[jackp96]

Neither conservative nor Mormon, but online gambling is an addictive scourge that ruins lives, and I'd love to see it banned broadly. And go ahead and ban paid loot boxes as well.

I don't love casinos or lotteries, but at least there's the friction of having to travel to a physical location to feed your addiction.

And then there's the whole "insider trading" and "gambling on war" angles that come into play with prediction markets.

[Recursing]

For more on this https://thezvi.substack.com/p/the-online-sports-gambling-exp...

> it is clear from studies and from what we see with our eyes that ubiquitous sports gambling [...] is mostly predation on people who suffer from addictive behaviors.

> This is not a minor issue. This is so bad that you can pick up the impacts in overall economic distress data.

> the financial consequences of legalized sports betting [...] include a 28% overall increase in bankruptcies (!). [...] a 28% increase in bankruptcies is far more than I would have predicted. The typical adult bankruptcy rate is about 0.16%, so this would mean about 4bps (0.04%)/year of additional bankruptcies, or an over 1% additional chance a typical person goes bankrupt during their lifetime. [...] A bankruptcy is extremely socially expensive, on the order of $200k. That alone is almost triple the profits, and clearly wipes out all the social gains. Legalized online sports betting is currently a deeply, deeply horrible deal.

> [...] there might be a 3% overall increase in domestic violence as the result of legalized sports betting [...] This is a huge direct cost to bear. Domestic violence ruins lives. It also is a huge indicator that this is causing large amounts of distress in various forms, and that those gambling on sports are not making rational or wise consumption decisions.

[egorfine]

As much as I hate what gambling does on the society, I'm still not sure if banning this activity counts as freedom. I believe that grown consenting adults do have a free will and should have the ability to destroy their lives if they so choose.

OTOH allowing those kind of activities WILL end up with people opting in for the greater evil and thus some kind of limits should be enforced by governments.

I have no idea what would be the right approach, but outright banning prediction markets and casinos is definitely not the right one.

[gottorf]

> I'm still not sure if banning this activity counts as freedom. I believe that grown consenting adults do have a free will and should have the ability to destroy their lives if they so choose

America is the land of the free, but I think there have been and will continue to be reasonable disagreements on the question of, free to do what? It's evident that "freedom" isn't a pure, unrestricted thing in the anarchist sense. We all agree that through the democratic process, laws can be made to declare some things not free to be done.

And to the degree that various taxpayer-funded social programs exist, the cost of grown consenting adults destroying their own lives are directly borne by the rest of us.

> but outright banning prediction markets and casinos is definitely not the right one

In general, I think a gradual "ban" in the form of taxation is often times better, especially for things that society is trying to discourage out of its sinful or destructive nature; think cigarettes.

[bluGill]

> We all agree that through the democratic process, laws can be made to declare some things not free to be done.

We intentionally put a lot of roadblocks in the way of the democratic process. The constitution, and amendments place limits on what the democratic process can do - they can be changed but that takes a lot of time/effort which in turn slows things (for both good and bad). Even that we are a representative democracy vs a pure democracy slows things down.

The above is a slightly US perspective, but most others reading this have similar things in their process to slow down "fad" laws.

[afavour]

> As much as I hate what gambling does on the society, I'm still not sure if banning this activity counts as freedom. I believe that grown consenting adults do have a free will and should have the ability to destroy their lives if they so choose.

I don't think it is freedom. But. If someone destroys their own life the rest of us who share the same society pay a price, be that government money supporting their rehabilitation, incarceration, or the non-financial impact of people being homeless on our streets etc.

So as much as I favor freedom I also think there should be limits. I think "freedom always without exception" is a pithy statement that doesn't lead to positive outcomes in reality.

[myroon5]

One difference between federal-level prediction markets and state-level gambling is that most states had limited gambling to 21+, so most state governments wanted more nuanced options than outright bans

[QuiEgo]

> I believe that grown consenting adults do have a free will and should have the ability to destroy their lives if they so choose.

Part of living in a society is giving up some of your freedom to make the system work. I can't choose to kill myself of my own free will by smoking in an airplane anymore, no matter how happy it would make me, because it might not only hurt me, but everyone around me.

I think that's the line for me: When your self-destructive behavior causes harm to others, not just your self, it's fair for society to ban it.

If a bunch of people are going to end up a burden to society in the aftermath of their self destruction through gambling, it's fair for society to say "no".

This tradeoff has been debated my philosophers for millennia. We still haven't quite figured out a universal answer. Laws of nature vs laws of man and all that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rv-4aUbZxQ

[SoftTalker]

> some kind of limits should be enforced by governments

I'm not sure why we think this works.

Gambling is considered bad, and banned in many states, but many of those states run a lottery. This is just a straight up theft from the poor who are least well equipped to understand they are playing a rigged game, and not rigged in their favor.

[gottorf]

> Gambling is considered bad, and banned in many states, but many of those states run a lottery. This is just a straight up theft from the poor who are least well equipped to understand they are playing a rigged game, and not rigged in their favor

I think gambling is almost a natural instinct in humans, and a state-run lottery may be a relief valve for that itch to be scratched in a controlled manner.

