[YoukaiCountry]

Please elaborate on the safety mechanisms/services, I'm not aware of them. But if I was poor, there would be nothing to stop me from going to a gas station and spending my last $20 bill on lottery tickets, instead of food.

[kolev]

You can't easily put thousands of dollars in lottery tickets.

[omegaham]

But you can do so with impulse purchases. There's a hilarious radio ad that I hear every now and then; it's an advertisement for a tire rim store. They certainly know their audience; it's loud, boorish, and ghetto, and they are looking for people without any common sense to put down $1500 on new rims for their pimpmobile. They do a roaring trade.

Same thing with bars. I know guys who drink their paychecks; every weekend, they're at the bar / strip club, spending every last cent in their bank accounts.

Same thing with electronics stores, jewelry stores, etc.

Should we legislate financial responsibility to prevent idiocy? I'm a responsible person, and I will gamble a hundred bucks every six months or so. I have a lot of fun; it's a glamorous evening where you're paying for an experience. I shouldn't have to stop doing that because some moron is gambling his grocery money away. I shouldn't have to stop drinking because someone else is giving himself cirrhosis.

I understand the counterargument - "You're having a frivolous evening. You don't need that. What's it to you? Your idea of a good time is also destroying famiies and ruining lives." But where does it end? I know plenty of people who put themselves horribly into debt with credit cards. I know people who spend their student loans on weed. I know people who speed and wreck their cars. Should we ban everything that can possibly be abused by clueless people?