I don't think any part of the comment you're responding to is "a matter of opinion." You're choosing to insert your opinion that you don't think it's moral for a government to help addicts if they are charged for the thing they're addicted to.

You're welcome to that opinion, but don't pretend that "addiction is a public health issue, gambling addicts have high suicide rates, and many profit from others' addictions" are subjective.

Do you also support legalization of hard drugs? Why not have a heroin store in every town. The customers are very loyal. Let people waste their money on drugs, it's not my place to tell people what to spend their money on. Who knows, maybe we'll get heroin ads on the subway. In fact, let's let cigarette companies also advertise again! what could possibly go wrong?

i somewhat agree with you.

at the same time, it's really not cool for billions of dollars to be spent on research of how to best influence susceptible people (who would otherwise not piss it all away,) to piss all their money away.

ban the predatory advertising and maximally addictive interfaces and most people will be happy. you can still piss your money away if you want to. but it really shouldn't be one poor sap with an addiction vs. a trillion dollar industry trying to exploit that addiction.

Then the premise is does the suffering of others affect you

Intellectually honest answers only

Problem is when it effects others. Addicts often have families. There's also a social cost when they go broke and lose everything. Just like with drug addicts.

But this is more about the companies preying on addiction, incentivizing it.

> 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.