44
votes
Legalizing sports gambling was a huge mistake – The evidence is convincing: The betting industry is ruining lives
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- Title
- Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake
- Authors
- Charles Fain Lehman
- Published
- Sep 23 2024
- Word count
- 1128 words
I always hate how the argument is whether or not vice should be legal, and it rarely ever goes any deeper than that. The vice isn’t the problem in my opinion. The problem is when people with economic resources, who are also almost completely insulated from the external costs of widespread vice, see promoting the vice as an easy way to earn a profit.
but, to use gambling as an example, why couldn’t the law simply be that all sportsbooks are legally required to donate a portion of their revenues to nonprofit organizations designed to support individual suffering from gambling addictions, that all of the accounting records have to be public information, and that no employee or shareholder can be compensated in terms of proportion of revenue?
Yes. This is exactly what I was going to post.
Its not that gambling should be illegal, its that when its legal there are companies legally profiting off of causing harm to people.
Gambling should be legal. Gambling platforms owned by one entity for others to use should not be legal.
But that's precisely what TFA proposes? Go back to gambling (amongst peers) being legal, like it was before. Gambling platforms were illegal, and TFA argues we should return to that, or like in California and Texas, keep it that way.
Returning to '92's PASPA laws, as argued by TFA, seemingly lines up exactly with your last paragraph
I've talked about this before on tildes, but I'm of the mind that any advertising for sports betting (and ads for any sort of gambling in general) should be illegal, due to how harmful and addicting the act of gambling can be. It's no different than cigarette ads in my mind (or alcohol ads for that matter).
I think it's impossible to outlaw the entire practice of sports betting now that the can of worms is open. Personally, I'd be okay with it being entirely illegal, but I understand some people want the freedom to spend their money how they see fit or whatever. But right now a bunch of sports betting companies are robbing people blind and a big cause of that is advertising. If you're showing Chuck and Shaq telling people to bet on NBA games, younger people who don't know any better are going to think gambling is fun and cool instead of being properly educated about the risks. Also, it's incredibly annoying when watching any american sport these days where not only do I have to see a billion advertisements a game (which are now even occurring between a pair of free throws in basketball), I have to hear a constant barrage of betting odds and know that people are losing their money over a dumb sports game.
Yea I agree with this.
Sports betting has been legal here all my life, it was never really something I thought about but you could go down to the gas station and bet on the outcomes of the game or prop bets through the provincial lottery system, but it was never heavily advertised.
Since it’s been legalized in the states though the entire sports industry has almost been reduced to a vector for gambling — it’s crazy to me how much the tail is wagging the dog.
Comment box
As usual I agree that the effects here are bad, but they are only this bad because of a lack of broader social welfare availability in this country.
I don't have an opinion on sports betting itself, as an activity. It seems to me not very different than legalizing alcohol. People need to be taught some personal control. Maybe it could be more regulated, like limiting the amount you can spend on betting annually, or heavily taxed, but how people spend their money freely is not that important to me. If states want to ban it, that's their prerogative, but it is not something I care about.
There are already plenty of ways you can waste money in society. People run their lives into the ground constantly by eating out, buying expensive cars, buying overly large houses, going on expensive vacations, etc., all of which are easier to do by going into major debt. I see how gambling is more psychologically attractive than some other things, so if we can make regulations to limit addictive qualities and maybe ban sports betting advertising, etc., okay. But if people want to waste their money, it's their money.
I agree that this is a problem, but I don't believe that people's retirement plans should revolve around making the choice every month to invest. They shouldn't have to consciously do this.
Corporations should be legally mandated or even more heavily incentivized to pay some small amount into employee retirement funds. The employee should not be able to decrease this amount below a certain threshold that would eventually provide an acceptable retirement fund. If companies don't want to provide pensions anymore, fine; at least do the bare minimum. The funds should be automatically invested. Even miniscule amounts add up to ridiculous proportions in the market over time. If people want to go into their 401ks and add more or change investments, they should be able to, but it shouldn't be as manual as it is today.
The government can do social security. In my opinion it should be expanded; however that requires raising taxes and is a huge political lift. But corporations can easily cover the rest with far less political lift. Relying on the individual knowledge and willpower of 333,000,000 people to continually, manually invest large portions of their income is the most inefficient way to set them up for retirement. Financial literacy education should also be expanded, but some people are literally never going to keep up with that sort of thing. Government welfare programs exist for a reason. Government incentives for corporations to contribute to the public good can likewise be effective.
This is a problem, but maxing out a credit card wouldn't be such a problem if credit card companies weren't allowed to commit usury on a regular basis. A 27% interest rate is obscene. Limit the amount interest rates can creep up and this kind of spending is less destructive to people. CC companies will respond by making it slightly harder to access large lines of credit, but I don't think that is really a problem. Most people shouldn't have access to that much credit anyway. It is not acceptable to be in that much debt with that high of an interest rate. If we're talking about controlling people's behavior because they're too unstable to control themselves (like banning sports betting), we also have to talk about the biggest problem of all, which is the entire credit card industry.
