"I don’t see why sports gambling is all that different."
Because it's addictive, Richard. That's the difference with amusement parks, or television, or other forms of entertainment. It creates compulsive behavior that is fundamentally irrational. Even when people want to stop, they convince themselves they can't, or convince themselves that a big win that will even their ledger is just another play away. That's why it was regulated akin to cigarettes and alcohol (wherein the physical harms are more obvious, but the financial harm has an upper bound, whereas the same is not true of gambling). That's the justification for government interference and not just leaving it up to individuals, especially when there's a whole industry very carefully optimized to induce you to become addicted and stay addicted.
You can't look at, say, the trend in smoking rate in this country over the last 40-odd years since the government got involved, and conclude that society isn't better off for it. Many more people are alive, and those alive are much more healthy, as a result of that gap between then and now. And given the 50 years previous to that, as far as public health is concerned, it was clear it wasn't a problem that was going to solve itself. Mere information is not sufficient, society needs to *help people* on these matters, and stop bad actors from bad acts. Like getting 15-year-olds addicted to smoking.
Same with sports betting. It's not "theoretical harm" that we're afraid of, as you wrote - it's very tangible (and immediate, as opposed to saving the seals or whatever). As Gregg Easterbrook used to say, his compromise with his Baptist upbringing is to be pro-topless but anti-gambling. I can support that position, because one of them is harmful beyond all measure of an individual's ability to self-regulate, and the other basically isn't at all.
It's pretty easy IMO to draw a line on government regulation that recognizes the difference, and sports betting will definitely be on the "regulate it" side of the line that most reasonable people would draw. For me, it's pretty easy to even note the difference between prediction markets and sports betting, because the former has longer-term deals and is mostly zero-sum between participants (and they're not opposed to having winners), while the latter can give you that dopamine hit multiple times a day if you're super into it. It's really only a comparison to the extent that both involve a wager. So does the stock market, and we obviously regulate that but just as obviously, don't ban it. So it should be here.
Somewhere in here there's the conception of "self-regulation". The classic view of freedom includes self-regulation; in the Christian conception, this is freedom from sin, but this isn't only a Christian concept. If vice merchants are free of any restrictions in their addiction-inducing practices, and as a result entire classes of people are enslaved to various self-destructive -- and family-destructive -- addictions, this seems like a net decrease in freedom to me.
Maybe sports betting doesn't need to be entirely banned at this time, but better regulating it in order to help people self-regulate seems like the bare minimum, and this probably involves placing maximums on how much and how frequently people can bet. To the point about amusement parks -- even they have regulations and safety inspections to ensure their rides aren't killing people.
that's a great point. We can make fun of people who exclaim "won't somebody think of the children?!" in response to any moral panic, but in this case society really does have an interest in protecting children, over and above any protection of the grownups involved. Kids growing up in households that are not having their resources drained by this particular addiction. It's only slightly different than them growing up in a household with drug addicts, or risks of physical abuse.
And yes, there's gotta be a compromise position available where it's not banned entirely, but there's some regulation of it to keep it from being quite so rampant. Merely having gambling-addiction hotlines probably ain't it.
That is a particularly pernicious “children” argument to claim the we should ban gambling because some gambling addicts have children.
We ban drugs, and I’m quite sure far more drug addicts with children have worse problems and do even more damage to those children. Yet the ban does not save those children. Illegal gambling is hardly likely to be better for the children; unless you have a “it only takes one” standard that has no place in a rational society, and certainly a large one.
“For the children” simply cannot be justification for restricting adults’ freedom, lest you have not just a nanny-state, but an authoritarian one whose power is limitless.
Nicotine and alcohol are chemicals, gambling is an activity which is "addictive" in that people like to engage in it. You could claim that anything people like to do (including watching sports & reading about it) is "addictive".
no, we can measure it neurologically. go spend 5 minutes reading anything about addiction, I'm not just throwing the term around to mean "anything I don't like", words have meanings. Nobody is addicted to reading about sports, as far as the world of medicine is concerned.
There is no known biological basis for behavioral addiction.
Don't you dare say "dopamine influx in the nucleus accumbens" - if that was really true, then antipsychotics would cure addiction because they block dopamine - but they don't.
Also consider: behavioral addicts also have high rates of chemical addiction, but the opposite isn't true.
You're telling me to go spend 5 minutes without giving any actual citation? Maybe you didn't because you don't actually know any of the scientific literature.
Mental medicine is woefully unscientific, and where the phrase "concept creep" comes from for a reason. Nor does referencing neurology fix things, as it's in the same boat as psychology in the replication crisis (it's just a coincidence that I used the word "boat" when discussing a field containing a paper about scanning the brain of a dead fish). But go ahead and provide the paper that with neurological measurements for reading about sports vs betting on them.
Well, fwiw I don’t agree with Steve re: that simply because gambling is addictive for some that that is justification for it to be banned.
But I do agree with him that gambling is addictive for some people in a different way than “reading about sports” or “loves to take long, hot showers” is.
In addition to the obvious point that gambling is a destructive endeavor for some.
There’s a reason there are Alcoholics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous meetings but not Caffeine Anonymous nor Reading About Sports Anonymous meetings.
Just because it ain’t identical to being addicted to heroin - or caffeine - doesn’t mean it’s not a real thing for some people.
You can ask for a paper on the subject, but personally I don’t need one to use the word “addictive” here confidently and accurately.
Which, again, does not mean I agree with Steve re: what public policy could be, simply because it is addictive and destructive for some non-zero number of people.
In a similar way to the fact that I’m against banning fire just because there exist people out there who are arson addicts who can be unbelievably destructive - to others even, not just themselves - with it.
It is the absence of the other such meetings that shows unequivocally that the relative lack of harm from them.
That absence is *evidence* of the destructive addictive nature of gambling; I wouldn’t suggest that it is conclusive proof.
If you are only arguing your narrow point re: ”neurological” or “mental medicine”, I’ll stay out of it as I have no dog in that fight, nor any interest.
But your implicit denial that there is nothing addictive about gambling to anyone doesn’t pass the smell test.
Gambling has a unique property that kicks in once you start getting in debt doing it: you face a choice between admitting to your wife that you gambled away your kids' college fund, or to your siblings that you gambled away the inheritance that you were in charge of, or you can continue getting deeper in debt, maxing out credit cards, mortgaging your house, and so on, while promising yourself that if you get lucky once and get it all back you will never ever touch the thing again (possibly honestly even, too bad it just doesn't happen). The deeper under you get, the more horrifying the former prospect looks. Many such cases!
Alcohol is addictive for some. Why don’t we ban that?
Oh, we did. How did that work out?
Video games are addictive to some? Why don’t we ban them?
Social media is addictive to some - and cause some of those addicted to commit suicide. Why don’t we ban it?
The list never ends.
I’m not saying there is zero validity in the argument. I’m glad we ban heroin. But the argument that “it’s addictive” by itself is woefully insufficient.
>She found, contrary to popular perceptions about Prohibition and crime, that prohibitions were associated with lower murder rates — as much as 29 percent lower in some cases.
So Prohibition reduced alcohol consumption, irmproved public health, and reduced crime. What was bad about it?
