Gambling is fundamentally rigged. It’s a mathematical tax on society and should be banned all together.
The only sound argument in favor of gambling I ever heard is the prediction market one where gambling inputs generate data on public census. I’m not particularly sold on that but other types of gambling like sports don’t event have this leg to stand on.
You are correct, because literally every choice we make is a gamble. Even crossing the street is “gambling” on getting hit by a drunk driver. But of course most insurance companies add a level of scammery and greed that is completely beyond any necessary price to protect farmers from a bad crop year etc. so ppl will rain hatred on your comment.
Insurance may be its own type of evil, but it’s not gambling. It serves me a financial purpose. It protects me from certain enormous and unexpected expenses which would otherwise cripple me financially for the rest of my life.
How aggressively insurance deny claims may be a symptom of the same problem to the ubiquity of online gambling apps and ads, unchecked greed, but they’re not the same.
IMHO we need peer to peer prediction markets, in which the insurance company is not the same party deciding who won the bet. Then your risk of denial would be more clear up front.
I don’t even know that I should refuse jobs that offer insurance through UnitedHealthcare until Luigi.
No insurance is risk distribution. We all pay 5$ so none of us needs to pay 5,000,000$ which is not economically sustainable. What insurance companies get is administrative overhead fee. This has nothing to do with gambling.
The price of an insurance product is divided in 4 parts, the risk, the actuarial adjustment, administrative and distribution costs, and return of capital.
No, the risk is the probability of a claim times the value of a claim. If you just charge that is mathematically proven that the insurance pool is going to fail. The actuarial adjustment is there to create a surplus that guarantee the survival of the pool.
You gamble with which bookie (insurance company) you choose. You gamble when you choose where to live. You gamble how fast you can make your insurance claim. This shit is gambling through and through. And we (“The Common Person”) are getting fleeced.
If you pay, you lose money and might not be able to stay in business. If you don’t pay, they might rob you and burn down your store. Yes, life is a gamble.
Just because there is a statistical aspect to it doesn’t make it gambling. By your definition literally everything is gambling which is a very small brained take.
The sound argument in favour of gambling is simple: it’s fun, and people enjoy it.
It’s not “rigged”, everyone involved understands the game. I hand over money, the house takes some, in return I get an enjoyable experience.
Personally online casino is a bit of a mystery to me, but I enjoy a visit to a real casino once or twice a year; it’s fun to sit at the roulette table pretending to be James Bond for an evening. An afternoon at a racecourse is a great day out, and betting on sports makes watching the event more fun. Hell, even Bingo can be fun with the right company.
I am capable of doing all those things without bankrupting myself because I am a perfectly normal person. That a few inadequates are not capable of that is not an argument for banning it for everyone, it’s an argument for having a properly regulated industry that protects idiots from themselves while allowing the vast majority to make their own decisions.
The house must always win, and that’s true as gambling empires have the games with “house edge” built in to make sure the odds are in their favor over the average gambler. This even includes online gambling where the odds aren’t really random but rather calculatedly more difficult to win bigger prizes.
I love doing heroin, it’s actually a wonderful and very safe drug if used responsibly. I like doing heroin once or twice per year and it’s actually way cheaper than a night at the bar, it’s definitely more enjoyable and it’s healthier too!
I don’t know why I, a responsible heroin user, should have to suffer just because a few loser degenerates can’t handle the needle.
I wasn’t being sarcastic. I am in favor of drug legalization, but with heavy regulation. My problem with drugs being illegal is that it then cannot be regulated.
I mean, many would say that treating people with heroine addiction is indeed better accomplished by giving them safe spaces to wean them off rather than criminalising them, yes.
But the American War on Drugs has been an unvarnished success, of course, so that’s obviously the best approach.
I do actually think that harm reduction is a better strategy than criminalization, so I’m not advocating for banning gambling outright. But I think that its dubious value as entertainment needs to be weighed against the harm that it causes, and that regulation should be put in place to address those harms efficiently.
Then we are in violent agreement. (I mean, I genuinely think gambling is fun, in moderation - so I probably wouldn’t say “dubious value”, but otherwise I agree 100%. Some people cannot enjoy it safely, and they should totally be protected by regulation.)
