| |
| ▲ | jareklupinski 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > companies need to pay 40-50% of their gross revenue to the government. That's comparable to tobacco. taxing a vice is worth it on paper, but the second-order effects (nonstop alcohol ads, pervasive gambling app dark patterns) aren't worth it imo | | |
| ▲ | combobyte 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | When was the last time you saw an ad for cigarettes? Those second-order effects are easy to mitigate with sensible public policy. And it's not like we have to invent the solution from scratch — we've done it before, very effectively. | | |
| ▲ | khriss 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | > Those second-order effects are easy to mitigate with sensible public policy. Regrettably, sensible public policy seems to be in remarkably short supply these days. | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is the correct reply to the constant "but whatabout" replies, that inevitably come up whenever you suggest regulation. "You've regulated bad thing X, but then they'll do Y!" So regulate Y! It's not like legislators only get one crack at a law. We should elect a government willing to move fast and iterate when loopholes are uncovered. | | |
| ▲ | gopher_space 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean if you're arguing an edge case you've already accepted the central point, so it's not like a response needs to be made. We handle edge cases. |
| |
| ▲ | esseph 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > When was the last time you saw an ad for cigarettes? Today at the gas station on the outside of the pump and the store door. | | |
| ▲ | dghlsakjg 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I was at a gas station today that sells tobacco. No ads. Its because even displaying tobacco products, let alone advertising them, is not allowed in that jurisdiction. I'll bet you didn't see any cartoon camels or doctors recomending a brand though, because even where tobacco ads are legal, many tobacco ads are no longer legal. Whether you see ads, and what kind of ads you see is highly regulated. That's the whole point, | | |
| ▲ | esseph 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > I was at a gas station today that sells tobacco. No ads. Its because even displaying tobacco products, let alone advertising them, is not allowed. We clearly don't live in the same states. | | |
| ▲ | dghlsakjg an hour ago | parent [-] | | Sorry for the ninja edit about jurisdictions. I live in a different country since we don't have states here. |
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | tofuahdude 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Aren't worth what? The tax? Or the vice being legal in the first place? | |
| ▲ | dakolli 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You can't tax revenue in sports gambling markets, it actually just leads to predatory gambling products with massive vig/house edge. This was attempted in Tennessee. Margins are extermely low sports betting, like 4.5%. Its actually a loss leader typically. So for casinos that only have this type of wagering it taxes like this aren't going to work. A casino might turn over 50 billion yearly but only have a 2.5% edge in sports betting but you're proposing we tax them on the 50 billion. It doesnt work. It will either push them out of business, or they'll find a way to screw the player to increase margin through even more deceptive products. If the legal entity can't operate because of a tax on revenue than illegal offshore entities will gladly take their place and do. The only solution really is sharia law, a complete ban and harsh punsihments for all operators and customers. I say this ironically but it actually is really the only solution, and even this doesnt work entirely. | | |
| ▲ | matthewdgreen an hour ago | parent [-] | | Sports betting was, if not prohibited, then highly-proscribed for most of my life. You could do it in a few places like OTB, go to Vegas, or deal with an illegal bookie. People still gambled, but this made the problem orders of magnitude smaller than it is today. We did not need Sharia law or the guillotine, just an existing system of laws that were generally highly workable. It is not helpful to pretend like we need wild solutions just to achieve results we’ve already achieved and maintained for decades. |
|
| |
| ▲ | karlgkk 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Or, at least treat it like a public health issue. Used to be that if you wanted to gamble, you had to physically to a dedicated gambling zone. | | |
| ▲ | consensus1 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Which we called the "stock market" | | |
| ▲ | xoa 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | No, the stock market is not gambling (or at least hasn't been, need not, and should not be). The stock market is a positive sum game, linked to the growth of the economy as a whole. Humanity is very, very far from the maximum possible utilization (and maximum efficiency) of matter and energy in this solar system or even this world. What decisions we make matters a lot in how well/how fast/whether we continue to get richer, so we've tried however ineptly and haltingly to make systems that reward short and long term gains balanced against current use priorities. And have failed plenty, and may yet fail completely. But it's perfectly possible for everyone to win, for the whole world to get "richer" (defined as being better able to meet human goals & desires within a given mass/energy budget or have more or both). Investments can yield >1x total returns. And that has indeed been the case, that's the story of modern civilization. Gambling in contrast is strictly zero sum at best and always negative sum in reality. A group of people puts in 1x capital, the house takes a cut of that, and then the <1x gets unevenly redistributed and that's it. Nothing is generated, the collective set of people is strictly worse off after the gamble, with a few making gains off the backs of loss distributed amongst everyone else. All while hacking dopamine reward centers that didn't evolve for that. It appears to be the case that we can't perfectly stop 100% of all IRL gambling without a cost that exceeds the benefit. That's life. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be picking as much low hanging fruit as possible, same as with other negative sum brain hacks. | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > or at least hasn't been The stock market was so gambling that we had 'bucket shops' where people would just buy and sell fake stocks that tracked real stock prices. Now we have public companies directly selling shares with no voting rights and no plans to ever pay dividends, which is the same thing. | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | By a strict definition of gambling, the stock market is gambling: It's a monetary wager placed on an unknown future event. Just because it (often) is positive sum doesn't mean it isn't an unknown that people are betting money on. | | |
