Why is no one talking about the true jerk in this situation? The guy legally forcing the other to mortgage his house in order to give him $500k — because of rock, paper, scissors...
Well, we do not know what would happen if the situation were opposite. They both entered into the agreement, presumably seriously. It seems like just playing the game qualifies both sides as jerks.
Yes but sometimes you have a shark that eggs on the game knowing it is rigged.
Google rock paper Scissors robot. It's not inconceivable that a human may have some skills close to that. Or was purposely slowly entering their final state.
How do you propose to enforce this? If these two people had simply gambled the same way, and the loser took out the mortgage and paid the winner, nobody would even know.
It's illegal to gamble where I live, yet every year my friends and I place bets on major sporting events.
The solution to problems isn't always more government. Particularly when the proposed laws are totally unenforceable.
To penalize them, you have to identify them first. Gambling is like corruption, in that two innocent activities (a game and a transfer of money) are combined, and you need to prove that link to prove that gambling occurred.
To be fair, what you actually accomplish there is not to ban gambling, but just to limit it to table stakes. Though that's probably a more useful goal anyway.
It will not. First, large numbers of people will still gamble, and pay a far higher price to do so.
Sports betting is illegal in my state, yet the poker games at my local casino has always been full of bookies taking bets from other players, at significantly worse lines and higher vig than legal book makers in Vegas charge. And sometimes stiffing winners clients after they have a big win, or using threats of violence to collect from big losers.
A few years ago the poker room had to shut down fir nearly 6 months due to a flood. Private games spring up all over town, and instead of taking $126 an hour ($14 per player per hour) like the casino, they raked as three and four times as much. In one game a friend of mine saw the dealer cashed out $2500 in “tips” from her shift. she had been skimming from the pots and the “host” claims he wasn’t in on it. With no cameras, floor management, security etc, they are lucky they didn’t just get hit by a home invasion given the tens of thousands in cash at each game.
Legalized gambling doesn’t just save lives by keeping it out of organized crime control, it makes it far less costly for participants, and making its negative impacts on society much lower. In a competitive market the rake/vig is much lower, playing poker for $14 an hour has much more limited personal impact than playing it for $50/hour.
Lastly legal gambling can enforce rules to protect players from their worst instincts. One example is banning collection of gambling debts to help ensure players only play with what they can afford to lose.
> Sports betting is illegal in my state, yet the poker games at my local casino...
So gambling is still allowed in your state. I'm saying to ban it completely so the entire market is closed.
It won't be too difficult to crack down on private gambling sites as well. The issue in the US is that each state has its own laws, so this won't work unless there is a ban at the federal level.
> Legalized gambling doesn’t just save lives by keeping it out of organized crime control, it makes it far less costly for participants, and making its negative impacts on society much lower.
I don't agree. There are countries where gambling is banned, and they don't have a gambling or crime problem.
Not sure I follow? If two people have a 'rational' bet, then is that legal in your eyes? Surely you can't be saying that irrational actions should be illegal, or that gambling on 'irrational' decisions (however one might even try to define that) should be banned? Or that all gambling should be banned, because there is a chance that some bets might be irrational? None of those viewpoints seem to make any kind of sense, as far as I can see?
If the roles were reversed, I would have a similar criticism of the other guy. Clearly, the loser didn’t want to pay because he contested it in court — and the victor could have forgiven the debt.
I wouldn’t even make my friend pay me back for lunch if they forgot their wallet — let alone put them through financial hardship for such a trivial, low-effort event as a game of RPS.
> I wouldn’t even make my friend pay me back for lunch if they forgot their wallet — let alone put them through financial hardship for such a trivial, low-effort event as a game of RPS.
That's a bit different. Your friend is presumably not deliberately forgetting his wallet while eating $500k lunches, and if he was I bet you'd expect him to pay you back. And the game of Rock Paper Scissors may be trivial and low-effort, but betting $500k on the game is very much not.
If I enter into a $500k bet on a game of Rock Paper Scissors, it's with the understanding that I stand to lose $500k if I lose the game, and I take that seriously. The only reason that risk is worth taking is if I also stand to win $500k if I win the game. If I win and you turn around and say "oh come on man I really don't want to pay", then you're basically saying you entered into the bet with the intention of scamming me out of an expected sum of $250k, so yes I'll insist that you pay up.
This is a fair point. Part of the reason I would not make this bet in the first place is because I wouldn’t want the put myself into a situation where I either lose lots of money or risk causing financial hardship on another person. It’s lose-lose, in my opinion (I don’t think it’s worth $500k).
I understand how people can reasonably disagree about this and I take back calling him a jerk (although I hope I would not behave the same way in his circumstance). I also lack information about the specifics of what happened.
>I wouldn’t even make my friend pay me back for lunch if they forgot their wallet — let alone put them through financial hardship for such a trivial, low-effort event as a game of RPS.
What is the minimum amount of effort required to make a bet of $500,000 valid?
If he's a true jerk, he'll report the now cancelled debt to his country's equivalent of the IRS. If you owe money and some or all of that is cancelled, in many countries the amount cancelled might count as income to you for tax purposes.
I'd expect that in this case it would not be income, because it sounds like the court determined that the debt was not valid in the first place and so it is more of a "there was never a debt in the first place" than a "cancelled debt" situation, but being investigated to determine that would likely be annoying.