Yeah and I recognize that I’m the weird one who doesn’t enjoy gambling at all. I realize that lots of people, if not most, do find the lottery or some gambling to be fun, and I know that most people that do so are doing it responsibly and understand that on average, they’re losing money. Even if I don’t see the entertainment value for myself I have to accept that everyone is not like me.
Gambling is addictive and exploitative. A lot of effort goes into keeping players engaged, exploiting the pleasure response centers of the brain. It’s not just refined folk betting on horses, but gacha games, loot boxes, slot machines, prediction markets. Gritty and sleazy.
If your lucked out with your genes just be happy, and don’t call people with a high risk of addiction inadequate idiots.
“Exploiting the pleasure response centres of the brain” is pseudo-scientific twaddle for “a lot of effort goes into making it fun”.
Yes, yes it does. That’s a good thing.
And I didn’t “luck out” with my genes. They’re perfectly in line with the vast majority of people. That some people are cursed with inadequate faculties is a reason they should be protected (through regulation), not a reason for normal people to have their freedom curtailed.
We don’t ban movies because some people are blind.
Okay but the argument isn’t that gambling is bad. It’s that gambling ads and apps are. A gambling addict who gambles at a casino has to physically go to the casino and can only gamble as long as their body will allow them. Sure they can ruin their lives but there are physical unavoidable things that limit their gambling. To say nothing about the responsibility we’ve decided casinos have to address gambling addiction. A casino can kick a player out, sure they can go to another but that’s time they don’t spend gambling.
Gambling ads and apps are everywhere. They’re inescapable. An addict doesn’t have to physically go to a casino anymore. They can gamble wherever, whenever, on anything. If they try to pull themselves away the apps use push notifications to pull them in. Uninstall the apps, the ads are running everywhere all the time. Get banned, just make a new account. It takes minutes. The availability to gamble is just constant now.
If nothing else, ban gambling ads. It won’t stop people but it’ll let them escape the constant push to get back in.
I mean, an argument whose answer is “make all gambling” illegal - which is what we’re talking about here - clearly is founded on “all gambling is bad”.
Personally I’d agree with you about heavily curtailing, or even banning, advertising and sponsorship. And putting in place restrictions on amount wagered, loss limits, mandatory self exclusion registers etc. But all that is regulation, not an outright ban. (I’m not even particularly against a state monopoly tbh.)
A lot Christian fundies in here downvoting you. If we scratch a little more we might see how they actually feel about gay people and Dungeons & Dragons.
Lemmy has a deeply fucking weird vibe tbh. It’s like Karl Marx just stepped off the Mayflower. And I love the fact that it’s A Truth Universally Acknowledged that children should be allowed to use social media unimpeded (because Age Verification Is The State Surveilling You And Stealing Your Precious Bodily Fluids), and teens should be allowed to change their gender and take permanently life-altering drugs or surgery to do it (Because They Know Their Choices And Anyone Suggesting Otherwise Is An Oppressive Bourgeois Traitor Probably Trying To Steal Their Precious Bodily Fluids) but grown-ass adults can’t put a few quid on their team to win because They Are Vulnerable And Cannot Make Their Own Decisions Lest Their Precious Bodily Fluids Go To Waste Instead of the Collective. And God Forbid you suggest anyone with an entirely imagined Neurodivergent Condition (“OMG does anyone else go to sleep when they’re tired? I only understood this when I self diagnosed as autistic, normies could never understand”) be told what THEY are allowed to do because you’re just Oppressing Them FFS.
Gambling is “very harmful” to a tiny minority of people who have a disorder. That is very sad for them, and they should be protected from themselves through proportionate regulation.
I’m quite sure - this being lemmy - that plenty here think the “War on Drugs” is absurd and has failed, and that responsible people who know their limits are being punished and forced into illegal markets because a few people are unable to control themselves. And they’d be right. All prohibition does is force ordinary people into black markets and everybody loses.
As for alcohol - that damages far more people than gambling ever will. Personally, I am sufficiently competent to simply not drink alcohol, but I understand many are not capable of that - but I nevertheless don’t advocate for prohibition.
The question is how many people are harmed/unharmed by gambling? If say 2% of all bettors develop a gambling addiction, does that warrant a complete ban? What if it was 0,5% ? I don’t know the actual numbers on this but I generally think that you shouldn’t illegalsize for the many what is a problem for a small minority. I watch hours upon hours of sports with betting ads and I have never engaged in betting because I’m self aware enough to know that I might not be able to handle it if I get of “to a good start”.