| ▲ | xoa 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >By a strict definition of gambling, the stock market is gambling: It's a monetary wager placed on an unknown future event. No, that is not a strict definition of gambling, that is your own loose, personal and casual definition. The strict definition of the gambling in question under Arizona law (the subject of this article) is I believe partly under 13-3301 [0] and has a number of criteria that clearly differentiate it from investment (whether it be stock, loan by a bank or any other entity/person, or whatever else). Other polities will have their own flavors, but all of them are aimed at a net negative, destructive social activity. That's the whole point of regulating it, it's not some metaphysical philosophy thing about life having uncertainty it's about long experienced concrete harm. Trying to argue that buying shares in a broad index fund is a "wager that a meteor will not hit the Earth" is uninteresting. >Just because it (often) is positive sum doesn't mean it isn't an unknown that people are betting money on. It does actually! Positive sum changes everything in terms of collective incentives, strategies available and how investors can hedge risk. You may not choose to make use of all the tools available, but that doesn't make investment the equivalent of gambling. Part of the whole point of markets is to manage changing risk and information discovery (including dead ends) such that we still continue to grow overall. ---- 0: https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/03301.htm | |
| ▲ | gruez 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Pointing that out makes as much sense as "so you're against drugs? Did you know Tylenol is a drug? Ha checkmate!" |
| |
| ▲ | consensus1 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I was joking (mostly). The stock market absolutely is positive sum, but at the same time things like 2x levered short VIX ETF's exist... | | |
| ▲ | xoa 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean sure, people can find ways to use all sorts of events and activities for gambling, but that doesn't mean the events/activities themselves are. And the sentiment you expressed joking has gotten repeated with (afaict) total seriousness in these threads with some regularity (insurance is another one that people incorrectly bring up trying to defend gambling). So I think it's pretty important to differentiate between everything, and to help pass on some of the history as humans have grappled with this in the past. Insurance for example has the concept of requiring an "insurable interest" to help avoid negative incentives and gambling. You can insure your own house against burning down, but you can't take out a policy against some random stranger's house. |
|
| |
| ▲ | usefulcat 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The problem with this comparison is that it only really serves to water down the very real harms of actual gambling. Unlike sports gambling or casinos, the stock market actually does have some legitimate utility, as compared to being (at best) pure entertainment. | |
| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
|
| |
| ▲ | pibaker 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't think you can equate Kalshi style "prediction market" with gambling in Vegas. The worst thing that can happen in Vegas is you the gambler go bankrupt. In the meantime we already have reports of war intelligence in Ukraine being distorted so someone who betted on frontline movements can pocket some cash. Losing a war because some rich degenerate is trying to bet his way towards a second Ferrari is less unlikely than you imagined. | | |
| ▲ | dghlsakjg 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | The reports that were altered were public reports at the ISW from open reporting, not government intelligence. If you lose a war because you based your tactics and strategy off of media reports instead of your own intel, you weren't going to win that war anyway. That said, I recognize the broader point. Betting on everything, especially things that betters can directly influence is incredibly dangerous. |
| |
| ▲ | mw888 20 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Your argument of course sounds nice and fails under your inability to define "gambling." I view favored house-odds, on arbitrary games or not, as unethical and predatory. This is the classic casino slot machine and related. However, Poker doesn't have house odds, it is a fair game. Move one level up: prediction markets don't have house-odds if implemented plainly. On non-game events, they also have a positive externality, which already contradicts your claim: prediction markets predict quite well. Yet another level up: investing in the stock market. The same authentic gambler who burns money into a slot machine can play the stock market to similarly disastrous ends. But if you define this as gambling and want to outlaw or limit it to 'professionals' then you bar people from capital markets which is absurd. | |
| ▲ | Cyclone_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You can always just ban things. The families of those who go into financial ruin from gambling would prefer this. | |
| ▲ | zzgo 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > gotcha mechanics gacha mechanics | |
| ▲ | charcircuit 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The government never needs to tax things. If you think it is negative to society then it can be banned so that money can be spent elsewhere. | |
| ▲ | lern_too_spel 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why should it be comparable to tobacco? It should be derived from first principles. Figure out the external cost to society and tax it enough to pay for those costs after money distribution overheads. If there is no tax structure where the revenues exceed the costs, ban it. The difficulty with taxing prediction markets is that encouraging gambling on some events incentivizes gamblers to try to influence those events in a way contrary to how people would want to influence them in the absence of gambling, which typically means gamblers are incentivized to influence events in a way that will increase societal harms. For some events, resolving one way or the other is inconsequential, but this is not true for many of the events I see people gambling on in prediction markets. |
|
