>“Although the findings relate to direct marketing, I see no reason why the same or similar adverse effects wouldn’t occur for gambling advertising on TV or social media.”
Controlling/banning advertising for Alcohol and Tobacco results in significant health benefits. Sports gambling used to be illegal in many places or limited to specific places. Now that it's available in your pocket, like a pack of smokes or a flask of whisky, why wouldn't advertising triggers, direct or otherwise, be effective at encouraging susceptible people to partake? This is not a surprising result. It's the inaction of most governments that is surprising.
I used to work for a (now defunct) wagering operation. From my understanding even internally the marketing and business guys would’ve preferred the advertisements to be banned. It’s such an effective customer acquisition tool that the only way to compete is to spend insane amounts on marketing, because if you don’t, all of your competitors are and you’ll go bust. A ban would drastically level out the playing field and make things more sustainable.
The only ones that don’t want the ban are the ones selling the advertising slots. No way they’re giving up the gravy train.
Then why was it possible to ban cigarette commercials on TV? Or is it just that they cannot ban the ads in general? You have no right to the airwaves, so television access is easy to restrict.
I wonder if they would overturn that if sufficient evidence of harm were demonstrated. They've been remarkably consistent about permitting violations of constitutional rights where the government can unambiguously demonstrate a pressing need.
And yet SCOTUS has carved out a number of exceptions where they felt it was clearly necessary. Disorderly conduct and noise ordinances are examples. It's not the end of the world but (very approximately) being woken up by someone shouting in the street at 2 am was deemed a larger problem than restricting your individual right to drunkenly shout at your friend in that scenario.
> being woken up by someone shouting in the street at 2 am was deemed a larger problem than restricting your individual right to drunkenly shout at your friend in that scenario.
Because most of the time if you can argue “they won’t do a good job at capitalism [going to work]” then everyone goes “oh no no no we can’t have that.”
Greater New Orleans Broadcasting Association, Inc. v. United States (1999) makes it illegal for the government to ban advertising of legal gambling in the US.
It's everywhere on YouTube, usually as a 'hidden' ad in the alt-right manosphere (e.g. the recent Nick Shirley video he wears a sweatshirt for a gambling site throughout, with constant name drops of it that aren't over ads).
Disgusting behavior, especially coming from those who often claim their content is to improve things. Hypocrites across the board.
I've always found the marketing around gambling (and most things really) completely disgusting. As a society I think we're far too tolerant of these things.
A lot of the ads basically go along the lines of: 'you could win big and have a great time, awesome! (disclaimer: will probably ruin your life)'.
It should be like it is with smoking - photos of lung cancer patients on the package. People will still do it of course but at least it's not falsely advertised.
So the gambling ads should be things like, that moment where your wife finds out you've drained the family's savings and the house is about to be re-possessed. Yeah.
Just ban it. The only defense for our lives being flooded with advertising is that it helps markets be more efficient.
But the most efficient gambling provider is the one that extracts the most money from its customers. Helping gambling companies be successful is a net loss to society.
Okay, but have you considered that thanks to Polymarket, society was able to intuit within mere minutes that Khamenei was most likely dead when the odds jumped to 99%?
No more need to rely on MSM or governments, it's all just math and data (odds jumped entirely based on Reuters newswire update posting a quote from an unnamed Israeli source).
And as a bonus, people lost a bunch of money "winning" that trade!
No. A lot of the Australian ads play on the "this gimmick feature means if you lose you win!"
What it aleays means is you still win or lose a bet they just shuffled the permutations so that you win and lose in different outcomes.
But emotiionally they sell it as them giving you a chance. Pretty manipulative.
Examples would be like "money back if your horse comes second" or "bet on horse coming 3rd 4th or 5th" or "if your team is up at half time we count it as a win".
Crazy how we (the US) just decided as a society that gambling was not only not illegal anymore but that it was perfectly reasonable to integrate it deeply into every sporting event possible in a span of about five years.
And not just sports, but world events where insiders can have the financial incentives to make terrible things happen.
But say that, and the same non sensical asinine crowd that spammed about crypto future or NFTs will tell you that's just to have more accurate information and you don't get it.
When online sports gambling started in the US they were offering $500-$1000 of free bets to sign up. Very tempting to sign up, even though I don't gamble anymore than about once a decade, but I decided whoever did that offer was probably smarter than me about who would win out in the end.