Freedom to do vice is worthless, which is what Richard's entire post misses. In some cases the enforcement of laws against a certain vice might do more harm than good, but the "freedom" to engage in vice is, by itself, worthless. You can in fact ban the bad things and keep the good things.
No, your argument was mostly about things that are largely non-addictive vs things that have an element of addiction.
My point is that having an element of addictiveness is not sufficient. Yet your main argument Is that it’s the mere existence of an addictive element that justifies your position.
P.S. you claim that gambling was treated like cigarettes and alcohol, but other than Prohibition (how’d that work out?), in fact we didn’t completely ban either of those vices. Requiring gambling to be highly regulated and taxed is a very different thing from banning it.
This has been extensively covered by people a lot more thoughtful than Richard. You impose barriers to entry. I'm not sure what the current rules on advertising alcohol are now, but for a long time you couldn't advertise for hard liquor on tv. Most states have rules about where alcohol can be sold. You can't get a beer with your McDonalds. You must be a certain age to purchase it. Etc.
People who are concerned about gambling are concerned about how much easier it is, and the fact that it is much more aggressively advertised. Very few are advocating for the end of gambling altogether.
How could someone write a defense of gambling without mentioning addiction?
As for prediction markets, I expect them to work like every other unregulated prediction market in history, ie, collapse in a massive speculation bubble, and either die or get regulated. Fine. No pension funds are investing in it, and there are reasonably high barriers to entry.
NPR covered Elon's take on space travel (like all exploration, it's extremely dangerous, and it's hard to imagine the public accepting the likely loss of life needed to do it today), like, a million years ago. I imagine it's been the topic of multiple TED Talks, etc. There should have been some minimal research before writing on this topic.
“…pro-topless but anti-gambling. I can support that position, because one of them is harmful beyond all measure of an individual's ability to self-regulate, and the other basically isn't at all.”
I find this a particularly interesting take, because of course Islam and Sharia law so COMPLETELY disagree with Easterbrook and you on “pro-topless” and the male ability to self-regulate that they use it to justify all kinds of restrictions on women’s dress, appearance and even ability to be alone in public.
yes, the idea that Christianity / Christendom have culturally evolved to have a certain level of trust (or at least optimism?) in male self-regulation, is certainly amusing when considering other topics in the news. But I think it's a pretty low bar, if you see some tits, for a man to not immediately move to raping the owner of those tits. For the same reason that we ought to be trusted to not steal something we see that's valuable or shiny, especially if it actively resists being stolen or unattended. Not-Harassing such owners might be a higher bar, but, you know, I think we can safely cover the bare (ha!) minimum here through normal socialization tools like shaming and the justice system. Call me a crazy feminist if you must.
Unless, of course, you support the party that calls Islam a “‘mostly peaceful religion” while having huge numbers of pro-Hamas antisemitic leftists in it who chose “Back Hamas” in the aftermath of Oct 7th.
I’d still disagree with you on the gambling point, but very respectfully so. Because I pretty much agree with every word you wrote above.
However, you can’t have it both ways: you can’t support the progressive agenda and today’s progressive coalition on the one hand, which defends Islam and refuses to defend but instead disproportionately massively criticizes an Israel trying to defend itself.
Because progressives today literally defend Muslim countries that deny women basic rights on precisely the basis you assert causes “no harm”, but continually disgracefully castigate the only democracy with full women’s rights, LGBT rights, etc. in the region. With prominent elected members of that coalition calling what Israel does “war crimes” and genocide while never criticizing the murdering, rapist, civilian hostage-taking terrorists.
"You can't look at, say, the trend in smoking rate in this country over the last 40-odd years since the government got involved, and conclude that society isn't better off for it"
Actually I can conclude that.
With the popularity of vaping, it's easy to get a higher nicotine content vs tobacco. Additionally, it's easy to hit a vape like a bong (big puff, holding it in) instead of puffing a cig.
People who vape may be inhaling fewer chems in general, but they're consuming much higher quantities of nicotine, which is the addictive part.
Rationality is also a vibe. There are trade-offs and the most important thing isn't to always come down on the side of people can make their own mistakes, but on the side of we are explicit about the trade offs and we are making a decision based on what we think they are and are willing to reconsider when the data changes. We should look at regulating vice as a series of trade-offs. How harmful is the vice? how many people would do it if it was advertised like Coke? How long has it been part of our culture? How hard is it to enforce a prohabition? What are the different types of reglatory regemes that would reduce harm? What is the smallest amount of regulation that would reduce harm to the greatest extent? What is easy to enfornce? Ban advertising for sports gambiling, might be an okay policy, the fixes things with a minimal effects on freedom. Sports teams should not be able to mention it or be sponsored by it. Another possibility is maybe it's legal but you need to go in person to vegas to do it. Policies have trade-offs, moralizing freedom is the same as moralizing against vice, it fails to recognize trade-offs. So just be an adult and make rational decisions that recognize the trade-offs. Figure out what data would change your mind before a policy is rolled out.
I think this is getting the framing wrong - the thing that became harmfully risk-averse is society (which government risk aversion downstream of that). Our risk aversion actually harms government infrastructure projects a lot more more than private projects.
And I think you're doing the same kind of risk aversion here. We have enough evidence to be pretty confident that banning online sports gambling would be a net good for society. We should go on to say "okay then let's do it", instead of worrying about the risks and possible side effects of that like we would with an environmental review.
Not very persuasive. There were ten times as many blue laws in America's heyday. And Prohibition was more intrusive than a gambling ban but the 20s were one of our most dynamic decades
And since slippery slopes are speculative; let's speculate further! It's worth asking if on Earth 2, an Elon Musk who patiently fathered his children between only two marriages and never abused drugs to excess (thanks to strong societal taboos or laws enacted due to those societal taboos) is doing much better things for humanity than melting down over a close presidential election cycle with relatively small long-term consequences.
For all we know, on Earth 2, Musk is getting us to Mars in 2030 and has recalculated his self-driving car strategy to have more hardware than the insufficient video machine-learning his Teslas are relying on to a dead end. But in this world, his peak will be rigging Twitter on steroids and enraging most US media and financial networks all for a huckster to narrowly lose to the first black woman president. Maybe it's all downhill from here; he can't stop himself because of radicalizing over his poor relationship to his kids and abusing non-prescription drugs.
Sure, this is all a massive reach. But so is "Saturn V rockets won't happen because we made cocaine illegal." Let's try to measure more slippery slopes before we conclude on the best policy.
I do think one thing that libertarians need to contend with a bit more seriously is the obvious tension pointed out here.
Entrepreneurs have built out huge companies based on serving all the classic biblical vices. Gluttony, Envy, Lust, Gambling, Sloth, Drugs & Alcohol, etc. The availability & quality of indulging in those vices has gone way up, the cost has gone way down. As a high conscientious individual, the maximum-liberty standpoint is very compatible with me. But it obviously has serious deleterious impact on a large portion of society, especially once any social pressure has disappeared to avoid them. The result is a population that is less productive, more unhealthy, more unhappy.
Having an increasingly dysfunctional working class seems like it would cause problems for Mars projects at some point since big efforts necessarily require large numbers of those individuals to contribute.
Your argument boils down to elitists know better than the masses what is good for them.
And yet elitists enable state lotteries, which have terrible odds and those addicted could spend all their money on.
