| ▲ | wpietri 4 hours ago |
| It took decades to clearly define gambling enough to regulate it as we do now. Note that pinball was banned in major cities for decades because it was too similar to gambling devices. And even with those definitions things weren't very clear. I used to work for financial traders here in Chicago. Every year there would be an unofficial snow futures market. It was a fancy way for all the traders and clerks to gamble on monthly snowfall at O'Hare. But to my delight, the CME eventually created an actual, legal weather derivative for snow. What made one gambling and the other not? What makes any given bet a legitimate financial trade versus pure gambling? Let me know if you figure it out. My point being that not having a clear definition won't stop us from grappling with the harms. Nor should it. Figuring out what new things really mean is always a messy process. |
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| ▲ | danielmarkbruce 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's actually somewhat easy... If you are creating financial exposure to an event with no underlying risk to it, and the point is exposure itself, you are gambling. In your snow example, those guys were gambling on snow for fun. The formal weather derivative - most weather derivatives have parties (usually players in the energy market, sometimes agriculture) who have real underlying risk and aren't entering those contracts to create risk for it's own sake. It's quite hard to get a market off the ground when there is no underlying risk - people purely speculating generally don't generate enough volume to achieve liftoff. Look at Kalshi and the volume on most bets - it's tiny. |
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| ▲ | vasco 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Having "underlying risk" to something just means you invested in it before. So for you it's not a gambling as long as you... have gambled before in the other direction? Buy bunch of call options? Gambling. Buy a bunch of put options for stock I already hold, somehow honorable investing. | | |
| ▲ | hgomersall 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's all gambling. You can dress it to as having a social purpose, but that's not why most people do it - they want the numbers to go up. The stock market is exactly the same - middle class gambling. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > You can dress it to as having a social purpose, but that's not why most people do it - they want the numbers to go up. Too cynical. This disqualifies basically anything you can do with money. If you put it in a bank to get interest you are solidly into the not-gambling end of the scale. And I don't think an index fund is that much more to the gambling side. | | |
| ▲ | hgomersall 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not really. The question is are you working for your money or are you hoping the money will provide free rent for you. If the latter, you're gambling. The only reason it's relatively risk free is because the system has been thoroughly stitched up in favour of the rent seekers. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm confused by the ideas you're combining here. Do you think all forms of rent-seeking are gambling or just ones that involve money in a direct way? The only risk in a bank deposit is up at the "societal collapse" level. Are you really so extreme as to say that's gambling, and if so isn't having money at all a form of gambling? | | |
| ▲ | an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | hgomersall an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | The point is largely around expectation. Sure, the base case of putting money in a bank is very safe, but the interest on that is not. Factor in inflation and its pretty easy to get negative returns on bank deposits. If you fiddle with "investments" with the intent of making money without doing anything else, that's gambling. Sticking money in the bank with the hope that it's still there next time you come back to it is not really gambling. You're just doing the default thing. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > Factor in inflation and its pretty easy to get negative returns on bank deposits. But that applies to having money at all. That can't be enough to call it gambling. > expectation, intent I understand your argument here, but I disagree. Shifting to the bank that offers the best rate is good management, not gambling. Understanding how interest works and being motivated by interest to do bog-standard money storage doesn't turn that storage into gambling. > without doing anything else I don't understand how this connects at all. Maybe it reflects badly on you if you want to turn money into free income, but that doesn't make it any more or less of a gamble. It's a totally different axis. | |
| ▲ | gloryjulio an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > If you fiddle with "investments" with the intent of making money without doing anything else, that's gambling. There are lot of value investors which sit at home do stock picking occasionally. They don't work for their money. I don't think they are gambling. The only investors that fits your non gambling definition seems to be the active investors who take part in the companies. But most investors don't |
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| ▲ | pants2 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's certainly not well defined today; memecoins, prediction markets, sports betting, and more are all toeing the line of gambling. |
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| ▲ | rglullis 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Toeing the line? There is no underlying risk to any of that except the bet itself. Of course it is gambling. | | |
| ▲ | Sharlin 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not in the eyes of law (in many or most jurisdictions that regulate gambling). |
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| ▲ | jbstack 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > What made one gambling and the other not? What makes any given bet a legitimate financial trade versus pure gambling? Legally, it's whether the bet meets the legal definition of gambling as per the legislation applicable in your jurisdiction and any binding case law. There's no universal answer. But from an ordinary language perspective, the difference is whether it involves an element of skill sufficient (at least in theory) to win in the long run if you possess that skill. For example: Roulette - generally gambling Blackjack - usually gambling these days, sometimes not if count counting is feasible Poker - not gambling Stock market investing - not gambling |
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| ▲ | SwtCyber 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| That's fair. A lot of regulation seems to work this way: first you recognize a real harm, then spend years arguing over where exactly the boundary should be |