I've been around the block long enough to know you never take an 'easy profit' deal from someone who is in the business of making money from them while in their own domain.
It was actually free money assuming you had the resolve to stop once you claimed the bonus (presumably most people didnt). As long as you were laying the other side of your bet on an exchange you could extract the full value of your free bets risk free.
I collected a few grand back then, however those sort of promotions are now illegal where I live.
There are sometimes free lunches out there to be had. They’re playing the averages and accepting some losses if they know they’ll make it up from other customers. But you’d better be sure you’re not one of the suckers if you do it.
There's a certain poker quip which I like to use and apply to other contexts, such as active investing: "If you look around the table can't tell which player is the sucker, you're the sucker."
In other words, beware entering into a game where the rules ensure somebody will be victimized. This is especially true when many of the existing denizens spend much much more time and effort and finagling than you'll ever want to match.
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -- W.O.P.R, War Games (1983)
It was truly a wild time. All the books desperate for action in this new online gambling world (US). I went from book to book, took "advantage" of their promos, never collected a dime. When I was up, I bet more. Hit zero? Go to the next book. Their lines were better anyway ;)
I mean if it didn't make the gambling organizations more money they wouldn't do it. Gambling industry has always been about how much wealth it can extract from the punters without being regulated for it.
Hopefully this research ends up being used to justify more gambling regulations, but governments are addicted to the gambling lobby donations so who knows what will happen.
why can't we have a law that just caps your gambling losses? Everyone gets a federally issued gambling license tied to your ID, if you lose more than X amount the casino is no longer legally allowed to let you play. Casual gamblers can still enjoy, problem gamblers get cut off; just like with alcohol at the bar.
I like it in principle, but the pathologically addicted already make additional accounts and pay other people to acquire them.
So it may help by stopping some people from getting to that point, but as a safety net, an important chunk of the victims will still punch right through it.
Someone could create a market where problem gamblers can buy wagering power (the ability to risk more after reaching their own loss cap) from non-gamblers unless you force physical in person gambling with ID checks.
Gambling should return to being legal in Vegas and on reservations, 24/7 gambling anywhere is very problematic.
It genuinely is, and I’d sooner see regulation targeting it than someone’s multileg parlay. There’s a much clearer line between alcohol on demand and public misconduct or injuries from DUI, than gambling and a more nebulous societal harm.
They can but most non gamblers wouldn't partictpate. Many non gomblers won't particitate because they might go to vegas this year and so want the chance.
vegas is cheap. Not free, but cheap to get to compared to most other tourist traps. There are a fair amout of free trips to vegas those hopes will keep a lot away.
and most people have ethics and so would not sell. Maybe to someone in the family, but strangers.
Gamblers are the whales of that industry. The industry is well aware of that and well aware of how much harm they can cause. But their paychecks depend on not knowing so they choose not to.
Same as pay-to-win freemium games. Find the whales and milk them for all you can. For every high-spender who can afford it they know full well the other 99 cannot. They know they are ruining some people's lives. They know they use dirty psychological manipulation tactics. Their paychecks depend on not knowing so they choose not to.
There are many jurisdictions where the companies are not allowed to ban 'winners', but the companies often respond by lowering those users' bet size limits.
No different than big tech and their divisive algorithms. Or big pharma and side effects. Or big manufacturing and environmental harm (including harm to the people living around manufacturing companies).
It is an inherent property of unchecked capitalism to externalise and ignore any unwanted costs. Or on the flip side of that coin, profit from causing damage to others, where possible.
Also there’s a bit of a tragedy of the commons. If one entity is scrupulous that doesn’t mean another will. Obviously if they had any morals they’d see the bright line.
Had an interesting case study where a coworker liked to gamble - he was fairly responsible, kept to his budget and treated it like an expensive hobby he enjoyed- but at the same time, he had someone else handle his retirement investments, which is an unpredictable payoff market where you come out ahead on average. I asked a couple times why he didn't replace gambling with investing and never got a good answer. He was certainly smart enough that he could have had fun with the research and chance.
