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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

#91

Post by watwut »

eximius wrote: post #61

I mean, yes, but it's so far down the list of bad things for society we're facing right now. I'd rather we tackle the root problems leading to these. Increase education rather than reduce liberties. I'm not, like, strongly opposed to reducing this particular liberty, but man it's not my first priority.

Isnt the root problem a company being able to A/B test the most addictive product? They spent huge amount of money to find all the psychological tricks, to identify who has gambling potential and then target those people.

Education wont beat that. Gambling is not a rational decision in the first place.

But, young men gambling (they are the primary target demographic) will make them into desperate and hopeless group. And not just financially, marrying or dating gambler is even bigger mistake then partnering with an alcoholic. Their lives will go down the drain in all aspects.

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

#92

Post by lordnacho »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #68
watwut wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's certainly bad for individuals, and by extension their families. When gambler makes debt, then the partner gets half the debt in divorce. And they have to pay it. It is not bad for families just "by extension". It is directly harming the family members even after the divorce.

Personal gambling debt is individual unless credited to a joint account no?

You don't have to go into debt for it to be a problem. If one spouse spends money gambling, it's still gone from the other one's savings.

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

#93

Post by RataNova »

bruce511 wrote: post #13

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…

I do think advertising is the lowest-hanging fruit here. There's no good reason we should be letting sportsbooks run ads during games that are watched by kids

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

#94

Post by MandieD »

angarg12 wrote: post #16

I left my home country over 10 years ago, and ever since I've travelled back once every 1 or 2 years. Since 4-5 years ago I started to notice these betting houses cropping up where my family and friends live. They are impossible to miss, with big pictures of different sports and no windows. The most important thing to notice is where these place are and are not. They proliferate in working class and less well off nei…

Well over a decade ago, when we were initially looking for a place to rent in Bavaria's second-largest city, which is otherwise one of the safest cities in the country and the world, the quickest way to screen neighborhoods was the presence (or absence) of those little casinos/sports betting offices.

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

#95

Post by dist-epoch »

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…

[flagged]

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

#96

Post by RataNova »

pavlov wrote: post #66

The role of gambling in society has massively expanded in the past 25 years. Legalization of sports betting, online poker, and meme cryptocurrencies are all highly visible examples of normalized gambling. Young people increasingly seem to believe that they need to gamble to get anywhere in life.

When traditional paths to financial security feel increasingly out of reach (housing, stable jobs, etc.), it's not surprising that high-risk/high-reward thinking becomes more normalized...

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

#97

Post by skippyboxedhero »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #18
bruce511 wrote: post #13

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…

> 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 that are legal in the US, talking about addiction makes no sense at all...weed, for example, is inherently addictive, gambling is not).

Regardless though, when sports betting was largely illegal in the US, the illegal market was by far the biggest sports betting market in the world. Continuing to make it illegal was extremely illogical.

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

#98

Post by bongodongobob »

pjc50 wrote: post #41
bruce511 wrote: post #13

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…

Gambling used to be so illegal in the US that it used its global Internet jurisdiction to shut down poker companies located outside the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg

And yet every bar I go to, as far back as I can remember, has slot machines and somehow that doesn't count? Even gas stations. Never understood this.

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

#99

Post by dist-epoch »

soulofmischief wrote: post #82
kriops wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guilt by association: If, e.g., violence is a problem, then one needs to deal with the violence. In general, law-abiding citizens are—and should—be free to congregate and partake in their bad habits wherever they please. And even though gambling is generally immoral, it does not infringe on anyone else's God-given rights and has no business being made illegal. Gambling is emphasized above to emphasize we are talking…

This argument doesn't account for the inherent, drastic power imbalance between the average participant of gambling and the average owner of a gambling center. Gambling between people, a basement poker game, that's fine, that's no one's business. Handing your money over to rich people operating black boxes that are designed from ground up to mesmerize and mind control you into emptying your wallet is a totally other…

I'm curious how do you feel about drug legalization.

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

#100

Post by esseph »

keanb wrote: post #65
nosianu wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they chose their genes and the structure of their brain after all, how irresponsible of them! /s In general, something that happens at scale and consistently is not an individual problem. You have whole armies of very well funded designers of things like processed food, or games, working to deliberate find the faults in human brains, and to make politicians make the laws that lets them do it legally, and you say…

[flagged]

You have far less control over things than you may think.
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