Justifying their behaviour with 'addiction' makes them completely unresponsible for their actions. If that's the case you'd have to declare them incompetent for doing business and assign them an agent.
That's a fairly unempathetic view. I don't know what it's like to be a gambler, but I do know that anyone who thinks they are completely rational is only fooling themselves. We are emotional animals with a tiny rational voice that can only shunt our emotions in a better direction.
I think my number one pet peeve of this species is that people are so strongly inclined to assume that everyone’s experience is about the same as their experience. Empathy can be such an uphill battle.
Hacker News isn't really representative of humanity as a whole. It is a very thin slice of intelligent and creative but also cynical and pedantic people with low empathy and emotional intelligence. That is not a value judgement, that is just what it is. Virtually every top comment in every article is nitpicking or dismissal; positivity, especially blind positivity without any evidence, is not valued here.
Hello! I apologize for this being extremely out of context but five months ago on one of my comment threads you recommended Takayama Showa-Kan and I wanted to let you know that I visited it last month and loved it (and Takayama as a whole). Thanks again for the rec!
Is it a net benefit for society for folks to lose out on all their assets and money for the sake of gambling?
This is generational wealth that gets lost in gambling. It is the responsibility of a strong society to prevent scams, and to protect people from very damaging forms of manipulation.
Explain why that is a “responsibility of a strong society” rather than simply a fool and his money are soon parted. I like having the option to throw my money in a wishing well if I were so inclined.
Because when a fool is parted from his money he and those who depend on him starve to death, and that, dear friend, is the part a strong society should be concerned about.
Universal basic income might cleanly solve that problem. Might, because the addict might spend the weekly income on the addiction instead of food and shelter.