Then there was a market downturn and his investment advisor had to talk him down from selling in a panic, and I was like "oh... It's not an information problem at all. It's entirely an emotional regulation problem"
I think your coworker was quite smart. Investing and gambling are close enough that for many parties they are indistinguishable. I've heard investing described as 'gambling for people with more money'. The biggest difference is that if you have enough money you can legally manipulate the market. If it's your retirement investment that might just be over the horizon far enough to get you into danger. Just having access to that with a habit could already be an issue.
I'm not sure it's irrational to sell in a market downturn. It's a way to pad your emergency savings rather than try to catch a falling knife later when you're already fired. Of course if you sell more than you need to survive a layoff, then that's probably not smart.
If you were friends with an alcoholic it would be pretty shitty to give them a bottle of vodka for their birthday.
People are not machines, it’s not as simple as deciding whether to do something or not. You have stronger and weaker days. Temptation makes it harder to do what is in your best interests, even if you’ve decided on another day that you’d rather not partake.
Getting concrete about gambling: lots of people decide not to gamble and just don’t. Lots of people decide they don’t care whether they gamble and they do. But there are also many people in the middle, who would rather not gamble, but find that they sometimes act against their own best interests, and their own past resolutions to not gamble. Bombarding these people with offers of free bets increases the likelihood that they will gamble on their weaker days.
When I hear takes like yours, I feel very jealous. I would love to always act in my own best interests and according to some policy I predetermined. But that’s just not my experience of how life works.
I wish that mark pilgrim had not taken his blog off-line… He had a very insightful and moving peace about alcoholism and described it in a very striking and understandable way.
I feel like you’re trying to force some sort of binary here, but I’m trying to say that you may choose not to gamble in general, on day X, but find that you do gamble later.
In fact I would say that many gambling addicts have _chosen_ _not_ to gamble in some sense, but in another moment they do find that they choose to. There’s a temporal aspect to this.
Advertising gambling to those people makes it less likely that they will follow through on their choices.
Do you always do literally everything you choose with a clear head? Never procrastinate, get angry, feel sad, whatever? It’s really hard for me to see your perspective on this.
I think it becomes philosophically clearer if we view it as a fight between multiple minds--or contextual operating modes--in the same person. The practical and ethical question for outsiders is which one we want to favor in the fight with the other(s).
"I want to eat this bucket of ice cream... But I also really want to not want to."
I understand moral arguments but also see how others might not. I think it might be more useful to view this from a societal perspective. Is it to society's benefit to ensure gamblers don't ruin their own lives? To answer that question, what's the cost to society when a gambler ruins their life?
Lost savings means an impoverished individual and potentially an impoverished family and children. These draw support resources from the state and community, are more likely to turn to crime, and are less likely to develop into contributing members of society.
Help me understand the difference between preying on gambling addicts vs preying on gullible old people to get them to buy $500 in apple store gift cards.
Both are scummy but it's not clear how to regulate the latter without huge collateral damage whereas the former is quite straightforward (because there's effectively no societal benefit to begin with).
If we totaly forbid gift cards, which is the huge colleteral damage? If you want to send $500 to John, just write a check in USA or bank transfer in the rest of the world.
Gambling is basically a scam (house always wins) and thus should not be a legal transaction you can make. What moral responsibility do we have to allow companies to scam people?
> If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
Because harm does not guarantee control.
When it becomes compulsive, it’s not a simple cost-benefit choice anymore. People can know it’s hurting them and still feel driven to keep doing it.
The dopamine rush of gambling means the brain can get stuck chasing relief, hope, or reward, despite also knowing that it is destructive.
> If gambling orgs do something that you know causes harm, why isn't the a legal sense of responsibility?
Because it’s not that easy to prove responsibility in the face of powerful money lobbying and victim-blaming. Shame and stigma around addiction means people don’t come forward. Freedom argument comes in that not everyone who gambles is an addict, so restricting it takes freedom away. The same argument is used to push the personal responsibility angle.
Ultimately I think the way the gambling orgs cover their ass is by advertising gambling addiction helplines and adding small disclaimers to call those lines if you have a problem: “that’s it, legislators, we are clearly giving them the tools to help themselves, and that shows us exercising responsibility. Bombarding gamblers with offers is simply marketing and creating engagement for our business, you can’t make that illegal.”
Do they have moral responsibility to not exploit addicted gamblers? I would argue, yes, they do. But unless you prohibit all gambling marketing, how would you accomplish this moral responsibility even if the gambling company agreed it had it? It’s not like addicts identify themselves or that you can filter your marketing easily to people without problems. This is why the solutions have been on outlawing the whole thing, because it’s really hard to operate as a business without the societal cost.