There is bipartisan support for this kind of thing. A Republican Senator, Hawley, even sponsored a bill last year called the "Capping Credit Card Interest Rates Act" (bill info) which would have lowered the maximum interest rate to 18%. But it didn't even make it out of committee.
If it's going to remain legal, sounds like they need to significantly raise taxes on betting.
The idea that regulatory bodies are "nearly certain" to be captured by industry is not true.
Regardless, okay, but if "bettors were just as likely to use unauthorized betting sites after legalization," this doesn't actually "cut the problem off at the root." It just makes it harder to track.
I don't bet on sports and if states want to ban it, whatever. There is a lot more going on here though.
Your entire post is right, but misses that this is only worse because of these factors and is still very much bad in countries that do have these safety nets.
Sports betting has surged not only in the US, but in large parts in Europe too. And it's also incredibly harmful here.
I'm going to agree with the author of the blog, the most elegant solution is to just stop it entirely. There are no upsides.
I struggle to understand why gambling is fundamentally different than other vices that aren't currently banned in the US:
These are just some random things that I'm pretty sure are much more harmful to individuals and society than sports betting.
Note: I'm not a libertarian, and I understand why some things are illegal and some things aren't But the criteria of "it's ruining lives" doesn't seem strong enough to take away people's ability to be free to do the majority of stupid shit.
You can’t smoke tobacco or drink beer through your phone at any second of the day. And you don't constantly get pop-ups to spend money on Facebook.
I can smoke tobacco or drink bear at any second of the day. I don't need a phone for that. And I can have it delivered if I run out.
I think you are saying that betting sites have dark patterns. That's a separate issue and could be regulated separately from banning sports betting.
More that betting apps follow folks around every second of the day. I’ve read some discussions on here and on Reddit about how people are checking their phone constantly to place bets. Ten seconds and a few taps later, you’ve made a new bet and spent more money.
Plus, it's illegal to do certain things while drinking and illegal to smoke in many places. If I show up at work with a beer in my hand and a cig in my mouth they'd probably not fire me but at least heavily reprimand me, however if I walk in talking about what sports teams they think are gonna win and start placing bets, likely no one would bat an eye.
I honestly don't even really care about sports but legalized betting has made watching them so much more insufferable. The last thing I wanted from a sports broadcast was another reason for the announcer to not be talking directly about the game. Now I get Terry giving me a Draft Book Sports King live update on the spreads and percentages and odds and oh God I don't even care.
I wonder how John Madden would've commented in the "Everything is a Bet" era.
The argument for legalization would be that it’s impossible to stop, especially now that crypto exists (although not a necessary condition), and being legal allows the government to regulate and control what happens. Essentially the same one for drug legalization or decriminalizition.
Yeah but they're not controlling it though. It's completely out of hand.
My experience is mainly from the EU, and specifically the Netherlands, where we had state-run ("Controlled" is more accurate than "run" but I digress) casino's and gambling as pretty much the only method of gambling. This is no longer the case, and sportsbetting is advertised anywhere and everywhere.
Perhaps the genie is out of the bottle, but if anything, stop allowing advertisement for these types of gambling. Like we do with tobacco and alcohol.
I do just want to point out though that in the context of vice industries like gambling, having a robust social support system to deal with the consequences doesn’t actually “solve” the abstract economic problem, here. it just pins the liability to the average taxpayer instead of to the person that promoted the industry in the first place and profited from it. Because if the only reason a substantial portion of people need welfare is because they saw a fanduel ad and have an addictive personality, then it doesn’t really really seem fair that it’s me and you who has to pay for it in those particular cases.
Me and you aren't paying for a person who has a gambling problem, all of us are paying for social welfare. By all means take the people causing the issue to task and have them contribute to that welfare, but it's not accurate or helpful to try and turn the situation into a competition between "recipients" and "contributors" to welfare, when the truth is that we're all contributing and receiving in a variety of ways. If you want to find a villain, look at the people profiting off of all this.
I’m honestly not sure exactly how I’m “turning the situation into a competition between ‘recipients’ and ‘contributors’ to welfare” when I’m only making the point that these people don’t need welfare, they need restitution, and using the welfare system to provide that restitution only transfers that economic damage onto everybody who might need it in the future and who is currently paying into it, and onto the people who are currently depending on it too for that matter.
by the way the last thing you write is “If you want to find a villain, look at the people profiting off of all this.” But my comment actually identifies this person: “it just pins the liability to the average taxpayer instead of to the person that promoted the industry in the first place and profited from it.”
Mirror: https://archive.is/jWI1s