In no way is it better now that we have online gambling. The entire industry should be illegal and barred from participation in the traditional banking system.

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talon8635 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Nowhere near solving cancer, but hey we got TikTok and Facebook and crypto and AI swarms and endless porn and gambling, and an increasingly radical, divided, depressed, and anxious humanity.

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lotsofpulp 34 minutes ago | parent [-]

What does solving cancer mean? Stopping any and all mutations from happening? Seems like a pretty tall order.

I guess being able to scan each and every cell for the cancerous mutation is also a possible solution, but also a tall order.

	▲	satellites 18 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'll assume you're asking in good faith. You don't have to prevent mutations or scan every cell in the human body to "solve" cancer. You can: - make detection easier and cheaper (e.g. with less invasive biopsies) - make treatment easier and cheaper (e.g. more precise targeted treatments, making chemo a last resort instead of the only option) Among other things. There's even emerging research that certain types of cancers could be "vaccinated" against: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-02612-3
	▲	UltraSane 12 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It means being able to stop any uncontrolled cell replication.

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tygon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

While I in no way support habitual gambling, the second you push for something like that, you will have a sizable group of "freedom activists" up in arms. More likely, I see it being more-heavily taxed to make it less appealing.

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soraminazuki an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Even without the addiction problem, a business that allows you to bet on anything happening in society is bound to be the largest vehicle for corruption in the history of mankind. This is a threat to democracy and stability that actually undermines our freedom. Prediction markets should never have been allowed to exist, and if the US is willing to protect this industry, the rest of the free world should sanction it out of existence.

	▲	Atreiden 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I share this perspective and hate the straw-man from pro-prediction-marketists that those opposed are moralists and puritans who can't accept that people like to bet on sports. Prediction markets are a way of effectively placing a "bounty" on something you would like to happen. Or capitalizing on one of these existing bounties because you're able to affect the result. It's a way to commodify power (and information of course, which is what these platforms bill themselves for), converting it into money, which can you can build further power with.

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deepsun 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Any law or regulation has a freedom activists group against it. That's normal, any government has an oppression mechanism that enforces it's will. The whole "civilization" was born when people started restricting somebody's freedom in order to achieve some goals (e.g. water rationing in the Ancient Nile).

So it's not surprising someone would be against restricting gambling. The hard part is to how the gov should do it. But it's not government's job to please every single person.

	▲	satellites 8 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Easy for the gov to do it: make hosting a gambling website in the US illegal, make providing access to online gambling illegal, treat money earned from gambling services like money earned from narcotics trafficking, threaten to punish payment processors if they work with gambling providers, make gambling commercials illegal (like they did with tobacco) etc. Make it where you can't run a billion-dollar company like DraftKings in the US and watch it dry up overnight. Online gambling was literally illegal in most of the US a decade ago, even on the modern post-social-media internet. You could still do it by jumping through hoops like using a VPN to access foreign gambling sites, but you couldn't get it in the App Store on your iPhone, and you weren't spammed with ads for it every time you watch football. It's not hard to imagine going back to that world; it wasn't that long ago. I used to support legalizing online gambling back then, but we've run the experiment and seen the results and it's past time to shut it down.

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pasc1878 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem about more-heavily taxed is that the gambling companies have spotted this and are registered in off shore tax havens.

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daymanstep an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Same goes for drugs, tobacco, alcohol etc. oh look how that ended up. There's a reason why Prohibition has been repealed in every major country that tried it.

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satellites 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Alcohol is older than recorded civilization, while online gambling has existed for about half of one human lifetime, and has been mainstream for less than a decade. We're watching the negative consequences play out in real time. This isn't prohibiting something innate to humanity; you could still go to a casino and gamble before DraftKings existed.

10 years ago I had some friends who were into online sports betting. It required getting a VPN, accessing offshore servers, signing up for sketchy websites, and linking an online bank account. It was enough hoops to jump through that the average person wouldn't bother. Back then I would have agreed with you: let the people play! But I'm only 33 and I've watched online gambling cripple peoples' lives in just the last few years. It's a huge problem and should be made illegal again. You should not be able to access it in one click from the App Store.

	▲	ryandrake 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Just like all prohibitions, if you take away access to X, people will just find other (often illegal/dangerous) ways to do X. We can make gambling less convenient and push it back into the backroom poker rooms and illegal bookies who break peoples' legs, but it would be more effective to solve the problems of despair, desperation and hopelessness that are driving people to gambling in the first place. That's a lot harder, so here we are talking about bans.

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ericyd an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Strange response, do you believe that society has always had access to online gambling, in the same way that alcohol and drugs have been around forever?

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max__dev 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So where was this multi billion dollar industry before? This demand is highly elastic and new, which you cannot say about any of the others you mentioned.

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Barrin92 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

alcohol prohibition has always been difficult because it's so tied into food and social culture. Tobacco use has been extremely successfully restricted, harder drugs and gambling also remain prohibited in many countries.

You may not be aware of how rapidly and historically unprecedented gambling has spread in the US in the last few years. More than half of all men aged 18-49 participate in some form of online sports betting (https://futurism.com/future-society/men-aged-18-to-49-hooked...)

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bryanlarsen an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

There aren't too many places where you can order beer from Amazon.