61–70 of 479 posts
The problem isn't the 70M people who placed bets, its the ~25M with broken risk aversion. These are mostly men, and a very specific type of men. You can try to curtail their access to gambling but we're missing the underlying problem.
This line from the ads always strikes me as darkly ironic: > if you need help making responsible choices, call… Like, the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online. What do they even think we’re supposed to take away from that line of the commercial?
> the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online I don't gamble at all in any form, but I still firmly disagree. Some people enjoy gambling in a way that never hurts them-- I've known countless friends and coworkers who talk about doing a bit of it in Vegas or what have you. You're saying every last one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from me? They know they're not going net positive on t…
What name do we give “the guy who says it’s fine to tear down Chestertons fence” ?
The problem isn't the 70M people who placed bets, its the ~25M with broken risk aversion. These are mostly men, and a very specific type of men. You can try to curtail their access to gambling but we're missing the underlying problem.
Has society ever addressed an underlying psychological problem successfully? Because when it comes to the underlying psychological causes of homelessness and drug addiction and school shootings and violent extremism my impression is we don’t really do much.
I am not sure what you are saying with homelessness...it isn't some massive baffling issue, someone who doesn't have a house, needs a house so build a house? School shootings...I don't understand how anyone can believe this is normal?
The US has fairly obvious social problems, these essentially inhibit the functional resolution of most of these problems you list. However, gambling is not like this, the solution to problem gambling is (obviously) regulating gambling so that it is possible for the government to control people's behaviour. Simple.
Homelessness? Build houses. Drug addiction? Get people clean, harsh sentences for dealing. School shootings? No guns. Violent extremism? Jail. These aren't real problems. Most of the world does not have issues with this stuff (I will accept through drug usage in the US appears to be so ingrained in culture, that it would never be possible for anyone to do anything to fix it...the solutions are known however). It is only over the last ten years or so where government has appeared totally unable to do anything because of paralyzing social discord.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online I don't gamble at all in any form, but I still firmly disagree. Some people enjoy gambling in a way that never hurts them-- I've known countless friends and coworkers who talk about doing a bit of it in Vegas or what have you. You're saying every last one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from me? They know they're not going net positive on t…
These services make a relatively smaller piece of their profit from "responsible" people with a lot of self-control. In many cases, the business is probably not viable without problem gamblers. Problem gamblers account for anywhere from 51% of revenue for sports betting apps, to 90% in the case of casinos [1,2] and the numbers seem to be getting worse. [1] https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/DMHAS/Publications/2023-CT-FIN.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>For big gamblers, we can have "qualified gamblers" rules like we do for qualified investors. This is actually a take I haven't seen elsewhere. Yes, we do protect investors at least marginally better (lots of people still get fleeced with little recourse, unfortunately) but conceptually, this is a very interesting idea. The fact that gambling exists on a loophole of being "for entertainment purposes only"[0] isn't a…
His take isn't new. It is deployed in part in the UK. Effectively, gambling companies adopt the role of the state conducting a full audit into your personal circumstances, income, assets, bank statement, utility bills to work out whether you can gamble. I would hope that I don't need to explain why this isn't a good idea. But the one you may not have thought of: gambling companies love this because small companies ar…
I agree, giving up that much information to a third party, opens too many risks for me, and I don't want it to be standard.
However, I'm sure there is some middle ground here that isn't so violating to your privacy. Like mentioned before, having a default limit that can only be surpassed if you're willing to go through some form of qualification. The limit can be set in place without any audit required, if its low enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These services make a relatively smaller piece of their profit from "responsible" people with a lot of self-control. In many cases, the business is probably not viable without problem gamblers. Problem gamblers account for anywhere from 51% of revenue for sports betting apps, to 90% in the case of casinos [1,2] and the numbers seem to be getting worse. [1] https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/DMHAS/Publications/2023-CT-FIN.…
I can readily believe that to be true, but my point still stands, the person I'm replying to made a really sweeping and incorrect statement.
I agree there’s a some sort of gray area here, but it feels awfully narrow… especially with the recent sports betting companies.
> A quarter of bettors can’t pay a bill because of their wagers, a third have gambling debts, more than half carry credit card debts, and a quarter of them are afraid they can’t control their gambling. No way. It's almost like these are addictive products being engineered to be as addictive as possible and deliberately punch people's brains in such a way to make them stay. That's so weird.
>> addictive products being engineered to be as addictive as possible and deliberately punch people's brains in such a way to make them stay The exact same argument could be used to make social media illegal.
I don't think you can kill corporate run gambling - people will just use some offshore website instead. It might be something we should treat more like smoking. - Require a disclosure of the EV of each bet as the user is placing it. E.g.: Expected loss $5. - Ad targeting restrictions.
> people will just use some offshore website instead No they won't, because moving real money to and from these shady offshore websites is a nightmare, and without enforcement there will be too much fraud in the system for the vast majority of regular people to bother. Gambling is so prevalent today because 1) there is incessant advertising, including being overlaid on the game you are watching and 2) it is convenien…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online I don't gamble at all in any form, but I still firmly disagree. Some people enjoy gambling in a way that never hurts them-- I've known countless friends and coworkers who talk about doing a bit of it in Vegas or what have you. You're saying every last one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from me? They know they're not going net positive on t…
These services make a relatively smaller piece of their profit from "responsible" people with a lot of self-control. In many cases, the business is probably not viable without problem gamblers. Problem gamblers account for anywhere from 51% of revenue for sports betting apps, to 90% in the case of casinos [1,2] and the numbers seem to be getting worse. [1] https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/DMHAS/Publications/2023-CT-FIN.…
The problem isn't the 70M people who placed bets, its the ~25M with broken risk aversion. These are mostly men, and a very specific type of men. You can try to curtail their access to gambling but we're missing the underlying problem.
These gambling businesses specifically target that 25M. You absolutely can make that much harder for businesses to do, and it will significantly reduce downstream misery.