> 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?
I don't gamble at all in any form, but I still firmly disagree. Some people enjoy gambling in a way that never hurts them-- I've known countless friends and coworkers who talk about doing a bit of it in Vegas or what have you. You're saying every last one is a degenerate gambler somehow concealing it totally from me? They know they're not going net positive on the experience, usually lose some money, and get some entertainment.
There's a saying about this: abusers give vice a bad name. People should be free to gamble if they want to, and certain checks should be put in place for people who choose to gamble so much it is ruinous to themselves.
(More apt comparison is obviously alcohol commercials saying “please drink responsibly”)
Casinos and gambling institutions absolutely and purposely optimize to attract and capture more problem gamblers.
The evolution of digital slots is a great example of this. An average person could have a little fun with an old fashioned basic slot machine, but the modern ones are so aggressively optimized to trigger addiction and keep addicts going that if you aren't vulnerable, they are massively offputting.
But they don't care, they don't have any desire to serve "Normal" people, and trying to make gambling more fun for people who aren't vulnerable to gambling addiction isn't something they do.
Because nearly all profit comes from addicts.
It feels like a bell curve topic, where the most naive people think you should just ban all vices and have a strictly better world, the middle of the road thinks it's all down to personal fortitude, and then people who know how the sausage is made realize the level of asymmetry that exists.
Weed isn't just weed anymore, it's fruity pebbles flavored.
Porn isn't just porn anymore, it tries to talk like a person and build a parasocial relationship.
Video games aren't just video games anymore, they start embedding gambling mechanics and spending 2 years designing the "End of Match" screen in a way that funnels you into the next game or lootbox pull.
You need to stop somewhere. Tech + profit motives create an asymmetric war for people's attention and money that results in new forms of old vices that are superficially the same, but realistically much much worse.
Gambling specifically online might just be giving tech companies too many knobs that are too easy to tune under the umbrella of engagement and retention.
This is why I have a huge problem with the recent development of online gambling outlets that you can access via your smartphone. In the past you had to go somewhere to gamble, it was a physical act that provided a barrier to entry. Now? You don't even need to think about it, your bank account is already linked, just spend away!
Personally, I'd rather states loosen laws and allow physical casinos be built and properly regulated than be in the current situation we have with these poorly regulated online money-siphons.
[1] https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/DMHAS/Publications/2023-CT-FIN... [2] https://www.umass.edu/seigma/media/583/download
I agree there’s a some sort of gray area here, but it feels awfully narrow… especially with the recent sports betting companies.
I agree, but:
> It feels like a bell curve topic, where the most naive people think you should just ban all vices and have a strictly better world, the middle of the road thinks it's all down to personal fortitude, and then people who know how the sausage is made realize the level of asymmetry that exists.
There's a wide gap in beliefs of the people who "know how the sausage is made" which is why I'm guessing you didn't ascribe a certain view to them.
Realistically, I think it breaks down into three camps:
1. They agree with the other end of the curve, and think the potential harm is too great.
2. They're in on profiting from it.
3. They are open to people being free to make decisions, but think there needs to be regulations on outright predatory behavior and active enforcement of them
I don't have a problem with anybody choosing to safely engage with recreational drugs, pornography, gambling, alcohol, and a number of other vices - humans have sought these activities out for an extremely long time, and outright banning them simply (as we have seen time and time again) leads to unregulated black markets that are more harmful to society as a whole. But it feels like we've done a complete 180 and now we have barely any regulation where it's needed, late-stage capitalism at its finest.
So many states have put ID verification laws out for accessing pornography, exposing citizens to huge privacy risks in the process, but we've got casino empires draining their savings accounts and can't do anything about it? Please.
Sports betting companies structure their odds and order books to disadvantage most bettors. There are plenty of markets where that isn't the case.
Not at all. First, yes, people should be free to make their own choices. But that means making free choices. Just as we don’t allow advertising for cigarettes, we shouldn’t allow advertising for gambling.
Second, there’s a world of difference between “hey, let’s go have a crazy weekend in Vegas” and “I have a blackjack dealer live on my phone 24x7.”