[mitkebes]

I think they know it's rigged, but it's also a (very slim) source of hope.

It's depressing to be poor, and have no perceivable path to fix that. Continual lottery participation is an action they can constantly take to have a chance to change that. It doesn't matter that their chances are incredibly low, it's still something they can do to have things not be entirely hopeless.

[ZeroGravitas]

It can be seen as a way to undermine illegal lotteries.

That rationale gets undermined if the state lottery is widely advertised in a predatory manner though.

[dpark]

> the poor who are least well equipped to understand

Is there some actual evidence that poor people are under the impression that they have a meaningful chance of winning significant money the lottery?

I see this line a lot and it’s extremely patronizing. I’m not even pro lottery but this “poor people are too dumb to understand” does not strike me as a sound argument.

[dfxm12]

This article looks at lotto sales. I understand it doesn't address the assertions brought up about why people buy tickets, but maybe it still interesting in the context of this conversation.

https://archive.is/kY7U6

[dpark]

For sure, lottery revenues are disproportionately drawn from the poorest.

[gottorf]

It's more that poor people have worse impulse control and higher time preference[0], which contribute to the behavioral outcome of spending money on lottery tickets despite the EV being negative.

[0]: If we're splitting hairs, we should specify that having poor impulse control and higher time preference are the base causational factors that make it more likely for someone to be poor, buy lottery tickets, engage in criminality, etc. etc.

[dpark]

Sorry, is there evidence for this?

I don’t have any trouble believing that there is some slice of poor people that this is true about. But I kind of doubt that holds in general.

[gottorf]

Are we disagreeing about the definition of "poor people"? I'm not sure why someone would find it so hard to believe that the poor, especially the long-term poor, have character traits that are not conducive to lifting themselves out of poverty.

On that same vein, there is no particular evidence needed to convince someone that people who share the characteristics with me of not being very tall or particularly athletic have a terribly poor chance of making it in the NBA.

But here is one study[0] which found, interestingly, that although a higher time preference (that is, preferring the present over the future) is correlated as expected with wealth, it is not significantly correlated with current income. Put another way: in the modern world where opportunities are varied, anyone, even people with poor impulse control and high time preference, could earn high incomes, but you only become wealthy (i.e. escape poverty) over time through putting aside some of that income to save and invest.

Back to the American setting, "heavy hitters" of the lottery spend about $2500/yr[1]. If you instead put $200/mo into the S&P 500 over ten years, you'd be sitting on over $55k. Time under the curve matters greatly. The same personality traits that make someone prefer buying scratchers instead of investing for their future are the ones that keep them poor. I would have thought this to be self-evident.

[0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7392281/

[1]: https://elmwealth.com/lottery-fallacy/

[SoftTalker]

Not too dumb, but badly educated about money (part of why they stay poor) and probabilities.

[dpark]

Poor people stay poor because it’s really hard to climb out of poverty. It’s a function of opportunity, culture, society, and a lot more stuff. Education is a factor but I am doubtful it’s the primary one, and even where it is a major factor, it’s probably more general education than specifically about money.

I feel like the “poor people don’t understand money” line of thought comes from the same people who insist that avocado toast and lattes are why millennials can’t afford housing.

[gottorf]

> it’s really hard to climb out of poverty. It’s a function of opportunity, culture, society, and a lot more stuff

I agree with you, but perhaps from the other direction. I think American society in particular gives an amazing amount of opportunity for people to climb out of poverty, or at least we used to, before we started "replacing what works with what sounded good". But we still do, for the most part.

Most of the cultural and social factors that prevent someone from lifting themselves up are self-imposed by those individual cultures and societies, and as of late, it's become verboten to call them out on it. There exist subgroups in this country where you'd indeed have to be a truly remarkable individual to claw yourself out of it into wealth. However, it doesn't have to be that way; that's a choice society made, on what grounds exactly I'm not sure, but the choice was made nevertheless.

[egorfine]

> poor who are least well equipped to understand

I fail to understand how this is someone's business. As I see it, in the US a person is free to be as dumb as possible. And have as much freedom as possible. I don't get it why anyone would patronize poor people (or any people) from making bad decisions.

[pear01]

By virtue of its position, the state often does things it forbids all other actors under its jurisdiction from doing. Thus your comment has much less force than it would seem, even if the apparent contradiction you pointed out is somewhat amusing.

[dfxm12]

Some things are banned for the good of society. Please remember that no man is an island, each is a piece of the continent. A man with an addiction he can't afford rarely destroys just his own life.

However, I will ask you to consider that under discussion are very specific bans. Call these something else if it makes you feel better. I think these are normally called "regulation." But, what's being discussed is still completely compatible with "freedom", especially with added context of the elected lawmakers enjoying the support of their constituency for their actions. This also leaves the door open for a future electorate to legislate something else.

[screye]

Nations do not apply a standard of 'total freedom' for most other vices. It is known that grown consenting adults can't compete against an algorithmic assault on their self-control systems.