By your logic elitists should force the “dysfunctional working class” to take COVID vaccines, because elitists know best what 22 year olds needed there…
[Note that just because there are no doubt dysfunctional members of the working class - more by percentage than of elites, I grant, less by percentage of the non-working dependent class, hopefully you’ll agree - I do NOT at all accept your premise that the working class as a whole is “increasingly dysfunctional”.
The unholy trinity between elites and the non-working poor, with said elites violating the law and the rule of law and bringing in million of illegals immigrants over the last 3.5 years, is the far more dysfunctional entity here.]
I am not claiming therefore you are wrong re: sports gambling. But I am saying that your argument is a bad one. Unless, perhaps, you are a Karen ardent believer in the nanny-state.
Addiction is a special case. I know lots of people argue for special cases for their pet issues. But addictive services and products really are exploitive.
It should be obvious you wouldn't let a 10 year old choose how much candy they should eat. It should be even more obvious you wouldn't let them choose how much heroin to take. You shouldn't let them choose how much they should gamble either. Someone turning 18, or even older, doesn't magically mean they can suddenly handle the responsibility. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't.
Some addictive products are enjoyed enough that I think it's worth keeping them legal. Alcoholism is really bad, but enough people enjoy it in moderation I think we're ultimately better having it be legal for adults. I don't think gambling passes that utilitarian test, and I don't buy the argument that we need some culture of free markets to get to mars. You could just as well argue that legalizing the worst types of free markets will inspire a worse backlash, like how Democrats allowing illegal immigrants has created a backlash against skilled immigrants.
The problem with special cases is that allowing them creates an incentive to define more and more things as a special case. If it's okay to ban something because it is addictive, people will claim anything they dislike is addictive.
I remember reading a study that showed that self-proclaimed "porn addicts" used pornography less frequently than the average person. The thing that made them feel "addicted" was their moral disapproval of its use, not how frequently they used it. I expect that a lot of other novel "addictions," like social media and videogames, are similar. If you allow addiction justify paternalism, then paternalists will rapidly expand the definition of addiction.
At the very least there needs to be much stricter standards for counting something as an "addiction" or a special case before anyone should feel comfortable restricting freedom to prevent it.
>The problem with special cases is that allowing them creates an incentive to define more and more things as a special case. If it's okay to ban something because it is addictive, people will claim anything they dislike is addictive.
I agree, but sometimes it's still worth it to define stuff as special cases anyway. I'm more of a pragmatist than an ideologue.
Or that's just society reacting to new challenges.
Porn does not appear to me to be any more addictive than, say, watching tv. Any behavior can be overused as a coping mechanism. Even though marijuana doesn't seem to have any physically addictive properties, some people end up stoned every waking hour.
BUT, I'm pretty convinced social media is addictive, and bad for you. I expect in fifty years people will be shocked to learn about how unregulated it is today, just as it's shocking to learn heroin used to be legal. People worldwide also appear to be really bad at self-regulating with cheap, abundant, delicious food everywhere, and I expect we'll have rules on that as well. Or we'll all be on Ozempic.
For some stuff like heroin, no age. Personally I think certain types of gambling should be restricted for everyone too. At the very least, ban gambling ads.
Correct. And while I accept that that is indeed a legit mechanism (i.e. by attaching strings to federal money) for the feds to get the policy they want, imo the far better way to deal with drunk driving by young adults is to have harsh sentences for drunk driving offenders.
But thanks, and I accept your point that in this case it is based on a federal law engineered by MADD - and a questionable SCOTUS ruling on that law in 1987 - and not weak-kneed state legislatures and governors.
I don't have strong opinions on sports betting -- though I would note it's always been legal and accepted in Britain -- but I do think sports betting companies that ban players for winning should themselves be banned.
An economist would say that taxing "vices" is generally more efficient than banning them. Also, we can apply liability law after harms are done rather than regulating beforehand for fear of harms that might be done.
I just wish the California Lottery would stop advertising on TV. People want to gamble, it’s a vice, but fine. That doesn’t mean the government should be spending my tax dollars to encourage more of it.
I’m with Kevin. It’s one thing to have a lottery (I got little issue with it). It’s quite another for the government to run ads advertising more spending on it. We know that the people paying the tax are disproportionately lower income. Advertising the lottery is spending ALL of our tax dollars to extract more regressive tax dollars.
I prefer flat taxes to progressive ones, but I ain’t a big fan of regressive taxes, even voluntary ones. But this particular case is perverse, as of course sin taxes (e.g. on alcohol) are partly justified as being deliberately regressive in order to *discourage* sin, yet with this advertising the state is actively *encouraging* it.
Your arguments about why government intervention is sometimes justified but the bar needs to be very high sound similar to what I used to justify my vote to legalize marijuana in my state, when it was on the ballot a few years ago:
It's not a vice I've ever indulged in, but I eventually realized that most people have, and that expending government resources to harass and sometimes jail a (mostly) random sample of that "most people" just wasn't a good idea.
That said, I think some of the other commentators have a good point about sports betting being especially harmful to society on account if the bottomlessness of the financial hole into which some people will go if given the chance. Ultimately, externalities exist and if the effect of sports betting is to enlarge the dependent underclass and move money away from productive sectors, then one might have to just bite the bullet and legislate morality.
It's an issue I'll have to think about more. Were it to come up in a referendum I'm not sure how I'd vote.
I wonder if there could be some regulation to put a bottom on the hole. Require everyone who signs up to show proof of income and savings, like they were applying for a loan or renting an apartment. Use that to calculate a "gambling credit score" for each individual and prohibit them from betting above that amount. I'm sure some people who are both clever and self-destructive would find a way around it, but it might put a lower bound on a lot of people.
You might also get the amusing spectacle of somebody working hard to get a bonus or a raise so he's allowed to gamble more.
Why are thirty year UST yields rising even as oil prices, agricultural prices, and Dow Chemical remain weak? Do you agree with Priya Misra's emphasis on deficits?
Or is my alternative explanation closer to the mark: financial markets are anticipating a Trump election victory and therefore lower immigration and higher tariffs?
“Those of us who believe in progress have an important mission, which is to convince elites that they’re too neurotic, worried about theoretical harms, and willing to err on the side of caution in situations where they more often need to get out of the way.”
If Richard really believed in the importance of this mission, he wouldn’t spend so much time talking about Trump’s aesthetics and how he talks, nor about how awful some of Trump’s most ardent supporters are (you note he rarely talks about how awful the pro-terrorists on the left are…).
If the pro-abundance, pro-progress agenda were truly that important to him, seems to me he’d spend less time on those things, and more time trumpeting the advantages of pro-abundance and the need to support same.
I think a big difference is that Trump and his horrible supporters are the ones in charge of the Republican party. The pro-terrorist left, by contrast, has largely been contained, centrist Democrats have managed to take back control of the party from them.
Another factor to consider is that Trumpism long ago ceased to be a "theoretical" harm. The worries that the elites had about Trump turned out to be well-founded and rational, not neurotic.
Since Richard is so pro-abundance I am surprised that he hasn't, in his words, "taken the coconut pill" yet. The Democrats currently in charge of the party seem to have fairly moderate economic views. Trump, by contrast, wants to do economically idiotic things like impose 20% tariffs and reduce legal immigration. The only way he can look better than the Democrats are this point is to assume that he is too flaky to follow through with any of his really bad ideas (not a totally unfounded assumption, but not something that I'd bet the economy on).