"The proportion of Connecticut gambling revenue from the 1.8% of people with gambling problems ranges from 12.4% for lottery products to 51.0% for sports betting, and is 21.5% for all legalized gambling."
Without going into details, I do have some ability to check if these numbers actually "make sense" against real operator data. Will try to sense-check if the data I have access to, roughly aligns with this or not.
- the "1.8% of people" being problem gamblers does seem roughly correct, per my own experience
- but those same 1.8% being responsible for 51% of sportsbook revenue, does not align with my intuition (which could be wrong! hence why I want to check further...)
- it is absolutely true that sportsbooks have whales/VIPs/whatever-you-call-them, and the general business model is indeed one of those shapes where <10% of the customers account for >50% of the revenue (using very round imprecise numbers), but I still don't think you can attribute 51% to purely the "problem gamblers" (unless you're using a non-standard definition of problem-gambler maybe?)
They have different reasons for their disdain, but neither side tends to love it.
In general the more people learn about the process, the more they dislike the current system. There's outliers, but that's why the last decade has mostly been a decline in general sentiment around big tech, and even in the last year AI doomerism is going increasingly mainstream.
Even the people who make these experiences don't do it beliving they're making something enriching. And they're definitely are not clamoring for their own families to grow up on this stuff.
> So many states have put ID verification laws out for accessing pornography, exposing citizens to huge privacy risks in the process, but we've got casino empires draining their savings accounts and can't do anything about it? Please.
That's driven by politicians pandering to the naive side of the bell curve, why are you surprised it's not consistent with what's best for the people?.
Their actions are driven mostly by what looks good at the polls and doesn't hurt their own bottom line too badly.
States are raking in billions of dollars in taxes from gambling, so it's not going to get that treatment.
A person can be generally responsible while still making decisions that are irresponsible. Gambling has a negative expected value, and so is generally considered to be irresponsible. Gamblers will often counter that they expect to lose their money and consider it to be a form of entertainment, but the whole of the entertainment is in believing that you might get lucky; this is indistinguishable from the motivation of a gambling addict. You don’t see these people taking out $500 in 1s and setting them on fire for fun, even though this is the aggregate outcome of habitual gambling.
Some might protest that all forms of entertainment are like this: You take the $500, take it to a movie theater, and 16 hours later your money is gone and you’ve seen 10 movies. So far as I know, the identification of casual gambling with vice dates back to the Victorian Period. I suspect (but cannot confirm) that the reason gambling was identified as a vice where other forms of comparatively frivolous entertainment were not is due to gambling’s (false) promise of providing money for nothing.
The way I resolve this is “What if everyone did what I did?”. The restaurants would obviously have to change. I figure the type of demand I create is more powerful than how they might use the profit.
I think the same thing applies here. If everyone only gambled responsibly, these companies would all be in the responsible gambling business.
At the same time, I think sports gambling has completely gotten out of control and needs to be more regulated. More advertising regulation seems like a good place to start.
Subscribing to Netflix has a negative expected value.
Ban Netflix.
I've thought of this often, seeing the state of mobile games. Not fun--they barely have strategy, little choice, and so much copy-cat gambling-machine mechanics.
But chances are that the original commenter was really using language in a more colloquial way, the way someone might say "the only responsible choice is not to use drugs". Someone saying that isn't making a statement that "no person ever, under any circumstance, can ever benefit from consuming any drug".
It's not an absolutist statement, but you are choosing to interpret it that way so that you can construct a response based on semantic pedantry.
Goalposts built around strawmen are almost designed to be shifted.
It was you who brought "degenerate" into it, as if throwing an insult or not made difference in facts.
Also, yes, gamblers hide their addiction. That is normal for gambler and you wont know it. They can be likable people and calling them "degenerate" just makes seeking help harder.
Restaurants are immoral too since think of the negative health consequences they cause exploiting this situation with their addictive substances. They even put more butter than necessary in the food to make it more addictive.
The wait staff treated literally like servants.
"We should ban everything besides things I personally find enjoyable"
Every streaming service you subscribe to has a negative expected value.