>“Although the findings relate to direct marketing, I see no reason why the same or similar adverse effects wouldn’t occur for gambling advertising on TV or social media.”
Controlling/banning advertising for Alcohol and Tobacco results in significant health benefits. Sports gambling used to be illegal in many places or limited to specific places. Now that it's available in your pocket, like a pack of smokes or a flask of whisky, why wouldn't advertising triggers, direct or otherwise, be effective at encouraging susceptible people to partake? This is not a surprising result. It's the inaction of most governments that is surprising.
I used to work for a (now defunct) wagering operation. From my understanding even internally the marketing and business guys would’ve preferred the advertisements to be banned. It’s such an effective customer acquisition tool that the only way to compete is to spend insane amounts on marketing, because if you don’t, all of your competitors are and you’ll go bust. A ban would drastically level out the playing field and make things more sustainable.
The only ones that don’t want the ban are the ones selling the advertising slots. No way they’re giving up the gravy train.
The US Supreme Court made it illegal for states to ban gambling ads, as a first amendment issue. I think it was a bad decision.
Then why was it possible to ban cigarette commercials on TV? Or is it just that they cannot ban the ads in general? You have no right to the airwaves, so television access is easy to restrict.
Correct, broadcast tv is easy
I wonder if they would overturn that if sufficient evidence of harm were demonstrated. They've been remarkably consistent about permitting violations of constitutional rights where the government can unambiguously demonstrate a pressing need.
The 1A does not have an exception for harm.
Not true. Generally the law must be evaluated by the “strict scrutiny“ standard.
And yet SCOTUS has carved out a number of exceptions where they felt it was clearly necessary. Disorderly conduct and noise ordinances are examples. It's not the end of the world but (very approximately) being woken up by someone shouting in the street at 2 am was deemed a larger problem than restricting your individual right to drunkenly shout at your friend in that scenario.
> being woken up by someone shouting in the street at 2 am was deemed a larger problem than restricting your individual right to drunkenly shout at your friend in that scenario.
Because most of the time if you can argue “they won’t do a good job at capitalism [going to work]” then everyone goes “oh no no no we can’t have that.”
Greater New Orleans Broadcasting Association, Inc. v. United States (1999) makes it illegal for the government to ban advertising of legal gambling in the US.
That was because they allowed advertising for some forms of (legal) gambling but not others.
It's everywhere on YouTube, usually as a 'hidden' ad in the alt-right manosphere (e.g. the recent Nick Shirley video he wears a sweatshirt for a gambling site throughout, with constant name drops of it that aren't over ads).
Disgusting behavior, especially coming from those who often claim their content is to improve things. Hypocrites across the board.
I see Kalshi promoted on many sports highlights videos on YouTube.
Makes sense, it’s high in protein.
The legalization and expansion of gambling was a massive mistake and should be undone as soon as possible.
I've always found the marketing around gambling (and most things really) completely disgusting. As a society I think we're far too tolerant of these things.
A lot of the ads basically go along the lines of: 'you could win big and have a great time, awesome! (disclaimer: will probably ruin your life)'.
It should be like it is with smoking - photos of lung cancer patients on the package. People will still do it of course but at least it's not falsely advertised.
So the gambling ads should be things like, that moment where your wife finds out you've drained the family's savings and the house is about to be re-possessed. Yeah.
Just ban it. The only defense for our lives being flooded with advertising is that it helps markets be more efficient.
But the most efficient gambling provider is the one that extracts the most money from its customers. Helping gambling companies be successful is a net loss to society.
south park alcohol commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Cg8klY9JI
And gambling, same as prediction markets, has literally no positive social outcome.
Okay, but have you considered that thanks to Polymarket, society was able to intuit within mere minutes that Khamenei was most likely dead when the odds jumped to 99%?
No more need to rely on MSM or governments, it's all just math and data (odds jumped entirely based on Reuters newswire update posting a quote from an unnamed Israeli source).
And as a bonus, people lost a bunch of money "winning" that trade!
At this point I question whether they should even be allowed to advertise.
No. A lot of the Australian ads play on the "this gimmick feature means if you lose you win!"
What it aleays means is you still win or lose a bet they just shuffled the permutations so that you win and lose in different outcomes.