According to reputable sources (Lancet), around 1.5% of people engage in problematic gambling, with at-risk harder to estimate but probably around 8%. Compared to around 50% of people overall who participate in gambling perfectly happily (and the rest don’t engage at all.).
Interestingly, there is a high co-morbidity with substance abuse and alcoholism. So if it’s all about protecting those people, we need to ban alcohol as well (and win the war on drugs - haha.)
It’s not only about addiction. Gambling industry is very corrosive overall being a major source for money laundering, financial exploitation and source of conflict. Generally I’m very libertarian but gambling is just an incredibly toxic industry because it has so many invisible costs that is more than just addiction.
How are you sourcing these claims? I from a gambling friendly country and now live in one where gambling is illegal and the societal damage caused by gambling is very noticeable. Though, I’d say big chunk of it is coming from gambling advertisements and legal physical casinos with no advertisements allowed would be very fair compromise imo.
Gambling is fundamentally rigged. It’s a mathematical tax on society and should be banned all together.
The only sound argument in favor of gambling I ever heard is the prediction market one where gambling inputs generate data on public census. I’m not particularly sold on that but other types of gambling like sports don’t event have this leg to stand on.
Insurance is gambling. You pay more in premiums than you get back in repayments after crashing. The house always wins.
Yet without Insurance business doesn’t function. Loss of expensive cargo or equipment wipes out the company.
You are correct, because literally every choice we make is a gamble. Even crossing the street is “gambling” on getting hit by a drunk driver. But of course most insurance companies add a level of scammery and greed that is completely beyond any necessary price to protect farmers from a bad crop year etc. so ppl will rain hatred on your comment.
Insurance may be its own type of evil, but it’s not gambling. It serves me a financial purpose. It protects me from certain enormous and unexpected expenses which would otherwise cripple me financially for the rest of my life.
How aggressively insurance deny claims may be a symptom of the same problem to the ubiquity of online gambling apps and ads, unchecked greed, but they’re not the same.
From the buyers point of view I agree it is risk reduction. But it is gambling from the sellers point of view.
IMHO we need peer to peer prediction markets, in which the insurance company is not the same party deciding who won the bet. Then your risk of denial would be more clear up front.
I don’t even know that I should refuse jobs that offer insurance through UnitedHealthcare until Luigi.
No insurance is risk distribution. We all pay 5$ so none of us needs to pay 5,000,000$ which is not economically sustainable. What insurance companies get is administrative overhead fee. This has nothing to do with gambling.
The price of an insurance product is divided in 4 parts, the risk, the actuarial adjustment, administrative and distribution costs, and return of capital.
Aren’t the risk and the actuarial adjustment the same thing?
No, the risk is the probability of a claim times the value of a claim. If you just charge that is mathematically proven that the insurance pool is going to fail. The actuarial adjustment is there to create a surplus that guarantee the survival of the pool.
Nah nah nah; Insurance is like preem gammbling.
For example insurance companies couldn’t pay everyone back after Hurrican Katrina. First come first serve I guess. :P
To my understanding insurance companies isolate areas so if that area gets hit hard. The insurance company just files bankruptcy in the area and moves on..
You gamble with which bookie (insurance company) you choose. You gamble when you choose where to live. You gamble how fast you can make your insurance claim. This shit is gambling through and through. And we (“The Common Person”) are getting fleeced.
Sounds like a protection racket, like the mafia used to do. Does that still count as gambling?
If you pay, you lose money and might not be able to stay in business. If you don’t pay, they might rob you and burn down your store. Yes, life is a gamble.
Just because there is a statistical aspect to it doesn’t make it gambling. By your definition literally everything is gambling which is a very small brained take.
From the buyers point of view it reduces risk, so it is not gambling for them.
However it is gambling from the point of view of the underwriters.
(I am assuming both sides play fair and pay out when they should)
The sound argument in favour of gambling is simple: it’s fun, and people enjoy it.
It’s not “rigged”, everyone involved understands the game. I hand over money, the house takes some, in return I get an enjoyable experience.