- Trump’s “horrible supporters” are not in charge of anything. But way to double down on Hillary’s “basket of deplorables”
- what you call “Trumpism” delivered markedly better results from 2017-2019 than the past 3.75 years of the border czar Harris-Biden Administration - unless you are the type who prefers a lot of inflation, many wars, and millions of illegal immigrants who can’t work legally but can receive many welfare benefits legally, and do get some more illegally.
- Due respect, while you are entitled to your own opinions, you are truly deluded if you think that the current Dem party has moderate economic views, and you are just wrong to claim that Trump’s economic policies in aggregate would be worse (and I do NOT defend across-the-board tariffs). THAT is why Richard ain’t taken the “coconut pill”. But if you think Kamala’s price-gauging [sic] ideas are good in ANY sense of that term, you are clueless; if you don’t worry about her following through on that, then you are merely being hyperpartisan in your double standards.
Border crossing started spiking in 2019, it flatlined under covid but came back when covid ended, which happened to be when Biden was in the oval office. But people wtill rely on *post hoc ergo procter hoc* logic on this one.
Yeah, sure, eliminating Remain in Mexico had nothing to d with it, right… 🙄
It is true that crossings increased a bit during Trump’s administration, but this is because his policies generated more economic growth and so gave immigrants more incentive to come here to find available work than they had under Obama.
But you are lying when you state or imply any kind of “spike” under Trump. The actual spike - and continuing high plateau - occurred once a Biden took over, and in particular eliminated Remain in Mexico and signaled to the world that he wanted more illegal immigrants to come.
It’s nice that you think you get to decide that gambling has “no redeeming utility” at all…
That indeed makes the world very simple.
Q: who is it who gets to determine which things have zero “‘redeeming” utility?
Maybe if you considered that your rationale justifies Sharia law (“women allowed out in public without being accompanied by a man, or showing any skin whatsoever, has no redeeming utility”), you might reconsider your position?
Doesn’t mean you might not be correct re: best policy about gambling, but your argument is beyond dangerous.
It's quite obviously true. Sports gambling is a truly shitty and exploitative industry that is somehow allowed to shield itself from losses by banning/limiting winners. The profit incentive here is not pro-social and, ultimately, the losses will be subsidized via tax dollars.
In contrast, much of what "semi-professional" individual investors do is speculation and gambling. However, there is some pro-social benefit to market efficiency, even if any one individual is at risk of losing their shirt. Similarly, betting markets for predictions would have social utility even if some people would use them irresponsibly.
And I'm merely opposed to unrestricted, commercialized, online gambling. I think vices rarely should be outright banned. Removing friction, however, often makes vices very costly to individuals and society. I don't give a fuck if you and your friends have a pot on fantasy football any more than I care that you have a weekend poker game with a buy in. The downside risk is capped naturally in those cases. Similarly, if commercialized gambling is restricted to certain physical locations then the Average Joe has a harder time ruining his and his family's financial future due to logistics.
Bringing up Sharia law is so hilariously bad as a response it barely dignifies an answer. But, in short, if GOD FUCKING WILLS IT then sure, let's institute religious law. Otherwise, no.
P.S. I completely agree with you that it should be illegal for any book to be able to selectively limit the size of bets for certain individuals; that practice is indefensible, and even for a libertarian-type like me who thinks we have too many damn laws, I am 100% for that particular regulation.
Dude, I’m fine if you believe that net-net, online gambling should be banned. That the downside harms exceed the benefits. That’s a perfectly reasonable position. Because IMO this particularly issue ain’t one that’s totally obvious.
Clearly, as someone else pointed out above, Britain has survived somehow with first offline and now online sports gambling for a longtime now.
It is your claim that it has ZERO redeeming utility that is a) completely false bullshit, and b) dangerous.
My point about Sharia law was focusing on the dangerousness of your “ZERO redeeming utility” argument. Because when you use the phrase “no redeeming”, you really are arguing exactly like religious zealots do.
Unfortunately for Britain, using them as a counterexample for economic issues is a non-starter because they are a disaster. But also, American society is fairly different in any number of ways on any given issue. Perhaps they've found some middle ground, but I doubt it would work well here.
Note that you're not offering any counterargument to defend the greater social utility of online sports gambling, just whining with a general counterargument.
Things that have easily measurable societal downsides without any clear redeeming upsides are always going to be great candidates for restrictions and bans even in a society that starts with individual freedom as a baseline.
Dude, you keep going back to your false narrative of NO “redeeming upsides”. That is the only thing I’m objecting to.
You are wrong that there is zero/no “redeeming” utility, even if you don’t personally think it’s worthwhile.
That is my sole objection to your words. I already told you, your position against is reasonable. I don’t feel strongly about this particular topic (I lean towards supporting, but I accept the arguments on the other side have merit). I am simply not trying to dissuade you of your position against online gambling at all.
Just stopping your false - and yes, dangerous - rhetoric that it has NO “redeeming” value.
I like sports betting quite a bit. Although I have tendencies toward addiction with other vices, sports betting doesn’t seem to have that effect on me. It makes the games more fun and I generally break even. When I don’t break even, the amount of money I’ve lost is well worth the entertainment value. And the amount I wager is very small relative to my income.
I have a friend on Facebook that grew up in my hometown, and I’m occasionally shown his posts. He regularly shares pictures of winning bets where the wager is 10-20x what I consider a standard bet. He is not an expert on sports by any means, nor is he well off. Apparently he is on some type of public assistance (SNAP, I believe). Yet he bets more on a single NFL drive outcome than a surgeon I know bet on the season win total for his Alma mater.
"I don’t see why sports gambling is all that different."
Because it's addictive, Richard. That's the difference with amusement parks, or television, or other forms of entertainment. It creates compulsive behavior that is fundamentally irrational. Even when people want to stop, they convince themselves they can't, or convince themselves that a big win that will even their ledger is just another play away. That's why it was regulated akin to cigarettes and alcohol (wherein the physical harms are more obvious, but the financial harm has an upper bound, whereas the same is not true of gambling). That's the justification for government interference and not just leaving it up to individuals, especially when there's a whole industry very carefully optimized to induce you to become addicted and stay addicted.
You can't look at, say, the trend in smoking rate in this country over the last 40-odd years since the government got involved, and conclude that society isn't better off for it. Many more people are alive, and those alive are much more healthy, as a result of that gap between then and now. And given the 50 years previous to that, as far as public health is concerned, it was clear it wasn't a problem that was going to solve itself. Mere information is not sufficient, society needs to *help people* on these matters, and stop bad actors from bad acts. Like getting 15-year-olds addicted to smoking.
Same with sports betting. It's not "theoretical harm" that we're afraid of, as you wrote - it's very tangible (and immediate, as opposed to saving the seals or whatever). As Gregg Easterbrook used to say, his compromise with his Baptist upbringing is to be pro-topless but anti-gambling. I can support that position, because one of them is harmful beyond all measure of an individual's ability to self-regulate, and the other basically isn't at all.