Nations have established middle grounds for gambling. To gamble, drive a couple of hours down to an exempt casino and set fire to your money if you so wish. Bootleg operations are permitted as long as they stay low. Prostitution has similar regulations. Sports betting, Onlyfans & Prediction markets remove those necessary frictions from each vice, preying on men (it's mostly men) at their most vulnerable.

Prediction markets : gambling :: weed : cigarettes

[yndoendo]

I find the whole _Freedom_ trope to be nothing but a straw man fallacy.

What is _Freedom_?

Should I have freedom to enjoy a movie or conversation uninterrupted? Should I have the freedom to modify a motorcycle or car to be excessively loud that it shakes windows while driving by and interrupting people so they have to pause their movie or conversation?

Freedom for the movie viewer or conversationalist goes against the freedom of the loud motorcycle or car driver? They both cannot have freedom because each will impeded on the others. So who is gets their version of _Freedom_?

[soco]

The contract between citizen and state is that we offload some rights and responsibilities to the state, which in turn does things and protects us. How's addiction handling in this pciture, should the state protect us from it? Like it should protect us from unruly neighboring states, unemployment, financial ruin, whatever (I'm not focusing on a particular country)?

[phs318u]

> I believe that grown consenting adults do have a free will and should have the ability to destroy their lives if they so choose.

Perhaps. But almost universally, most societies consider it a crime to encourage or facilitate another’s self-destruction.

[NeutralCrane]

I think an on over-fixation on “freedom” is what leads to many of the societal ills we (uniquely) deal with in America.

Freedom itself is itself a nebulous concept. Are my freedoms restricted when I can’t drive 80mph through my neighborhood? Yes. On the flip side I enjoy the “freedom” of living in a more controlled, safer environment. Is a corporation’s freedoms restricted by the laws that prevent them from dumping toxic sludge into the river upstream from me? Yes, but my freedom from living downstream of that pollution is preserved. Are my freedoms preserved when we allow broad access to firearms in this country? Yes, at the cost of my kids freedoms to attend a public school without the risk of being shot by a mentally ill psychopath.

Here we are considering the freedom to destroy your life via gambling vs the freedom from being targeted by corporations with much greater resources than you trying to get you to do so, and the freedoms of your family who may choose to not gamble and still have their lives destroyed as a result.

An “pure” worldview of maximizing personal freedoms over-simplifies the trade-offs and is doomed to fail in the real-world as a result. Realistically maximizing societal well-being requires a more moderate approach.

[nomadygnt]

I agree to a point. But it should be regulated as what it is, which is gambling. Prediction markets doing everything in their power to avoid regulation is just scummy.

[which]

The "return to player" numbers for lottery tickets are on the order of 60% https://wizardofodds.com/are-lottery-players-smart/. Many states have online lottery apps, they do TV and radio ads, etc. Why should that be allowed? Of course some of the only forms of gambling where skill actually matters (poker and sports) come under constant attack...

If you bet randomly on the winner of NFL games on DraftKings you'd expect to lose 4-5% of your money per bet over time. I'm not sure the people here with a cultivated disinterest in professional sports know this but it is much more entertaining to watch a game when you have money on the line. We know that all but 1-2 percent of people are able to control themselves and not become problem gamblers. The UK fines casinos for not doing enough to stop problem gambling, the US can do the same. You can do income checks, have a national self exclusion system, and ban advertising.

Lastly, prediction markets are the only way for Americans to bet on sports and not be banned for winning too much (short of using sketchy agents for Betfair and Asian books that can randomly steal all your money)

[toss1]

>>all but 1-2 percent of people are able to control themselves and not become problem gamblers

That says absolutely nothing about the blast radius of damage from the 1-2% who do become problem gamblers and end up leaving their families impoverished and destitute, robbing their children of chances for education, etc. This cascades into issues and expenses for society in terms of more dependent and fewer productive members.

Similarly only a small percentage of people also are problem drinkers enough to drink and drive, and the small percentage of trips while impaired result in accidents. Yet the blast radius of the damage by that small percent is such that we decided long ago that serious laws and enforcement is a good idea.

Just because only a small percentage of people

[aczerepinski]

Good call on lootboxes. I’d love it if video games that include them would be forced to do age verification to whatever extent casinos need to, and be 18+.

[ekianjo]

Not just kids get addicted

[nhumrich]

Well sure. But not just kids get addicted to alcohol.

[mcmcmc]

One distinction I think really needs to be included in any gambling bans is whether it’s a game of chance or skill. Betting on yourself is quintessentially American. I’d argue betting on someone else’s game of skill (eg sports betting) is a game of chance.

Would be interesting to see how a new prohibition amendment on gambling on games of chance would work.

[criddell]

> game of chance or skill

The line isn't all the clear, is it? Is poker skill or chance? What about betting on a horse? Or buying a stock option?

[mcmcmc]

In poker you have some control over the outcome through your actions in the game. Your skill at judging horses and jockeys cannot affect the outcome of a horse race. Options trading I don’t really know enough to have a strong opinion, but since it’s already regulated and has some utility in contributing to price stability, I don’t really consider it in the same class.

[fragmede]

GLP-1s reputedly address the same reward center as gambling for some people, so there's that.