But emotiionally they sell it as them giving you a chance. Pretty manipulative.
Examples would be like "money back if your horse comes second" or "bet on horse coming 3rd 4th or 5th" or "if your team is up at half time we count it as a win".
They are just offering a different wager!
Crazy how we (the US) just decided as a society that gambling was not only not illegal anymore but that it was perfectly reasonable to integrate it deeply into every sporting event possible in a span of about five years.
We didn't decide that, btw.
And not just sports, but world events where insiders can have the financial incentives to make terrible things happen.
But say that, and the same non sensical asinine crowd that spammed about crypto future or NFTs will tell you that's just to have more accurate information and you don't get it.
When online sports gambling started in the US they were offering $500-$1000 of free bets to sign up. Very tempting to sign up, even though I don't gamble anymore than about once a decade, but I decided whoever did that offer was probably smarter than me about who would win out in the end.
I've been around the block long enough to know you never take an 'easy profit' deal from someone who is in the business of making money from them while in their own domain.
“… you never take an 'easy profit' deal from someone who is in the business of making money from them while in their own domain…”
Laura ingalls wilder said it best, in Farmer Boy:
“never bet your money on another man’s game”
It was actually free money assuming you had the resolve to stop once you claimed the bonus (presumably most people didnt). As long as you were laying the other side of your bet on an exchange you could extract the full value of your free bets risk free.
I collected a few grand back then, however those sort of promotions are now illegal where I live.
There are sometimes free lunches out there to be had. They’re playing the averages and accepting some losses if they know they’ll make it up from other customers. But you’d better be sure you’re not one of the suckers if you do it.
> while in their own domain
There's a certain poker quip which I like to use and apply to other contexts, such as active investing: "If you look around the table can't tell which player is the sucker, you're the sucker."
In other words, beware entering into a game where the rules ensure somebody will be victimized. This is especially true when many of the existing denizens spend much much more time and effort and finagling than you'll ever want to match.
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." -- W.O.P.R, War Games (1983)
All too often I look over at other tables and see that the suckers are friends and family.
It was truly a wild time. All the books desperate for action in this new online gambling world (US). I went from book to book, took "advantage" of their promos, never collected a dime. When I was up, I bet more. Hit zero? Go to the next book. Their lines were better anyway ;)
I mean if it didn't make the gambling organizations more money they wouldn't do it. Gambling industry has always been about how much wealth it can extract from the punters without being regulated for it.
Hopefully this research ends up being used to justify more gambling regulations, but governments are addicted to the gambling lobby donations so who knows what will happen.
why can't we have a law that just caps your gambling losses? Everyone gets a federally issued gambling license tied to your ID, if you lose more than X amount the casino is no longer legally allowed to let you play. Casual gamblers can still enjoy, problem gamblers get cut off; just like with alcohol at the bar.
That effectively destroys the industry, since 90% of revenue comes from 10% of customers.
I like it in principle, but the pathologically addicted already make additional accounts and pay other people to acquire them.
So it may help by stopping some people from getting to that point, but as a safety net, an important chunk of the victims will still punch right through it.
Interesting approach but crack is illegal and still people are addicted to it.
your point is not clear to me. alcohol is legal and people are addicted to it
For the same reason it isn't outlawed to begin with. It makes some wealthy, influential people even wealthier. They, not we, control our government.
Someone could create a market where problem gamblers can buy wagering power (the ability to risk more after reaching their own loss cap) from non-gamblers unless you force physical in person gambling with ID checks.
Gambling should return to being legal in Vegas and on reservations, 24/7 gambling anywhere is very problematic.
Alcohol should only be legal in pubs and bars; alcohol in Disney World, on planes, and in grocery stores is very problematic.
You probably meant it as a quip but alcohol in every grocery store and definitely on planes is problematic.
It genuinely is, and I’d sooner see regulation targeting it than someone’s multileg parlay. There’s a much clearer line between alcohol on demand and public misconduct or injuries from DUI, than gambling and a more nebulous societal harm.
They can but most non gamblers wouldn't partictpate. Many non gomblers won't particitate because they might go to vegas this year and so want the chance.
> Many non gomblers won't particitate because they might go to vegas this year
I’m pretty sure you would see so many people selling their quotas that the price would be dirt cheap.