It's pretty easy IMO to draw a line on government regulation that recognizes the difference, and sports betting will definitely be on the "regulate it" side of the line that most reasonable people would draw. For me, it's pretty easy to even note the difference between prediction markets and sports betting, because the former has longer-term deals and is mostly zero-sum between participants (and they're not opposed to having winners), while the latter can give you that dopamine hit multiple times a day if you're super into it. It's really only a comparison to the extent that both involve a wager. So does the stock market, and we obviously regulate that but just as obviously, don't ban it. So it should be here.
Somewhere in here there's the conception of "self-regulation". The classic view of freedom includes self-regulation; in the Christian conception, this is freedom from sin, but this isn't only a Christian concept. If vice merchants are free of any restrictions in their addiction-inducing practices, and as a result entire classes of people are enslaved to various self-destructive -- and family-destructive -- addictions, this seems like a net decrease in freedom to me.
Maybe sports betting doesn't need to be entirely banned at this time, but better regulating it in order to help people self-regulate seems like the bare minimum, and this probably involves placing maximums on how much and how frequently people can bet. To the point about amusement parks -- even they have regulations and safety inspections to ensure their rides aren't killing people.
that's a great point. We can make fun of people who exclaim "won't somebody think of the children?!" in response to any moral panic, but in this case society really does have an interest in protecting children, over and above any protection of the grownups involved. Kids growing up in households that are not having their resources drained by this particular addiction. It's only slightly different than them growing up in a household with drug addicts, or risks of physical abuse.
And yes, there's gotta be a compromise position available where it's not banned entirely, but there's some regulation of it to keep it from being quite so rampant. Merely having gambling-addiction hotlines probably ain't it.
That is a particularly pernicious “children” argument to claim the we should ban gambling because some gambling addicts have children.
We ban drugs, and I’m quite sure far more drug addicts with children have worse problems and do even more damage to those children. Yet the ban does not save those children. Illegal gambling is hardly likely to be better for the children; unless you have a “it only takes one” standard that has no place in a rational society, and certainly a large one.
“For the children” simply cannot be justification for restricting adults’ freedom, lest you have not just a nanny-state, but an authoritarian one whose power is limitless.
Nicotine and alcohol are chemicals, gambling is an activity which is "addictive" in that people like to engage in it. You could claim that anything people like to do (including watching sports & reading about it) is "addictive".
no, we can measure it neurologically. go spend 5 minutes reading anything about addiction, I'm not just throwing the term around to mean "anything I don't like", words have meanings. Nobody is addicted to reading about sports, as far as the world of medicine is concerned.
There is no known biological basis for behavioral addiction.
Don't you dare say "dopamine influx in the nucleus accumbens" - if that was really true, then antipsychotics would cure addiction because they block dopamine - but they don't.
Also consider: behavioral addicts also have high rates of chemical addiction, but the opposite isn't true.
You're telling me to go spend 5 minutes without giving any actual citation? Maybe you didn't because you don't actually know any of the scientific literature.
Mental medicine is woefully unscientific, and where the phrase "concept creep" comes from for a reason. Nor does referencing neurology fix things, as it's in the same boat as psychology in the replication crisis (it's just a coincidence that I used the word "boat" when discussing a field containing a paper about scanning the brain of a dead fish). But go ahead and provide the paper that with neurological measurements for reading about sports vs betting on them.
Well, fwiw I don’t agree with Steve re: that simply because gambling is addictive for some that that is justification for it to be banned.
But I do agree with him that gambling is addictive for some people in a different way than “reading about sports” or “loves to take long, hot showers” is.
In addition to the obvious point that gambling is a destructive endeavor for some.
There’s a reason there are Alcoholics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous meetings but not Caffeine Anonymous nor Reading About Sports Anonymous meetings.
Just because it ain’t identical to being addicted to heroin - or caffeine - doesn’t mean it’s not a real thing for some people.
You can ask for a paper on the subject, but personally I don’t need one to use the word “addictive” here confidently and accurately.
Which, again, does not mean I agree with Steve re: what public policy could be, simply because it is addictive and destructive for some non-zero number of people.
In a similar way to the fact that I’m against banning fire just because there exist people out there who are arson addicts who can be unbelievably destructive - to others even, not just themselves - with it.
The existence of such meetings does not strike me as especially scientific evidence.
It is the absence of the other such meetings that shows unequivocally that the relative lack of harm from them.
That absence is *evidence* of the destructive addictive nature of gambling; I wouldn’t suggest that it is conclusive proof.
If you are only arguing your narrow point re: ”neurological” or “mental medicine”, I’ll stay out of it as I have no dog in that fight, nor any interest.
But your implicit denial that there is nothing addictive about gambling to anyone doesn’t pass the smell test.
Gambling has a unique property that kicks in once you start getting in debt doing it: you face a choice between admitting to your wife that you gambled away your kids' college fund, or to your siblings that you gambled away the inheritance that you were in charge of, or you can continue getting deeper in debt, maxing out credit cards, mortgaging your house, and so on, while promising yourself that if you get lucky once and get it all back you will never ever touch the thing again (possibly honestly even, too bad it just doesn't happen). The deeper under you get, the more horrifying the former prospect looks. Many such cases!
Are you a gambling addict?
“Because it's addictive, Richard.”
Alcohol is addictive for some. Why don’t we ban that?
Oh, we did. How did that work out?
Video games are addictive to some? Why don’t we ban them?
Social media is addictive to some - and cause some of those addicted to commit suicide. Why don’t we ban it?
The list never ends.
I’m not saying there is zero validity in the argument. I’m glad we ban heroin. But the argument that “it’s addictive” by itself is woefully insufficient.
> Alcohol is addictive for some. Why don’t we ban that? Oh, we did. How did that work out?
Actually quite well.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibition-alcohol-public-health-crime-benefits
I dont care. I work hard. Alcohol brings me joy on the occasions when I drink. I am not going to be deprived of that just to protect fuckups
“I don’t give a shit about other people” is often alleged to be the basis for libertarianism, so it’s amusing to see it in the wild.
If you actually think Prohibition turned out well, I’ve got this great bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you…
Hardly a surprise that Prohibition would reduce drinking, though…
>She found, contrary to popular perceptions about Prohibition and crime, that prohibitions were associated with lower murder rates — as much as 29 percent lower in some cases.
So Prohibition reduced alcohol consumption, irmproved public health, and reduced crime. What was bad about it?
Well, for one, I don’t believe it improved *violent* crime. No doubt it reduced drunk and disorderly behavior…
And it surely enriched criminals and reduced respect for the rule of law. So at least you gotta give me that.
You also understand that “associated with” and “caused by” are not at all the same thing, right?
And just a single take from a leftist publication is nowhere near enough to persuade that Prohibition was a good, or successful, policy.
Are you suggesting we should implement it now? If not, why not? If yes… then you don’t actually believe in freedom much at all, do you?
Freedom to do vice is worthless, which is what Richard's entire post misses. In some cases the enforcement of laws against a certain vice might do more harm than good, but the "freedom" to engage in vice is, by itself, worthless. You can in fact ban the bad things and keep the good things.
"But the argument that “it’s addictive” by itself is woefully insufficient."
Good thing I wrote a couple hundred words to elaborate and add nuance, then!
No, your argument was mostly about things that are largely non-addictive vs things that have an element of addiction.
