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- Hacker News
- Personal choice is when it just exists, like Las Vegas in Nevada.
If you really really want to gamble then go, travel to Nevada and do it.
The problem is sticking their filthy ads and purchased propagandists into the faces of vulnerable people and society at large.
Preying on victims over the phone, soc. media ads, bought manipulators so called influencers with no morale.
by agigao - I sure did have to scroll down to find the best comment - appreciate that you were willing to make it.by mock-possum
- If you think this is bad, have you noticed fast food? It's engineered to be addictive, the cause of obesity and diabetes epidemics, and they're allowed to advertise everywhere.
What is it about gambling that people find bad while other advertising for harmful stuff gets a free pass?
- The problem isn't the 70M people who placed bets, its the ~25M with broken risk aversion.
These are mostly men, and a very specific type of men. You can try to curtail their access to gambling but we're missing the underlying problem.
by brettgriffin - > These are mostly men, and a very specific type of men. You can try to curtail their access to gambling but we're missing the underlying problem.
You should address that too, but gambling is frankly a parasitic business meant to exploit such people, and we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good by avoiding the re-abolishment of such a pernicious industry.
by palmotea - In 30 years they'll be a huge liability for the state. In the past, they used to send them to meat grinders (wars). Somehow later it was figured out that a mandatory cut of their paycheck will give them a small payment later in their retirement years. But now that social security is broken (both in the US and Europe) and short-term thinking is the norm, every "business men" is salivating at the opportunity.
In a couple decades, they'll be a massive drag on society and could even collapse countries. France is kind of a good example of how that future will look like.
by csomar - I believe there are studies which show men are more likely to have problems with sports betting, but women are with slot machines. My anecdotal evidence (and it's bordering on statistically significant...) is that these studies are correct.
- I would entertain the possibility that there are at least some who cannot or will not avoid that kind of destructive behavior. The only thing you can do for them is deny access. I know that nobody asked for a lecture on 12 step, but number one is an admission that you do not have control.
Do you enable the majority who can manage risk, knowing some will be destroyed by it or deny it to everyone to protect the minority who can’t?
- These gambling businesses specifically target that 25M. You absolutely can make that much harder for businesses to do, and it will significantly reduce downstream misery.
- Has society ever addressed an underlying psychological problem successfully?
Because when it comes to the underlying psychological causes of homelessness and drug addiction and school shootings and violent extremism my impression is we don’t really do much.
by michaelt - On a somewhat related note, there seems to be a huge interest in vice policing on social media. Gambling, sex, drugs, these are some of humanity's oldest vices. Why has it become so popular on social media to highlight these, along with a narrative of social or cultural decline?by Karrot_Kream
- Standard bible thumping. You will notice that there is also an emphasis on traditional family values as well both in the media and in the positions of politicians.by asdff
- Moral panics are as old as the hills.by dredmorbius
- And the fourth oldest vice is gossip, the original social media, talking trash while you pick bugs out of your friend's hairby fritzo
- 1. People who have problems themselves love seeing others have more serious problems. Sex addicts think "at least I'm not a gambling addict". Gambling addicts think "at least I'm not a drug addict".
2. Fear is the emotion that's easiest to trigger because before modernity, life was indeed quite dangerous. You can make shitload of money by making people feel scared.
3. It is true that for many people, the society got worse, and they want to know why.
by anal_reactor - I think part of it is just every change in something, there is strong push back until we establish good equilibrium as society.
With Sport Betting, throwing advertisements and having bets talked about by sports analysts during the game is starting to be seen as bad thing because it's seen as really bad habit, like smoking and maybe society should attempt to regulate it better.
by stackskipton - Think of it in terms of public health not morality. Heart disease is one of humanities oldest killers but we still want to fix it. We also dont want to ban deep friers as we value freedom. Similar for gambling. We do want to discuss what to do when vice becomes no longer nice.by hshdhdhehd
- > Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong rattled off crypto buzzwords at the end of the Q3 call, resolving $84K in prediction market bets to "yes."by sakopov
- Wasn't this posted a minute ago and on the front page?
Am I going crazy, or was it just... disappeared from there??
by disqard - Polymarket is not even close to the same thing. Sports betting allows a blessed few corporations to run rigged markets and intentionally prevent price discovery by keeping the smart money out.
Polymarket uses open orderbooks where you match against someone else who wants the other side of the trade just like the stock market. Prices are set by the market, as they should be.
by alphazard - I used to live in Sri Lanka and one of the most pervasive things I noticed when I moved to the west were all these gambling ads. There, it was widely accepted that gambling was harmful. Yes, you could do it, but you could never advertise it. I'm shocked that my 3rd world country has way better control over this than the west.by haritha-j
- I think that's an unfair conclusion towards Sri Lanka, it's not like Western countries are inherently superior. Some things are further developed, some things were lost, and some things just reflect different values.by vanderZwan
- I'll make a bet here:
By the 2040 US presidential election, anti-gambling legislation will be a bigger party platform issue than abortion is for one of the two major US political parties.
We are ruining a generation of men with this, just as we did with alcohol in the era before prohibition. A wiser and more sensible approach is desperately needed today, but will not come for another 15 years until the damage is inescapable to see.
by Balgair - There’s something entertaining about an article on addiction-driven gambling and then a comment that uses a provocative, attention grabbing hook, on a website that has trained its audience to respond like Pavlovian dogs to bait.by uvaursi
- I'll take the other side of that bet given Western countries with legal gambling do not have this issue. Some have it legalized forever.by 0xy
- A generation of men?by Den_VR
- This line from the ads always strikes me as darkly ironic:
> if you need help making responsible choices, call…
Like, the only “responsible” choice is not to gamble online. What do they even think we’re supposed to take away from that line of the commercial?
by gcanyon - The irony is, if someone already needs help making "responsible choices," they're likely already hookedby TimByte
- I guess it depends on the person. I gamble away exactly ~$3 every month, never felt the need to increase that. I call it "randomness fund"
- We’re not supposed to take anything from it, it’s a simple legal liability thing. (And maybe actually mandated by law?) It’s like mandatory workplace trainings: they do almost nothing to prevent people from acting badly, but they let employers say “look we told our employers not to do this!!! it’s not our fault they did it anyway!!”
(More apt comparison is obviously alcohol commercials saying “please drink responsibly”)