platforms like Novig which are like the polymarket for sports betting.

There is no comparison. A quick search about Pinnacle: https://www.reddit.com/r/sportsbook/comments/kek5t8/warning_... My experience (though I have never bet on these platforms) is that Pinnacle-like platforms almost never let you withdraw your "earnings". They are essentially a bookie. Polymarket on the other hand, is just an exchange. And they use Defi to make sure you can always withdraw your bounty even if you ge…

They absolutely let you withdraw earnings. I place around 20 wagers a day. Pinnacle and Circa are used as measures of what the market is actually pricing in. You can devig lines to arrive at event likelihoods. From there you can line shop such that your expected value is positive over the long run.

Re: Addiction Markets

#433

Post by [deleted] »

idiotsecant wrote: post #392
kiba wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea to impose piguouvian taxes, not a good idea to impose sale taxes as that's regressive. Property tax's a mixed bag since it taxes both land and building when ideally you only want to tax land. States that impose income taxes are choosing not to imposes taxes elsewhere like land, which is the ideal tax. Income taxes have negative consequences since you're taxing economic activity.

Why shouldn't we tax the buildings? It seems like there's lots of real estate out there with relatively moderate land value but astronomical building value.

[deleted]

Re: Addiction Markets

#434

Post by daseiner1 »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #166
hshdhdhehd wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it in terms of public health not morality. Heart disease is one of humanities oldest killers but we still want to fix it. We also dont want to ban deep friers as we value freedom. Similar for gambling. We do want to discuss what to do when vice becomes no longer nice.

This is actually a good example of what I mean. Heart disease is meticulously studied. Its incidence is tracked tracked. It has longitudinal studies. Its mechanisms are explored. It has peer reviewed studies discussing interventions. Doctors talk all the time about the tradeoffs their patients can make to decrease their chances of getting heart disease. What it has a lot less of is random public policy influencers wr…

vice != money. meticulous study lags behind facts on the ground. perhaps vice is super-charged today, and policy influencers are more akin to journalists.

(giving extreme benefit of the doubt, here)

Re: Addiction Markets

#435

Post by daseiner1 »

globular-toast wrote: post #245
agigao wrote: post #234

Personal choice is when it just exists, like Las Vegas in Nevada. If you really really want to gamble then go, travel to Nevada and do it. The problem is sticking their filthy ads and purchased propagandists into the faces of vulnerable people and society at large. Preying on victims over the phone, soc. media ads, bought manipulators so called influencers with no morale.

If you think this is bad, have you noticed fast food? It's engineered to be addictive, the cause of obesity and diabetes epidemics, and they're allowed to advertise everywhere. What is it about gambling that people find bad while other advertising for harmful stuff gets a free pass?

the outsize harms of gambling, financial ruin that is highly individualized, highly destructive, and particularly devastating. there are obviously significant public health costs from fast food, but its destruction does not present the same way.

Re: Addiction Markets

#436

Post by daseiner1 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #383
zkmon wrote: 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…

Notice that whenever anything happens in the US, especially on the negative side, the first question that pops up is usually "How will this affect the stock market?" .

And "the economy" is so frequently conflated with the stock market.

Re: Addiction Markets

#437

Post by tacker2000 »

robotnikman wrote: post #89
neaden wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also because the NBA is going through a gambling scandal with players being involved with the mafia.

This is the first time I heard of this, I decided to look up some of the news stories behind it. Maybe I'm nieve, but I thought the Sicilian Mafia died out decades a

They never died, they are still going strong.

Re: Addiction Markets

#438

Post by wombatpm »

cael450 wrote: post #201
wombatpm wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax advertising for gambling? Require all advertising for gambling to go through a state agency? There is lots a state can do besides banning.

Yeah but banning them is the right thing to do. Why would you have a state agency review gambling ads?

Prevent false claims, educate people on the foolishness of parleys?

Re: Addiction Markets

#439

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF »

idiotsecant wrote: post #392
kiba wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good idea to impose piguouvian taxes, not a good idea to impose sale taxes as that's regressive. Property tax's a mixed bag since it taxes both land and building when ideally you only want to tax land. States that impose income taxes are choosing not to imposes taxes elsewhere like land, which is the ideal tax. Income taxes have negative consequences since you're taxing economic activity.

Why shouldn't we tax the buildings? It seems like there's lots of real estate out there with relatively moderate land value but astronomical building value.

Taxing the buildings incentivizes urban sprawl and blight. People with money to park will park it in empty lots, waiting for the land to increase in value instead of paying the extra property tax to develop it themselves.

The result is a downtown with empty lots, abandoned buildings, and short buildings, right next to skyscrapers making much better use of their footprint and surrounding infrastructure

When a pedestrian has to walk one block further because they're walking past an empty building or empty lot that a rich person has dibs on, it produces negative value for the city

Re: Addiction Markets

#440

Post by dredmorbius »

ACCount37 wrote: post #318
shipman05 wrote: post #142

It feels like banning advertising for gambling would be a sweet spot between harm reduction and maintaining individual liberty. Sports gambling ads have ruined sports media. State lottery ads are even worse. The government should not spend money to encourage its own citizens to partake in harmful activities.

"Make it legal but very annoying" is an underrated policy option. And banning advertisement is the first resort in this line of regulation. If there are no ads to tell you, you have to, first, be informed that sports gambling is a thing people do, then decide that it's a thing you want participate in, and then obtain information on how it's done. This adds friction. Friction reduces participation. But if you really w…

Taxing they daylights out of the advertising is another option.

That should push the shadier operators out of the limelight, though it would likely leave large-pot gaming (sports, Powerball, etc.) standing, at least for a while.

(I'd very much like to hear criticisms of this approach.)

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