Thread

1. ecshafer · 1790700742 · focus · HN ↗

   Legalizing sports betting and online gambling was such a massive mistake. They are sleazy immoral industries that profit on suffering.

   1. morleytj · 1790705723 · focus · HN ↗

      Gambling addiction is a brutal public health problem. As I understand it, gambling addicts have a very high incidence of suicidal ideation. When people work in these industries, their paychecks are directly coming from putting people into deep suffering.

      1. sneak · 1790707816 · focus · HN ↗

         That's a matter of opinion. There are those of us that believe that it is a gross violation of one's human rights to dictate how they're allowed to spend the money that they earned.

         It's a side effect of liberty that people can choose to put themselves into deep suffering. I know people who do the same by blowing all of their money on designer clothes or expensive cars. Nobody is talking about regulating poor people wasting money on those things.

         If you earn the money, you're entitled to piss it away. Them's the breaks.

         1. sleepybrett · 1790714983 · focus · HN ↗

            > That's a matter of opinion. There are those of us that believe that it is a gross violation of one's human rights to dictate how they're allowed to spend the money that they earned.

            Hi, we live in a society. People who bankrupt themselves out of whatever money they have earned and become a burden to the society at large via homelessness/welfare/crime. Which is also the same case for hard drugs (traditionally this was originally a problem with opiates). I personally do not care if you decide you want to kill yourself with heroin, but I do care as soon as our taxes are used to deal with you as a side-effect.

            So making reasonable laws that curtail some of the worst things you can piss your money away on to curb crime/homelessness/welfare/er-bill-delenquency expenditures seems like a wise decision.

            Libertarian thinking tries to ignore these side effects but they are real.

            1. scrtm · 1790717156 · focus · HN ↗

               >I personally do not care if you decide you want to kill yourself with heroin, but I do care as soon as our taxes are used to deal with you as a side-effect.

               isn't this already the case with a lot of things that carry less negative stigma? bankrupcty, limited liability, extreme sports (base jumping, rock climbing, etc), financial risk taking, health choices, bailouts are more socially accepted, but they also risk pushing costs onto the public upon failure.

               1. sleepybrett · 1790783273 · focus · HN ↗

                  i mean if you base jump and your chute fails you end up as a smear at the bottom of a cliff somewhere. They will probably attempt an air rescue and some poor park ranger will have to come out with some buckets of water and wash whats left of you off their monument. However as someone who knows someone who had to be airlifted out of a national park, he survived and paid for that helicopter ride and his medical bills (gust of wind blew him off an exposed high trail and down into a very steep ravine where he broke a leg).

                  A heroin/fent/meth addict doesn't die right away, and usually doesn't die until after years of crime/homelessness/welfare. They cost every day until they finally overdose, now with narcan (if they are on an opiate) they can be saved from that overdose (and hopefully rehabilitated) but often that doesn't even stop them.

                  We have to draw lines somewhere and sports betting, in my opinion is somewhere a line should be re-drawn.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.