the betting industry is ruining lives…
Yes
Also, lotteries are horrid and seeing them used to fund basic state functions makes me gag.
I heard somewhere, I wanna say
that the idea that lotteries fund schools isn’t even true.Like, if property tax generated X dollars for local schools, and then a lottery was introduced that produced Y dollars, instead of schools now getting X+Y dollars, they still get X and you either give Y amount of dollars from the budget to something we don’t want to say the lottery is funding, like police budgets or something, since the dollars are all fungible, or you reduce property taxes by Y dollars.
Meaning that generally, what it actually does, rather than providing a new revenue stream for your kid’s school, is move the tax burden from the rich to the poor.
And the ads are fucking everywhere. Entire train stations with every square inch of advertising space plastered with Jamie Foxx or whatever washed up scumbag piece of shit actor they could find.
Gambling is perhaps the most egregious example of a naked wealth transfer from the poor to the rich
Second only to landlording
I love that all of this started when a couple of techbros started illegal fantasy football betting apps, made a shitload of money by further impoverishing the impoverished, then used their ill gotten gains to buy off legislators. Now i am sure they are billionaires, instead of what they deserve which is execution
Uber basically proved you could operate any app outside the law with impunity. Shit rules.
Yeah - the article says “for the dozen states, including Texas and California, where sports gambling is still illegal, the solution is simple: change nothing,” but because of these apps, it’s trivially easy for Californians to gamble on sports.
I forget the exact stats on it, but gambling addiction is especially destructive to people’s lives even compared with other major addictions. Also, on a petty treat-fiend note, it has made sports so much fucking shittier.
It’s also ruining sports, the advertising is everywhere and extremely tacky, while contributing to the financial ruin of the poorest in society. If I see another HollywoodBets advert I will
Specifically, for every $1 spent on betting, households put $2 less into investment accounts. States see big increases in the risk of overdrafting a bank account or maxing out a credit card. These effects are strongest among already precarious households.
Fake society with fake finance. This is terrible.
Looking specifically at online sports gambling, they find that legalization increases the risk that a household goes bankrupt by 25 to 30 percent, and increases debt delinquency. These problems seem to concentrate among young men living in low-income counties—further evidence that those most hurt by sports gambling are the least well-off.
Yeah definitely. I see it all the time with soccer/football.
Matsuzawa and Arnesen extend this, finding that in states where sports betting is legal, the effect is even bigger. They estimate that legal sports betting leads to a roughly 9 percent increase in intimate-partner violence.
…
Legalization isn’t yielding many benefits, either. Tax revenue—one of the major justifications for legalization—has been anemic, with all 38 legal states combined making only about $500 million from it a quarter, less than alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana
Of course, these gambling operations are great at avoiding taxes, setting up their operation to be off shore on official paperwork, in office buildings that don’t exist.
I don’t gamble and am actively repulsed by how it’s being pushed as hip and cool. That said, I’m surprised by the hardline abolition stances in here. Drugs (including alcohol) are surely far more corrosive to people’s wellbeing, but no one on here is arguing for prohibition, right?
The opioid epidemic has made a lot of people, myself included, skeptical of anti-prohibition. Turns out pushing something underground often does have the effect of making it more expensive and inconvenient to access. There some study I can’t find now, but it claimed legalizing prostitution actually increased human trafficking because now traffickers could mask their operations as legal sex work opening them up to new clientele they normally wouldn’t have access to. I suspect there’s a lot of men who would be going to brothels regularly if it was as easy as going to 7/11 but don’t want to go to the bad side of town to pick up a sex workers who could be a cop doing a sting.
Same with drugs, going from a system where you had to import raw opium from Afghanistan or wherever to the west via camel and make shift submarine, then process and distribute it clandestinely, made being a heroin addict and expensive pain in the ass. Now you can buy pills made semi-legally in a factory in Mexico that some guy got prescribed to him by a shady Floridian doctor for a broken ankle he had 10 years ago.
Prohibition didn’t work for weed and booze cuz both of those are things easy to make and distribute even when they’re illegal, plus they’re both easier to consume, and even abuse, while being a functional member do society. I think there are vices thought where you could reduce the consumption and abuse of just by making it a big fucking pain in the ass to get access to and gambling I think is one of them.
There some study I can’t find now, but it claimed legalizing prostitution actually increased human trafficking because now traffickers could mask their operations as legal sex work opening them up to new clientele they normally wouldn’t have access to.
That’s interesting—on the other hand, I know of one case where the shuttering of a sex work website due to human trafficking charges (which Kamala Harris lead the charge on, as it happens) actually made a lot of sex workers feel less safe. Article here.
It’s not quite the same concept, but thought it was worth mentioning.
And yeah I think making gambling less accessible and less visible is good. But then, shouldn’t we also do the same for alcohol and drugs, just up to the point where it’s still easier to get them legally than illegally?
