Yes, same in the US. States like to lecture us on gambling when they are the biggest operators out there.

the sucking up to trump is the biggest. though his wine is probably up there too.

Lemieux is/was the best that will ever be.

Too many people don't have knowledge of Bret Hart and this comment being grey shows it.

I am from Montreal and (I can't believe this but it is 100% true) I was bullied in my (English-speaking) Montreal-area grade school for wearing non-Oilers merch. I was pleased when he left. (Yes, this is the home of Rocket Richard, the Pocket Rocket, Jean Beliveau, Guy Lafleur and Patrick Roy at the time)

I think the online element hates Gretzky because of something about the order of Canada but that does nothing to me and I honestly don't care. However, the gambling ads literally damage the fabric of the country and ruin the lives of average people, for a guy who made more in an year than many people made in a lifetime.

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The ones in power who got this passed

If you pass legislation without due diligence regarding constraining a now legal activity, then it is effectively an act of support for advertising it. In this case, nearly all members of all political parties supported legalizing it, and then passed it off to the provinces and washed their hands of it until now

https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/43/2/52

> You have far less agency than you think you do

I guess it's possible, but you have no idea how much agency I think I have.

To focus on one example you give, "Society itself is a removed of agency. Animals can do whatever they want, humans are constrained socially in what we're allowed to do." -- this is a clear misunderstanding of what agency is, or at least how I am using it. You CAN do anything you are physically capable of doing, even in violation of society's rules. Complete agency! People desire things that are only obtainable through conformance with society's rules, or, more sociopathically, only obtainable through the appearance of conformance with society's rules. That society survives is in effect dependent on this fragile web of incentives and expectations and social consequences and martial consequences

You can choose not to drink Coke! That people statistically choose to drink Coke does not mean that people lack agency. If you think the reason people drink Coke is because TV tells you to, then I encourage you to create your own beverage and advertise the shit out it and then get super rich!

The problem is that there is a feeling that you have written out here: that manipulation of people's desires is somehow mechanistic or predictable.

That you can follow some script and get people to do something. But it only appears that way because you are looking at the survivors of the vicious evolution, red in tooth and branding. All the ads in the world didn't make Crystal Pepsi a winner (or frankly make Pepsi a winner). The combination of factors that makes one thing successful and another not cannot be easily replicated or copied from one domain to another or even within one domain.

If there were a mechanism then someone would be using it; everyone would be using it; and there would be no winners and everyone would be a winner. It's a self-contradictory view that doesn't match reality in any way.

Drugs and alcohol, for sure, I can see it. They are a disproportionate drain on the public health apparatus compared to individuals that live a healthy lifestyle. Use of drugs, alcohol, driving motorcycles, eating too much fatty food, participating in dangerous sports, all have a public health components.

I'm not seeing it for gambling. How is that expensive for anyone but the person doing the gambling?

They seem to be pretty diligent about it, I mean once I hit on 17 and won on 22, but generally they are pretty vigilant about it.

I'm actually consistent in the other direction.

I find intrusive advertising toxic and want it all reduced or banned.

Not just tobacco and gambling ads, but everything else as well.

(No, I don't care that it is like advocating for democracy in 10th-century England and would entirely blow up how our economy currently "works")

The most damning thing about the online gambling sites/apps is that they don't care about how much you bet, only how much you lose. They aggressively limit and ban their biggest customers if those customers win.

Use polymarket, they don't care.

The studies that showed rats would suck on a morphine feed until they got very sick had a floor which was demonstrated in the 1970s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

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