[soulofmischief]

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 story. On the individual level, it ruins the lives of anyone who is unable to resist or understand the psychological tricks employed on them. Zooming out, it destroys families, communities and in effect, societies.

If we are going to base the legality of gambling on consent and human rights, we have to recognize the limit where consent is no longer valid, due to sickening engagement tactics.

Someone's freedom to make money off of my ignorance or weakness does not supersede my right to self-determination and well-being, neither of which are possible when being hoodwinked by exploitative capitalists.

If we are to continue allowing corporate gambling operations and 24/7 mobile sports betting, we need to place serious restrictions on how these companies are allowed to operate.

[dist-epoch]

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

[XorNot]

I'm fairly okay with legalizing everything but absolutely banning advertising it.

Which is what we should be doing with gambling: no advertising, as opposed to now where everybody ad break has a celebrity endorsing the intelligence you clearly have when you choose (betting platform).

[soulofmischief]

The emotional manipulation of paid celebrity endorsement of harmful, engagement-hacking products and services is downright sickening, just the thought of how normalized it's become makes me sick to the stomach.

I'm very pro gun, pro freedom of consumption, pro crypto, etc. but once emotional manipulation comes into play, self-determinism goes out the window and people are no longer making free choices.

[throwaway2037]

    > I'm very pro gun, pro freedom of consumption, pro crypto, etc. but once emotional manipulation comes into play, self-determinism goes out the window and people are no longer making free choices.

To me, this is a very mature response. The whole idea of you do what you want as an adult and you own all of the consequences. Why do you make an exception for "emotional manipulation"? To be clear: I am not trolling in this post. I want to know why you think these things can be legal, but advertising about them is "morally bad".

[soulofmischief]

Well, advertising as a concept is fine, but the industry is steeped in advanced, refined yet old-as-time-itself psychological manipulation tactics.

When addiction is intentionally engineered at a high level and wrapped in the Trojan horse of self-sufficiency or emotion, deceit, or the power of suggestion, we have a problem. Imagine Taylor Swift doing an ad for crack cocaine.

[soulofmischief]

The war on drugs should never have happened. It's been used a tool of foreign and domestic terror and control for a century. It was designed and popularized by corrupt people who stood to gain wealth from restricting the freedom of others.

To your implied point, drug addictions similarly ravish communities, destroy lives, and in the case of drugs like fentanyl, legalization effectively makes it easy to acquire extremely potent and discreet poisons, which has a huge potential impact for violence.

We can paint a similar story for gun violence. We can tie drugs, gambling and guns together even more tightly when we look into where cities approve permits for gambling centers, where most liquor stores pop up, selective enforcement and scandals like the Iran-Contra affair [0].

It's important to have a consistent position on all of these topics, so I thank you for raising this point. So all of that said, I think drug consumption/manufacturing/distribution, guns and gambling should generally all be legal at a high level, but we must dispense with the racist and classist implementations of these systems within our societies, and we should have sensible evaluation and certification programs in place for access to different stratifications.

You should be required to periodically prove medical and psychological fitness, as well as operational certification, for certain powerful substances. Similarly, we need sensible restrictions on gambling and guns [1].

The reality is that with freedom comes responsibility. Without responsibility, unrestricted freedom leads to anarchy or a post-capitalist nightmare. One of the main points of government is to balance these freedoms across individuals, communities and society at large, in order to maximize the well-being and self-determination of the people, while allowing for progress and innovation.

I'm curious to hear your own position.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair

[1] To be clear, I am very pro 2nd amendment [1] and am not calling for a ban on anything or for the State to maintain a monopoly on violence and power.

"Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary" - Karl Marx

[dist-epoch]

I asked because I noticed this strange cluster (for me) of people which want to ban some things like gambling or social media algorithms because they are exploitative and addictive, but who also want to legalize drugs. I had a feeling you might be in it.

Stranger, some of them want to ban/make it harder to distribute drugs "legally" through doctors (OxyContin, Sackler family scandal) because doctors might be monetarily incentivized, but then they also support complete drug legalization, including for the same drugs (fentanyl). This position is not even internally consistent, in this case fentanyl was "legalized" close to what they seem to demand, just gated by a doctor.

I don't have a clear position, but I don't think I would support legalization of "hard" drugs (anything above marijuana/MDMA). I can't see any positive, the negatives are clear, and it impacts the whole society (I will respect your freedom until it impinges on mine).

I am pro 2nd amendment, but I also believe the State should maintain it's monopoly on violence. Otherwise it's Mad Max world. The way the 2nd amendment is stated (prevent tirany) would not work anyway today, the military power of the State is vastly larger, the "militias" will never stand a chance against Police/Army/Cyber/... So I am pro guns just as far as personal protection requires (so no rocket launchers).

[throwaway2037]

I was reading this chain of responses. They are great. The two of you are very thoughtful in your world view.

About your last paragraph: How do you feel about other OECD (highly developed) countries that do not allow personal gun ownership (except for hunting and sport shooting (clays, etc.)? Take Japan for example: Except for hunting and sport shooting, ownership of guns is not allowed. How do you feel about it?

[dist-epoch]

If there are no guns around, and if the Police is competent, I would be against allowing guns.

But the police must do it's job. Take Sweden, criminality is now rampant there, criminals are using grenades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Swe...

[soulofmischief]

The entire point of defense against tyranny is because today's well-behaved police can be tomorrow's racist State thugs. Authoritarianism is a ratchet.

[kriops]

It absolutely does account for that. Your entire comment is a strawman.

If that is not intentional (which I suspect it is not, so no offense intended), then I believe a quick search on “God-given rights” should help you make whatever case you want to in a logically consistent manner. It is a well-defined concept that has a specific meaning over a specific domain. I get the feeling “negative rights vs. positive rights” might be a useful search phrase as well.

[soulofmischief]

The Judeo-Christian god does not exist, nor any other god, so I'm not sure what rights you're referring to. Are you referring to human rights? We don't need a religion to justify those.

Anyway, you said your argument accounts for it, but didn't actually follow through and demonstrate why that is. How does your argument take into account the aforementioned power imbalances?

[kriops]

God-given rights refers to a certain theory of rights that does not require theism.

It is a well and widely understood term whose usage should not invite “correction”.

Referring to God-given rights invokes their definition, which should make the inconsistency I was referring to clear.

[soulofmischief]

Can you give a less vague answer?

[kriops]

No. Normally I would, but you are either being lazy or just plain acting in bad faith.

1. My answer is not vague. You are refusing to look up the critical definition. 2. Everything you have brought up (except for the theism bit, which is just completely off-topic) was preemptively addressed in my initial comment.

[soulofmischief]

Then please provide the excerpt of your initial comment which address which addresses the power imbalances I described.