Gambling is poison to both the individual and the sport. Gambling addiction is absolutely devastating. Gambling has the highest rate of suicide of any addiction [1]. Being able to gamble on your phone is way too accessible. Gambling of any sort is an awful industry but at least a physical casino has a higher barrier to entry than pulling your phone out.
Here's something else you may not know: if you win too much on these sports betting sites, you can get banned [2].
Now, you might be tempted to say "casinos ban card counters in Blackjack", which is true. But sports betting is more like poker where the house takes a cut of any action, so by winning you're taking money from other players, not the house.
So why do sportsbooks ban you for winning? Because it means other people lose and to create addiction you can't always lose. You have to sometimes win.
For me, this absolutely destroys any argument that it is a "game of skill" (which matters for the legislation that legalized it).
It’s a literal scam. We prohibit literal scamming and defraudation. Gambling apps should be wiped off the face of the earth, not made inconvenient to install. If they move to Tor like drug marketplaces have, that’s fine. That’s their place, approximately.
Sports gambling was prohibited in most US states during most of US history. It didn't "work" in the sense that it did not completely prevent sports gambling, but neither did it cause any major problems AFAICT.
I’m unsure but I’ll be honest in that I find it hard to understand how online poker is illegal in most states yet sports betting and the lottery are fine.
Drugs are in fact banned for the public good (ostensibly).
And why aren't gambling advertisements "part of a free society"?
I'm all for being skeptical of the government and its (ab)use of power, but I must admit I struggle to find a good excuse to not ban gambling past "people should be allowed to ruin their own lives".
I'm personally leaning towards gambling ban, but I can give a few excuses not to:
* Gambling won't disappear completely, but will move underground (creating mafias), or at least people will gamble online illegally (depriving country of tax revenue)
* Not every gambling leads to ruin, just like alcohol drinking is not always alcoholism. At policing the way people have fun is indeed a complex issue.
* There are forms of gambling that can't be regulated easily. One (unfortunately) form of gambling common recently is making insane bets in the stock market (see WallStreetBets subreddit, for example). It's even tax advantaged, compared to regular gambling.
* Making gambling illegal may make it harder for gambling addicts to find the help they need.
I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion but I'd like to know how you arrived there. What makes gambling a part of free society but not gambling advertisements?
> No. Gambling is a part of a free society, just like drugs are.
How do you square the harm that gambling does to unrelated parties?
It's really easy to lose a lot of money super fast with gambling such that suddenly your entire family is dire straits (losing the house, facing bankruptcy, etc.) before the non-gamblers have any ability to react.
There is no logically consistent world in which “Gambling is a part of a free society” and “Gambling advertisements…Don’t let it happen”.
If you’re taking a libertarian, its part of a free society therefore we are helpless and must allow it view, then banning the speech around it completely contradicts this view.
The constant pushing of sports gambling by leagues and broadcasters is well on the way to ruining sports themselves, so it might ban itself when there's nothing left to bet on.
Then how about daytrading, crypto trading, lottery, horse betting, etc. the list goes on. There are no shortage of ways to separate people from their money. It's like those school soda bans. As it turns out, people can get their soda from many places, not just school.
There are some forms of gambling that may arguably be a social good. For example, car insurance is a wager by the car insurance company that a driver won't get in a car accident during the coverage period. Commodity speculators may serve as a counterparty for farm insurance derivatives.
I’ve wondered if it could be possible to harness some of these "suboptimal" gambling behaviors into "socially good" gambling but I haven’t quite figured out how to do it. Maybe someone else here can do it.
You don't ban people from consuming sugar, you ban companies from mass-producing food with unhealthy amounts of it. It's about friction and incentives. If you want to buy a bag of sugar and bake a cake that's fine.
shades of grey and tradeoffs. gambling has a very clear and well studied negative effect on a small but sizeable percent of people and its not that great for everyone else. its my opinion were better off without it
Government bans on a thing are a question of "should we use guns to prevent people from doing $THING?"
Given that the use of violence is a rather extreme remedy to a perceived problem, there'd have to be a pretty compelling case to warrant pulling out a gun to stop people from doing something.
Except for the 300 layers of asking nicely, , formally giving warnings, issuing fines and citations, etc., yeah it basically is just guns threats violence and totalitarianism.
Readit News
Gambling is poison to both the individual and the sport. Gambling addiction is absolutely devastating. Gambling has the highest rate of suicide of any addiction [1]. Being able to gamble on your phone is way too accessible. Gambling of any sort is an awful industry but at least a physical casino has a higher barrier to entry than pulling your phone out.
Here's something else you may not know: if you win too much on these sports betting sites, you can get banned [2].
Now, you might be tempted to say "casinos ban card counters in Blackjack", which is true. But sports betting is more like poker where the house takes a cut of any action, so by winning you're taking money from other players, not the house.
So why do sportsbooks ban you for winning? Because it means other people lose and to create addiction you can't always lose. You have to sometimes win.
For me, this absolutely destroys any argument that it is a "game of skill" (which matters for the legislation that legalized it).
[1]: https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/problem-gambl...
[2]: https://www.elitepickz.com/blog/do-sportsbooks-ban-winners-a...
I would suggest restricting the aboslute crap out of it. make it really hard to get into.
Sports gambling was prohibited in most US states during most of US history. It didn't "work" in the sense that it did not completely prevent sports gambling, but neither did it cause any major problems AFAICT.
Gambling advertisements on the other hand, learn from Australia. Don't let it happen.
And why aren't gambling advertisements "part of a free society"?
I'm all for being skeptical of the government and its (ab)use of power, but I must admit I struggle to find a good excuse to not ban gambling past "people should be allowed to ruin their own lives".
* Gambling won't disappear completely, but will move underground (creating mafias), or at least people will gamble online illegally (depriving country of tax revenue)
* Not every gambling leads to ruin, just like alcohol drinking is not always alcoholism. At policing the way people have fun is indeed a complex issue.
* There are forms of gambling that can't be regulated easily. One (unfortunately) form of gambling common recently is making insane bets in the stock market (see WallStreetBets subreddit, for example). It's even tax advantaged, compared to regular gambling.
* Making gambling illegal may make it harder for gambling addicts to find the help they need.
The idea that we ban things for the public good is laughable.
Dead Comment
How do you square the harm that gambling does to unrelated parties?
It's really easy to lose a lot of money super fast with gambling such that suddenly your entire family is dire straits (losing the house, facing bankruptcy, etc.) before the non-gamblers have any ability to react.
If you’re taking a libertarian, its part of a free society therefore we are helpless and must allow it view, then banning the speech around it completely contradicts this view.
I’ve wondered if it could be possible to harness some of these "suboptimal" gambling behaviors into "socially good" gambling but I haven’t quite figured out how to do it. Maybe someone else here can do it.
If you banned everything that some percent of the population could use to harm themselves, you might be disappointed by what's left.
Given that the use of violence is a rather extreme remedy to a perceived problem, there'd have to be a pretty compelling case to warrant pulling out a gun to stop people from doing something.
That's what government bans are.
Except for the 300 layers of asking nicely, , formally giving warnings, issuing fines and citations, etc., yeah it basically is just guns threats violence and totalitarianism.