At the most basic level: how many can afford to go to Vegas? This would be sure money. They’d take it when they need it.
vegas is cheap. Not free, but cheap to get to compared to most other tourist traps. There are a fair amout of free trips to vegas those hopes will keep a lot away.
and most people have ethics and so would not sell. Maybe to someone in the family, but strangers.
your market idea makes no sense, and it could be outlawed easily.
Super shocking (sarcasm).
Gamblers are the whales of that industry. The industry is well aware of that and well aware of how much harm they can cause. But their paychecks depend on not knowing so they choose not to.
Same as pay-to-win freemium games. Find the whales and milk them for all you can. For every high-spender who can afford it they know full well the other 99 cannot. They know they are ruining some people's lives. They know they use dirty psychological manipulation tactics. Their paychecks depend on not knowing so they choose not to.
The worst thing is that gambling companies are free to ban you if you win too much.
So if you're still there it's just because you're being milked.
There's a a giant market for second hand accounts on betting websites for this very reason.
There are many jurisdictions where the companies are not allowed to ban 'winners', but the companies often respond by lowering those users' bet size limits.
This is my favorite line to bring up amongst my gambling addicted friends :)
They are not big fans
> Same as pay-to-win freemium games. Find the whales and milk them for all you can.
This is what happened to EVE Online and many other MMORPGs.
No different than Big Tobacco right? They loved researching all the things that weren’t linked to smoking.
No different than big tech and their divisive algorithms. Or big pharma and side effects. Or big manufacturing and environmental harm (including harm to the people living around manufacturing companies).
It is an inherent property of unchecked capitalism to externalise and ignore any unwanted costs. Or on the flip side of that coin, profit from causing damage to others, where possible.
Absolutely
Ha, well, opinions sure vary here. I'm sure it has nothing to do with that Upton Sinclair quote about "understanding"
No need to be cryptic. What are you trying to say?
> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Also there’s a bit of a tragedy of the commons. If one entity is scrupulous that doesn’t mean another will. Obviously if they had any morals they’d see the bright line.
I wonder how incentives could be better aligned.
Had an interesting case study where a coworker liked to gamble - he was fairly responsible, kept to his budget and treated it like an expensive hobby he enjoyed- but at the same time, he had someone else handle his retirement investments, which is an unpredictable payoff market where you come out ahead on average. I asked a couple times why he didn't replace gambling with investing and never got a good answer. He was certainly smart enough that he could have had fun with the research and chance.
Then there was a market downturn and his investment advisor had to talk him down from selling in a panic, and I was like "oh... It's not an information problem at all. It's entirely an emotional regulation problem"
I should sell a "meditation for investors" course
I think your coworker was quite smart. Investing and gambling are close enough that for many parties they are indistinguishable. I've heard investing described as 'gambling for people with more money'. The biggest difference is that if you have enough money you can legally manipulate the market. If it's your retirement investment that might just be over the horizon far enough to get you into danger. Just having access to that with a habit could already be an issue.
I'm not sure it's irrational to sell in a market downturn. It's a way to pad your emergency savings rather than try to catch a falling knife later when you're already fired. Of course if you sell more than you need to survive a layoff, then that's probably not smart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal–agent_problem
If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
If gambling orgs do something that you know causes harm, why isn't the a legal sense of responsibility?
> If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
That's not how addiction works.
I highly (and regularly) recommend reading Gabor Mate's "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts"
It's an enlightening read on addiction that will make you more empathetic for addicts of all types: gambling, substances, shopping, whatever.
Definitely worth a look if you find yourself asking "Why don't they just stop?"
https://www.amazon.com/Realm-Hungry-Ghosts-Encounters-Addict...
If someone cannot stop gambling, then what moral responsibility do gambling organizations have when giving them offers?
If you were friends with an alcoholic it would be pretty shitty to give them a bottle of vodka for their birthday.
People are not machines, it’s not as simple as deciding whether to do something or not. You have stronger and weaker days. Temptation makes it harder to do what is in your best interests, even if you’ve decided on another day that you’d rather not partake.
Getting concrete about gambling: lots of people decide not to gamble and just don’t. Lots of people decide they don’t care whether they gamble and they do. But there are also many people in the middle, who would rather not gamble, but find that they sometimes act against their own best interests, and their own past resolutions to not gamble. Bombarding these people with offers of free bets increases the likelihood that they will gamble on their weaker days.