My point is that having an element of addictiveness is not sufficient. Yet your main argument Is that it’s the mere existence of an addictive element that justifies your position.
P.S. you claim that gambling was treated like cigarettes and alcohol, but other than Prohibition (how’d that work out?), in fact we didn’t completely ban either of those vices. Requiring gambling to be highly regulated and taxed is a very different thing from banning it.
This has been extensively covered by people a lot more thoughtful than Richard. You impose barriers to entry. I'm not sure what the current rules on advertising alcohol are now, but for a long time you couldn't advertise for hard liquor on tv. Most states have rules about where alcohol can be sold. You can't get a beer with your McDonalds. You must be a certain age to purchase it. Etc.
People who are concerned about gambling are concerned about how much easier it is, and the fact that it is much more aggressively advertised. Very few are advocating for the end of gambling altogether.
How could someone write a defense of gambling without mentioning addiction?
As for prediction markets, I expect them to work like every other unregulated prediction market in history, ie, collapse in a massive speculation bubble, and either die or get regulated. Fine. No pension funds are investing in it, and there are reasonably high barriers to entry.
NPR covered Elon's take on space travel (like all exploration, it's extremely dangerous, and it's hard to imagine the public accepting the likely loss of life needed to do it today), like, a million years ago. I imagine it's been the topic of multiple TED Talks, etc. There should have been some minimal research before writing on this topic.
“…pro-topless but anti-gambling. I can support that position, because one of them is harmful beyond all measure of an individual's ability to self-regulate, and the other basically isn't at all.”
I find this a particularly interesting take, because of course Islam and Sharia law so COMPLETELY disagree with Easterbrook and you on “pro-topless” and the male ability to self-regulate that they use it to justify all kinds of restrictions on women’s dress, appearance and even ability to be alone in public.
yes, the idea that Christianity / Christendom have culturally evolved to have a certain level of trust (or at least optimism?) in male self-regulation, is certainly amusing when considering other topics in the news. But I think it's a pretty low bar, if you see some tits, for a man to not immediately move to raping the owner of those tits. For the same reason that we ought to be trusted to not steal something we see that's valuable or shiny, especially if it actively resists being stolen or unattended. Not-Harassing such owners might be a higher bar, but, you know, I think we can safely cover the bare (ha!) minimum here through normal socialization tools like shaming and the justice system. Call me a crazy feminist if you must.
I think your POV is *completely* reasonable.
Unless, of course, you support the party that calls Islam a “‘mostly peaceful religion” while having huge numbers of pro-Hamas antisemitic leftists in it who chose “Back Hamas” in the aftermath of Oct 7th.
I’d still disagree with you on the gambling point, but very respectfully so. Because I pretty much agree with every word you wrote above.
However, you can’t have it both ways: you can’t support the progressive agenda and today’s progressive coalition on the one hand, which defends Islam and refuses to defend but instead disproportionately massively criticizes an Israel trying to defend itself.
Because progressives today literally defend Muslim countries that deny women basic rights on precisely the basis you assert causes “no harm”, but continually disgracefully castigate the only democracy with full women’s rights, LGBT rights, etc. in the region. With prominent elected members of that coalition calling what Israel does “war crimes” and genocide while never criticizing the murdering, rapist, civilian hostage-taking terrorists.
"You can't look at, say, the trend in smoking rate in this country over the last 40-odd years since the government got involved, and conclude that society isn't better off for it"
Actually I can conclude that.
With the popularity of vaping, it's easy to get a higher nicotine content vs tobacco. Additionally, it's easy to hit a vape like a bong (big puff, holding it in) instead of puffing a cig.
People who vape may be inhaling fewer chems in general, but they're consuming much higher quantities of nicotine, which is the addictive part.
Prediction markets can also be addictive.
Rationality is also a vibe. There are trade-offs and the most important thing isn't to always come down on the side of people can make their own mistakes, but on the side of we are explicit about the trade offs and we are making a decision based on what we think they are and are willing to reconsider when the data changes. We should look at regulating vice as a series of trade-offs. How harmful is the vice? how many people would do it if it was advertised like Coke? How long has it been part of our culture? How hard is it to enforce a prohabition? What are the different types of reglatory regemes that would reduce harm? What is the smallest amount of regulation that would reduce harm to the greatest extent? What is easy to enfornce? Ban advertising for sports gambiling, might be an okay policy, the fixes things with a minimal effects on freedom. Sports teams should not be able to mention it or be sponsored by it. Another possibility is maybe it's legal but you need to go in person to vegas to do it. Policies have trade-offs, moralizing freedom is the same as moralizing against vice, it fails to recognize trade-offs. So just be an adult and make rational decisions that recognize the trade-offs. Figure out what data would change your mind before a policy is rolled out.
So what did you write about after the picture of the girl?
I think this is getting the framing wrong - the thing that became harmfully risk-averse is society (which government risk aversion downstream of that). Our risk aversion actually harms government infrastructure projects a lot more more than private projects.
And I think you're doing the same kind of risk aversion here. We have enough evidence to be pretty confident that banning online sports gambling would be a net good for society. We should go on to say "okay then let's do it", instead of worrying about the risks and possible side effects of that like we would with an environmental review.
Safetyism about about risk aversion
It’s a good default position to be skeptical of restraints on freedom, but here we have ample empirical evidence and no murky unknowns
"We have enough evidence to be pretty confident that banning online sports gambling would be a net good for society."
Not being included in "we", I wonder what are the criteria for inclusion.
Not very persuasive. There were ten times as many blue laws in America's heyday. And Prohibition was more intrusive than a gambling ban but the 20s were one of our most dynamic decades
And since slippery slopes are speculative; let's speculate further! It's worth asking if on Earth 2, an Elon Musk who patiently fathered his children between only two marriages and never abused drugs to excess (thanks to strong societal taboos or laws enacted due to those societal taboos) is doing much better things for humanity than melting down over a close presidential election cycle with relatively small long-term consequences.
For all we know, on Earth 2, Musk is getting us to Mars in 2030 and has recalculated his self-driving car strategy to have more hardware than the insufficient video machine-learning his Teslas are relying on to a dead end. But in this world, his peak will be rigging Twitter on steroids and enraging most US media and financial networks all for a huckster to narrowly lose to the first black woman president. Maybe it's all downhill from here; he can't stop himself because of radicalizing over his poor relationship to his kids and abusing non-prescription drugs.
Sure, this is all a massive reach. But so is "Saturn V rockets won't happen because we made cocaine illegal." Let's try to measure more slippery slopes before we conclude on the best policy.
I do think one thing that libertarians need to contend with a bit more seriously is the obvious tension pointed out here.
Entrepreneurs have built out huge companies based on serving all the classic biblical vices. Gluttony, Envy, Lust, Gambling, Sloth, Drugs & Alcohol, etc. The availability & quality of indulging in those vices has gone way up, the cost has gone way down. As a high conscientious individual, the maximum-liberty standpoint is very compatible with me. But it obviously has serious deleterious impact on a large portion of society, especially once any social pressure has disappeared to avoid them. The result is a population that is less productive, more unhealthy, more unhappy.
Having an increasingly dysfunctional working class seems like it would cause problems for Mars projects at some point since big efforts necessarily require large numbers of those individuals to contribute.