Personally online casino is a bit of a mystery to me, but I enjoy a visit to a real casino once or twice a year; it’s fun to sit at the roulette table pretending to be James Bond for an evening. An afternoon at a racecourse is a great day out, and betting on sports makes watching the event more fun. Hell, even Bingo can be fun with the right company.
I am capable of doing all those things without bankrupting myself because I am a perfectly normal person. That a few inadequates are not capable of that is not an argument for banning it for everyone, it’s an argument for having a properly regulated industry that protects idiots from themselves while allowing the vast majority to make their own decisions.
The house must always win, and that’s true as gambling empires have the games with “house edge” built in to make sure the odds are in their favor over the average gambler. This even includes online gambling where the odds aren’t really random but rather calculatedly more difficult to win bigger prizes.
I love doing heroin, it’s actually a wonderful and very safe drug if used responsibly. I like doing heroin once or twice per year and it’s actually way cheaper than a night at the bar, it’s definitely more enjoyable and it’s healthier too!
I don’t know why I, a responsible heroin user, should have to suffer just because a few loser degenerates can’t handle the needle.
You’re being snarky but this is pretty much why drugs should legalized. Except without the Christian fundie judgy “loser degenerates” thing.
I think that your comment tracks unsarcastically. I could do without the name calling, but otherwise, do dope all you want and mind your own business.
I wasn’t being sarcastic. I am in favor of drug legalization, but with heavy regulation. My problem with drugs being illegal is that it then cannot be regulated.
I mean, many would say that treating people with heroine addiction is indeed better accomplished by giving them safe spaces to wean them off rather than criminalising them, yes.
But the American War on Drugs has been an unvarnished success, of course, so that’s obviously the best approach.
I do actually think that harm reduction is a better strategy than criminalization, so I’m not advocating for banning gambling outright. But I think that its dubious value as entertainment needs to be weighed against the harm that it causes, and that regulation should be put in place to address those harms efficiently.
Then we are in violent agreement. (I mean, I genuinely think gambling is fun, in moderation - so I probably wouldn’t say “dubious value”, but otherwise I agree 100%. Some people cannot enjoy it safely, and they should totally be protected by regulation.)
Yeah and I recognize that I’m the weird one who doesn’t enjoy gambling at all. I realize that lots of people, if not most, do find the lottery or some gambling to be fun, and I know that most people that do so are doing it responsibly and understand that on average, they’re losing money. Even if I don’t see the entertainment value for myself I have to accept that everyone is not like me.
Gambling is addictive and exploitative. A lot of effort goes into keeping players engaged, exploiting the pleasure response centers of the brain. It’s not just refined folk betting on horses, but gacha games, loot boxes, slot machines, prediction markets. Gritty and sleazy.
If your lucked out with your genes just be happy, and don’t call people with a high risk of addiction inadequate idiots.
“Exploiting the pleasure response centres of the brain” is pseudo-scientific twaddle for “a lot of effort goes into making it fun”.
Yes, yes it does. That’s a good thing.
And I didn’t “luck out” with my genes. They’re perfectly in line with the vast majority of people. That some people are cursed with inadequate faculties is a reason they should be protected (through regulation), not a reason for normal people to have their freedom curtailed.
We don’t ban movies because some people are blind.
Woah ya’ll chill. I’m pretty sure it’s a widely studied topic that gambling (winning a bunch of money) and cocaine cause the same parts of the brain to fire.
Okay but the argument isn’t that gambling is bad. It’s that gambling ads and apps are. A gambling addict who gambles at a casino has to physically go to the casino and can only gamble as long as their body will allow them. Sure they can ruin their lives but there are physical unavoidable things that limit their gambling. To say nothing about the responsibility we’ve decided casinos have to address gambling addiction. A casino can kick a player out, sure they can go to another but that’s time they don’t spend gambling.
Gambling ads and apps are everywhere. They’re inescapable. An addict doesn’t have to physically go to a casino anymore. They can gamble wherever, whenever, on anything. If they try to pull themselves away the apps use push notifications to pull them in. Uninstall the apps, the ads are running everywhere all the time. Get banned, just make a new account. It takes minutes. The availability to gamble is just constant now.
If nothing else, ban gambling ads. It won’t stop people but it’ll let them escape the constant push to get back in.
