Addiction Markets

  But if you want to outlaw this harmful activity [licensed gambling], you have to find a way to replace 6.4% of Maryland’s budget, which is slightly less than the entire amount the state brings in from corporate taxes.

A fraction of the proceeds of losing bets from a fraction of Maryland's citizens contributes almost the same to state services -- EMS, education, road maintenance, etc -- than the total corporate taxes levied on all businesses.

Do I misunderstand, or is this just actually incredible?

A state is funding essential public services not through productive economic activity, but by extracting money from people losing bets

Sounds like a win to me, you can leave more for productive activity to grow and attract more, there less incentive for illegal gambling, and no one is forced to do it.

If there’s a massive burden with addicts, you can still impose that the gambling industry pays more to offset.

> no one is forced to do it

This logic always bugs me because no one truly lives in a vacuum. People are flawed and generally need help from a community. A small community can't really fight back a well endowed company like gambling companies. The whole(stated) reason android is losing unsigned side loading is because grandmas in SEA are sideloading gambling apps.

It's obvious to me that gambling is generally a vulnerability in the human psyche. For many, it short circuits something in their brain and forms genuine addiction.

It's actually insane to me to use this vulnerability as a tax base to fund roads and schools, because regardless of the funds, your incentives will still be perverse and those incentives will dictate that more people need to be losing their money to out-of-state firms because a small portion of it might fund roads and schools.

The incentives basically state: "A percentage of our population must become sick and addicted to risk and reward in order for society to function". Is this not basically the concept of Omelas?

> The whole(stated) reason android is losing unsigned side loading is because grandmas in SEA are sideloading gambling apps.

Do you have more details on this? I hadn't heard this angle on the story before.

I'm mildly surprised this is a concern Google has to have.