Your argument boils down to elitists know better than the masses what is good for them.
And yet elitists enable state lotteries, which have terrible odds and those addicted could spend all their money on.
By your logic elitists should force the “dysfunctional working class” to take COVID vaccines, because elitists know best what 22 year olds needed there…
[Note that just because there are no doubt dysfunctional members of the working class - more by percentage than of elites, I grant, less by percentage of the non-working dependent class, hopefully you’ll agree - I do NOT at all accept your premise that the working class as a whole is “increasingly dysfunctional”.
The unholy trinity between elites and the non-working poor, with said elites violating the law and the rule of law and bringing in million of illegals immigrants over the last 3.5 years, is the far more dysfunctional entity here.]
I am not claiming therefore you are wrong re: sports gambling. But I am saying that your argument is a bad one. Unless, perhaps, you are a Karen ardent believer in the nanny-state.
Addiction is a special case. I know lots of people argue for special cases for their pet issues. But addictive services and products really are exploitive.
It should be obvious you wouldn't let a 10 year old choose how much candy they should eat. It should be even more obvious you wouldn't let them choose how much heroin to take. You shouldn't let them choose how much they should gamble either. Someone turning 18, or even older, doesn't magically mean they can suddenly handle the responsibility. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't.
Some addictive products are enjoyed enough that I think it's worth keeping them legal. Alcoholism is really bad, but enough people enjoy it in moderation I think we're ultimately better having it be legal for adults. I don't think gambling passes that utilitarian test, and I don't buy the argument that we need some culture of free markets to get to mars. You could just as well argue that legalizing the worst types of free markets will inspire a worse backlash, like how Democrats allowing illegal immigrants has created a backlash against skilled immigrants.
The problem with special cases is that allowing them creates an incentive to define more and more things as a special case. If it's okay to ban something because it is addictive, people will claim anything they dislike is addictive.
I remember reading a study that showed that self-proclaimed "porn addicts" used pornography less frequently than the average person. The thing that made them feel "addicted" was their moral disapproval of its use, not how frequently they used it. I expect that a lot of other novel "addictions," like social media and videogames, are similar. If you allow addiction justify paternalism, then paternalists will rapidly expand the definition of addiction.
At the very least there needs to be much stricter standards for counting something as an "addiction" or a special case before anyone should feel comfortable restricting freedom to prevent it.
>The problem with special cases is that allowing them creates an incentive to define more and more things as a special case. If it's okay to ban something because it is addictive, people will claim anything they dislike is addictive.
I agree, but sometimes it's still worth it to define stuff as special cases anyway. I'm more of a pragmatist than an ideologue.
Or that's just society reacting to new challenges.
Porn does not appear to me to be any more addictive than, say, watching tv. Any behavior can be overused as a coping mechanism. Even though marijuana doesn't seem to have any physically addictive properties, some people end up stoned every waking hour.
BUT, I'm pretty convinced social media is addictive, and bad for you. I expect in fifty years people will be shocked to learn about how unregulated it is today, just as it's shocking to learn heroin used to be legal. People worldwide also appear to be really bad at self-regulating with cheap, abundant, delicious food everywhere, and I expect we'll have rules on that as well. Or we'll all be on Ozempic.
If 18 isn't old enough to make your own decisions, what age is?
For some stuff like heroin, no age. Personally I think certain types of gambling should be restricted for everyone too. At the very least, ban gambling ads.
Well, we don’t let 18 year olds drink alcohol, because too many people fret about throwing drunk drivers in jail for stiff sentences…
I believe the federal government withheld highway funds to Wisconsin until they raised their drinking age.
Correct. And while I accept that that is indeed a legit mechanism (i.e. by attaching strings to federal money) for the feds to get the policy they want, imo the far better way to deal with drunk driving by young adults is to have harsh sentences for drunk driving offenders.
But thanks, and I accept your point that in this case it is based on a federal law engineered by MADD - and a questionable SCOTUS ruling on that law in 1987 - and not weak-kneed state legislatures and governors.
I don't have strong opinions on sports betting -- though I would note it's always been legal and accepted in Britain -- but I do think sports betting companies that ban players for winning should themselves be banned.
An economist would say that taxing "vices" is generally more efficient than banning them. Also, we can apply liability law after harms are done rather than regulating beforehand for fear of harms that might be done.
I just wish the California Lottery would stop advertising on TV. People want to gamble, it’s a vice, but fine. That doesn’t mean the government should be spending my tax dollars to encourage more of it.
Think of it as a tax people are willing to pay
I’m with Kevin. It’s one thing to have a lottery (I got little issue with it). It’s quite another for the government to run ads advertising more spending on it. We know that the people paying the tax are disproportionately lower income. Advertising the lottery is spending ALL of our tax dollars to extract more regressive tax dollars.
I prefer flat taxes to progressive ones, but I ain’t a big fan of regressive taxes, even voluntary ones. But this particular case is perverse, as of course sin taxes (e.g. on alcohol) are partly justified as being deliberately regressive in order to *discourage* sin, yet with this advertising the state is actively *encouraging* it.
After seeing the ad I suddenly feel an urge to head to draft kings...
Your arguments about why government intervention is sometimes justified but the bar needs to be very high sound similar to what I used to justify my vote to legalize marijuana in my state, when it was on the ballot a few years ago:
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/why-i-will-be-voting-to-legalize?utm_source=publication-search
It's not a vice I've ever indulged in, but I eventually realized that most people have, and that expending government resources to harass and sometimes jail a (mostly) random sample of that "most people" just wasn't a good idea.
That said, I think some of the other commentators have a good point about sports betting being especially harmful to society on account if the bottomlessness of the financial hole into which some people will go if given the chance. Ultimately, externalities exist and if the effect of sports betting is to enlarge the dependent underclass and move money away from productive sectors, then one might have to just bite the bullet and legislate morality.
It's an issue I'll have to think about more. Were it to come up in a referendum I'm not sure how I'd vote.
I wonder if there could be some regulation to put a bottom on the hole. Require everyone who signs up to show proof of income and savings, like they were applying for a loan or renting an apartment. Use that to calculate a "gambling credit score" for each individual and prohibit them from betting above that amount. I'm sure some people who are both clever and self-destructive would find a way around it, but it might put a lower bound on a lot of people.
You might also get the amusing spectacle of somebody working hard to get a bonus or a raise so he's allowed to gamble more.
Dear smart people,
Why are thirty year UST yields rising even as oil prices, agricultural prices, and Dow Chemical remain weak? Do you agree with Priya Misra's emphasis on deficits?
https://x.com/SquawkCNBC/status/1849047457939833289
Or is my alternative explanation closer to the mark: financial markets are anticipating a Trump election victory and therefore lower immigration and higher tariffs?
Off-topic, I know. Apologies.
“Those of us who believe in progress have an important mission, which is to convince elites that they’re too neurotic, worried about theoretical harms, and willing to err on the side of caution in situations where they more often need to get out of the way.”
If Richard really believed in the importance of this mission, he wouldn’t spend so much time talking about Trump’s aesthetics and how he talks, nor about how awful some of Trump’s most ardent supporters are (you note he rarely talks about how awful the pro-terrorists on the left are…).
If the pro-abundance, pro-progress agenda were truly that important to him, seems to me he’d spend less time on those things, and more time trumpeting the advantages of pro-abundance and the need to support same.