When I hear takes like yours, I feel very jealous. I would love to always act in my own best interests and according to some policy I predetermined. But that’s just not my experience of how life works.
It seems like a gambling addiction is the same as not having the capacity to choose not to. Is that a misunderstanding?
I wish that mark pilgrim had not taken his blog off-line… He had a very insightful and moving peace about alcoholism and described it in a very striking and understandable way.
I think… sort of.
I feel like you’re trying to force some sort of binary here, but I’m trying to say that you may choose not to gamble in general, on day X, but find that you do gamble later.
In fact I would say that many gambling addicts have _chosen_ _not_ to gamble in some sense, but in another moment they do find that they choose to. There’s a temporal aspect to this.
Advertising gambling to those people makes it less likely that they will follow through on their choices.
Do you always do literally everything you choose with a clear head? Never procrastinate, get angry, feel sad, whatever? It’s really hard for me to see your perspective on this.
I think it becomes philosophically clearer if we view it as a fight between multiple minds--or contextual operating modes--in the same person. The practical and ethical question for outsiders is which one we want to favor in the fight with the other(s).
"I want to eat this bucket of ice cream... But I also really want to not want to."
People in Gambler’s Anonymous (GA) would definitely disagree with this characterization.
The same way sober alcoholics would disagree with a similar statement about alcohol addiction.
Please correct me! Gaps in my understanding are opportunities to learn something new.
I'd like to know the difference between the characterization of being "powerless over alcohol" for example and not having the capacity of choice.
1. https://www.aa.org/the-twelve-steps
I understand moral arguments but also see how others might not. I think it might be more useful to view this from a societal perspective. Is it to society's benefit to ensure gamblers don't ruin their own lives? To answer that question, what's the cost to society when a gambler ruins their life?
Lost savings means an impoverished individual and potentially an impoverished family and children. These draw support resources from the state and community, are more likely to turn to crime, and are less likely to develop into contributing members of society.
Help me understand the difference between preying on gambling addicts vs preying on gullible old people to get them to buy $500 in apple store gift cards.
Both are scummy but it's not clear how to regulate the latter without huge collateral damage whereas the former is quite straightforward (because there's effectively no societal benefit to begin with).
If we totaly forbid gift cards, which is the huge colleteral damage? If you want to send $500 to John, just write a check in USA or bank transfer in the rest of the world.
Huh? I don’t think you should do either.
Gambling is basically a scam (house always wins) and thus should not be a legal transaction you can make. What moral responsibility do we have to allow companies to scam people?
Only the moral obligation not to prey on the weak. Gambling addicts are sick. Taking advantage of a sick person makes you scummy.
It was legal up til a few years ago. Take a guess why it's not now (or just read the news).
| If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
If this is serious, lol. "Why are you addicted to X. Just stop, it's easy!"
“Stop being poor.”
> If it's so bad for gamblers, why don't they stop?
Because harm does not guarantee control.
When it becomes compulsive, it’s not a simple cost-benefit choice anymore. People can know it’s hurting them and still feel driven to keep doing it.
The dopamine rush of gambling means the brain can get stuck chasing relief, hope, or reward, despite also knowing that it is destructive.
> If gambling orgs do something that you know causes harm, why isn't the a legal sense of responsibility?
Because it’s not that easy to prove responsibility in the face of powerful money lobbying and victim-blaming. Shame and stigma around addiction means people don’t come forward. Freedom argument comes in that not everyone who gambles is an addict, so restricting it takes freedom away. The same argument is used to push the personal responsibility angle.
Ultimately I think the way the gambling orgs cover their ass is by advertising gambling addiction helplines and adding small disclaimers to call those lines if you have a problem: “that’s it, legislators, we are clearly giving them the tools to help themselves, and that shows us exercising responsibility. Bombarding gamblers with offers is simply marketing and creating engagement for our business, you can’t make that illegal.”
Do they have moral responsibility to not exploit addicted gamblers? I would argue, yes, they do. But unless you prohibit all gambling marketing, how would you accomplish this moral responsibility even if the gambling company agreed it had it? It’s not like addicts identify themselves or that you can filter your marketing easily to people without problems. This is why the solutions have been on outlawing the whole thing, because it’s really hard to operate as a business without the societal cost.