I mean, an argument whose answer is “make all gambling” illegal - which is what we’re talking about here - clearly is founded on “all gambling is bad”.
Personally I’d agree with you about heavily curtailing, or even banning, advertising and sponsorship. And putting in place restrictions on amount wagered, loss limits, mandatory self exclusion registers etc. But all that is regulation, not an outright ban. (I’m not even particularly against a state monopoly tbh.)
Blind people listening to a movie doesn’t destroy their life the way gambling does. Get your head out of the sand.
A lot Christian fundies in here downvoting you. If we scratch a little more we might see how they actually feel about gay people and Dungeons & Dragons.
Lemmy has a deeply fucking weird vibe tbh. It’s like Karl Marx just stepped off the Mayflower. And I love the fact that it’s A Truth Universally Acknowledged that children should be allowed to use social media unimpeded (because Age Verification Is The State Surveilling You And Stealing Your Precious Bodily Fluids), and teens should be allowed to change their gender and take permanently life-altering drugs or surgery to do it (Because They Know Their Choices And Anyone Suggesting Otherwise Is An Oppressive Bourgeois Traitor Probably Trying To Steal Their Precious Bodily Fluids) but grown-ass adults can’t put a few quid on their team to win because They Are Vulnerable And Cannot Make Their Own Decisions Lest Their Precious Bodily Fluids Go To Waste Instead of the Collective. And God Forbid you suggest anyone with an entirely imagined Neurodivergent Condition (“OMG does anyone else go to sleep when they’re tired? I only understood this when I self diagnosed as autistic, normies could never understand”) be told what THEY are allowed to do because you’re just Oppressing Them FFS.
It really is through the looking glass.
Eh literally everything is entertaining so it’s not a very interesting metric to measure anything.
That’s a ridiculous remark even for lemmy.world.
Are your suggesting that entertainment has no value? That the people must be condemned only to Being Productive 24/7?
Guy above is suggesting that gambling is a very harmful entertainment and that there are better ways to entertain yourself
And guy above is wrong.
Gambling is “very harmful” to a tiny minority of people who have a disorder. That is very sad for them, and they should be protected from themselves through proportionate regulation.
I’m quite sure - this being lemmy - that plenty here think the “War on Drugs” is absurd and has failed, and that responsible people who know their limits are being punished and forced into illegal markets because a few people are unable to control themselves. And they’d be right. All prohibition does is force ordinary people into black markets and everybody loses.
As for alcohol - that damages far more people than gambling ever will. Personally, I am sufficiently competent to simply not drink alcohol, but I understand many are not capable of that - but I nevertheless don’t advocate for prohibition.
You’re diminishing the harms of gambling. Entertainment is cheap and one of societal areas where we can afford safety.
The question is how many people are harmed/unharmed by gambling? If say 2% of all bettors develop a gambling addiction, does that warrant a complete ban? What if it was 0,5% ? I don’t know the actual numbers on this but I generally think that you shouldn’t illegalsize for the many what is a problem for a small minority. I watch hours upon hours of sports with betting ads and I have never engaged in betting because I’m self aware enough to know that I might not be able to handle it if I get of “to a good start”.
It’s the same problem with drug prohibition.
According to reputable sources (Lancet), around 1.5% of people engage in problematic gambling, with at-risk harder to estimate but probably around 8%. Compared to around 50% of people overall who participate in gambling perfectly happily (and the rest don’t engage at all.).
Interestingly, there is a high co-morbidity with substance abuse and alcoholism. So if it’s all about protecting those people, we need to ban alcohol as well (and win the war on drugs - haha.)
It’s not only about addiction. Gambling industry is very corrosive overall being a major source for money laundering, financial exploitation and source of conflict. Generally I’m very libertarian but gambling is just an incredibly toxic industry because it has so many invisible costs that is more than just addiction.
The harms of gambling are, by and large, tiny. Significantly less than alcohol or drugs.
We can’t only ban the entertainments you don’t like. You’re either a prohibitionist or not.
How are you sourcing these claims? I from a gambling friendly country and now live in one where gambling is illegal and the societal damage caused by gambling is very noticeable. Though, I’d say big chunk of it is coming from gambling advertisements and legal physical casinos with no advertisements allowed would be very fair compromise imo.