So color me skeptical…
I think a big difference is that Trump and his horrible supporters are the ones in charge of the Republican party. The pro-terrorist left, by contrast, has largely been contained, centrist Democrats have managed to take back control of the party from them.
Another factor to consider is that Trumpism long ago ceased to be a "theoretical" harm. The worries that the elites had about Trump turned out to be well-founded and rational, not neurotic.
Since Richard is so pro-abundance I am surprised that he hasn't, in his words, "taken the coconut pill" yet. The Democrats currently in charge of the party seem to have fairly moderate economic views. Trump, by contrast, wants to do economically idiotic things like impose 20% tariffs and reduce legal immigration. The only way he can look better than the Democrats are this point is to assume that he is too flaky to follow through with any of his really bad ideas (not a totally unfounded assumption, but not something that I'd bet the economy on).
Dude, you’re entitled to your opinions but…
- Trump’s “horrible supporters” are not in charge of anything. But way to double down on Hillary’s “basket of deplorables”
- what you call “Trumpism” delivered markedly better results from 2017-2019 than the past 3.75 years of the border czar Harris-Biden Administration - unless you are the type who prefers a lot of inflation, many wars, and millions of illegal immigrants who can’t work legally but can receive many welfare benefits legally, and do get some more illegally.
- Due respect, while you are entitled to your own opinions, you are truly deluded if you think that the current Dem party has moderate economic views, and you are just wrong to claim that Trump’s economic policies in aggregate would be worse (and I do NOT defend across-the-board tariffs). THAT is why Richard ain’t taken the “coconut pill”. But if you think Kamala’s price-gauging [sic] ideas are good in ANY sense of that term, you are clueless; if you don’t worry about her following through on that, then you are merely being hyperpartisan in your double standards.
Border crossing started spiking in 2019, it flatlined under covid but came back when covid ended, which happened to be when Biden was in the oval office. But people wtill rely on *post hoc ergo procter hoc* logic on this one.
And it's dropped dramatically! Lower than it was in 2019!
Yeah, sure, eliminating Remain in Mexico had nothing to d with it, right… 🙄
It is true that crossings increased a bit during Trump’s administration, but this is because his policies generated more economic growth and so gave immigrants more incentive to come here to find available work than they had under Obama.
But you are lying when you state or imply any kind of “spike” under Trump. The actual spike - and continuing high plateau - occurred once a Biden took over, and in particular eliminated Remain in Mexico and signaled to the world that he wanted more illegal immigrants to come.
If you can’t see the difference between online sports betting and amusement parks then I don’t know how to take your analysis seriously.
Gambling has a known addiction element with no redeeming utility (like setting market prices).
Its redeeming quality is that it's fun. It's also really dangerous for some people.
The fact it’s entertaining is not a “redeeming” quality.
It’s baked in that people want to do it and that in a free society the default is let people do things.
The issue is what social utility makes up for the known downsides of commercializing this fun at scale in one’s pocket.
There’s nothing, nor any longstanding tradition for online gambling.
It’s nice that you think you get to decide that gambling has “no redeeming utility” at all…
That indeed makes the world very simple.
Q: who is it who gets to determine which things have zero “‘redeeming” utility?
Maybe if you considered that your rationale justifies Sharia law (“women allowed out in public without being accompanied by a man, or showing any skin whatsoever, has no redeeming utility”), you might reconsider your position?
Doesn’t mean you might not be correct re: best policy about gambling, but your argument is beyond dangerous.
"I" don't "get" to "decide" that.
It's quite obviously true. Sports gambling is a truly shitty and exploitative industry that is somehow allowed to shield itself from losses by banning/limiting winners. The profit incentive here is not pro-social and, ultimately, the losses will be subsidized via tax dollars.
In contrast, much of what "semi-professional" individual investors do is speculation and gambling. However, there is some pro-social benefit to market efficiency, even if any one individual is at risk of losing their shirt. Similarly, betting markets for predictions would have social utility even if some people would use them irresponsibly.
And I'm merely opposed to unrestricted, commercialized, online gambling. I think vices rarely should be outright banned. Removing friction, however, often makes vices very costly to individuals and society. I don't give a fuck if you and your friends have a pot on fantasy football any more than I care that you have a weekend poker game with a buy in. The downside risk is capped naturally in those cases. Similarly, if commercialized gambling is restricted to certain physical locations then the Average Joe has a harder time ruining his and his family's financial future due to logistics.
Bringing up Sharia law is so hilariously bad as a response it barely dignifies an answer. But, in short, if GOD FUCKING WILLS IT then sure, let's institute religious law. Otherwise, no.
P.S. I completely agree with you that it should be illegal for any book to be able to selectively limit the size of bets for certain individuals; that practice is indefensible, and even for a libertarian-type like me who thinks we have too many damn laws, I am 100% for that particular regulation.
Dude, I’m fine if you believe that net-net, online gambling should be banned. That the downside harms exceed the benefits. That’s a perfectly reasonable position. Because IMO this particularly issue ain’t one that’s totally obvious.
Clearly, as someone else pointed out above, Britain has survived somehow with first offline and now online sports gambling for a longtime now.
It is your claim that it has ZERO redeeming utility that is a) completely false bullshit, and b) dangerous.
My point about Sharia law was focusing on the dangerousness of your “ZERO redeeming utility” argument. Because when you use the phrase “no redeeming”, you really are arguing exactly like religious zealots do.
Unfortunately for Britain, using them as a counterexample for economic issues is a non-starter because they are a disaster. But also, American society is fairly different in any number of ways on any given issue. Perhaps they've found some middle ground, but I doubt it would work well here.
Note that you're not offering any counterargument to defend the greater social utility of online sports gambling, just whining with a general counterargument.
Things that have easily measurable societal downsides without any clear redeeming upsides are always going to be great candidates for restrictions and bans even in a society that starts with individual freedom as a baseline.
Dude, you keep going back to your false narrative of NO “redeeming upsides”. That is the only thing I’m objecting to.
You are wrong that there is zero/no “redeeming” utility, even if you don’t personally think it’s worthwhile.
That is my sole objection to your words. I already told you, your position against is reasonable. I don’t feel strongly about this particular topic (I lean towards supporting, but I accept the arguments on the other side have merit). I am simply not trying to dissuade you of your position against online gambling at all.
Just stopping your false - and yes, dangerous - rhetoric that it has NO “redeeming” value.
You keep not providing any possible redeeming utility.
That silence speaks volumes.
Anecdote of questionable value:
I like sports betting quite a bit. Although I have tendencies toward addiction with other vices, sports betting doesn’t seem to have that effect on me. It makes the games more fun and I generally break even. When I don’t break even, the amount of money I’ve lost is well worth the entertainment value. And the amount I wager is very small relative to my income.
I have a friend on Facebook that grew up in my hometown, and I’m occasionally shown his posts. He regularly shares pictures of winning bets where the wager is 10-20x what I consider a standard bet. He is not an expert on sports by any means, nor is he well off. Apparently he is on some type of public assistance (SNAP, I believe). Yet he bets more on a single NFL drive outcome than a surgeon I know bet on the season win total for his Alma mater.
In conclusion, America is a land of contrasts.