But then, shouldn’t we also do the same for alcohol and drugs
Thing is we kind of already do. There’s a ton of regulations regarding the sale and advertisement of alcohol and tobacco, many of which are the product of activism by anti-smoking and temperance movements.
Idk how I feel about gambling personally, but you don’t really have to take a hardline prohibitionist or libertarian stance on these things. I suppose one could make the argument that adults should have the right to gamble responsibly, but like you can also think regulations against problem gambling are good.
Edit: also…
on the other hand, I know of one case where the shuttering of a sex work website due to human trafficking charges (which Kamala Harris lead the charge on, as it happens) actually made a lot of sex workers feel less safe.
So I don’t really have time right now to delve deep into that article, but I kind of suspect they were interviewing adult, independent sex workers who are in the profession mostly voluntarily. Not that their experience and concerns aren’t valid but I do feel like I see a lot of pro-legalization arguments coming from that crowd and I think it’s worth considering their experiences as sex workers is nothing like most women in the industry. They’re independent and working in a lucrative industry on their own terms, often in semi-legal niches often for wealthier clientele. I think some people in that world fail to realize legalizing full service prostitution is essentially opening the doors for it to be industrialized which like likely lead to what is essentially sex-trafficking-in-all-but-name.
I think dangerous drugs should be prohibited.
You think drugs should just be freely available to the public? All of them? You wouldn’t prohibit meth? Heroin? Cocaine?
You think drugs should just be freely available to the public?
I do. A lot of the danger of drugs is mitigated by quality control and education.
In the United States we have an opioid epidemic fueled by quality controlled, regulated drugs given out by medical professionals in spite of generally widespread knowledge that opioids are dangerous and addictive.
I think that a lot of people say stuff like what you’re claiming, but I don’t really buy it.
it’s the same thing as prison abolition where secretly it’s not really that. I consider myself a drug liberationist but you can’t just let people kill themselves with heroin or take antibiotics whenever. there would still need to be mechanisms of control oversight and intervention. ultimately the goal is to transcend the need for these vices of course.
Why are opioids dangerous? And why do people get addictes? Its not because of their availability
Aside from causing permanent brain damage?
Because they impair your judgement and kill you if you take too much which you could easily do do if your judgement is impaired?
Also, yes it fucking is because of the availability. The reason it became a massive epidemic is that every other doctor in the country became a drug dealer for dangerous recreational drugs.
Fentanyl and OxyContin seem to suggest otherwise
Are we talking about prohibition or restriction? I fully support restrictions on dangerous drugs, but hasn’t it been consistently shown that outlawing vices entirely doesn’t stop their consumption and just makes it more dangerous (especially for poor people)?
If we’re basing this off danger, then alcohol is the much more immediate concern given how easily available and culturally accepted it is while still being quite bad for you
outlawing vices entirely doesn’t stop their consumption and just makes it more dangerous (especially for poor people)?
We’re in a thread about how legalizing sports betting is driving poor people further into poverty. The idea that legalization is inherently harm reduction is completely divorced from reality.
i agree its a total false equivalence here drugs and gambling are in fact different and one is a lot easier to stop people doing in harmful ways
I think the question to ask about this is why it’s such a unique problem to america. Much like guns.
Here in the UK 15% of men do online gambling and 4% of women. Ok so the top line of data says that 40% of people do gambling but this is only because of scratchcards at petrol stations. When you remove these it drops to 15 and 4.
Why is this situation so significantly worse in america? What is unique about american society and culture that causes 33% of americans to be betting on sports, let alone other stuff?
Spanish here, absolutely not a unique problem to the US of A. Betting joints popped up EVERYWHERE some 5-10 years ago
Supreme court struck down a law banning sports gambling in 2018 on the logic that “illegal gambling is already happening, might as well make it legal and cut out the criminals!”. The now-legal betting companies started pushing a non-stop torrent of pro-gambling ads immediately.
Australia is also pretty bad, see below:
“Capitalism with American Characteristics” is a disease that is poisoning every part of society. I believe it breeds desperation and a “fuck it” attitude and drives people to reckless behavior, aggression, and distrust of others.
I’m not immune. I kind of hate most people, especially here. Society sucks, most people suck.
Capitalism with American Characteristics
I think this is an interesting thing to discuss. Honestly we could do this for a lot of countries but for America especially. It’s probably useful to normalise talking this way about socialism too.
legalizing it is fine IMO, it’s probably better than black market gambling. but the ads being everywhere is terrible. advertising cigarettes on tv is illegal, should be the same for gambling
Death to America
For profit sports betting operations should absolutely not be legal. Gambling on your smart phone, which is already an addicting dopamine machine, should absolutely not be legal.
libertarian brain claims another victim
it’s so prevalent in american leftists lol
haven’t watched the video, but right now in Brazil legalized sports gambling is such a menace that its driving a substantial portion of the poorest into debt. influencer driven online scams are one thing, but sports gambling goes to the heart of what little community we have left via sports.
