There's Now a Casino in Everyone's Pocket. for Some Men It's a Near-Fatal Gamble

At what point do we see our culture of envy or cheap "wins" or the replacement/conflation of present, active, and involved role models with the fast-fashion idol worship of celebrities/sport stars or tech-bro/influencer billionaire as helping to wire the brain in a way that rewards fast money thoughts like gambling.

When we grow up modestly and have this glamorous fast money jet-setting lifestyle of people who mostly lucked into right time/place/genetics thrown in our face at 30-60 second intervals every 10+ mins everyday of our lives (worse with social media), it's not the betting that we are not wired to defend against.

If there's a solution to course correct the culture of needing hyper-excessive things & external-validation to feel worthy I dont know what it is -- but if it involved its prohibition I would be against it as being an extension of the problem. There is a correlation between sports events and incidences of domestic violence[0], if we care about sports betting causing violence to others and wish to stop it, then by that logic stopping sports altogether solves even more harm. But cutting the sickly branches of a live oak is not the way to prevent oak wilt from spreading through the community

Betting is benign in itself, but when the belief becomes that $_thing can quickly solve all of life's problems, people get creative in their pursuit of it. Crypto itself benign, but a tool for quick money; large swaths are harmed financially and some physically (not whataboutism, its related root causes). The war on drugs didn't do so well in their protecting of others either. Targeting bets to shield people from misuse will push it back underground where the most "vulnerable" addicts have 3 problems now. (gambling, law, broken limbs) It also inadvertently reinforces the culture that they are not whole in themselves, enabling them to continue to skirt their part in being responsible for their own life and feelings of worthiness.

The top comment* here is, imo, one of the more balanced takes in terms of time to impact and coverage over the calls for hamfisted prohibition type regulations. It also minimizes harm by still treating adults as adults but also by sending the message that the predatory behaviour (e.g., gamified mobile betting, betting adverts on Premier League kits) won't be tolerated.

*"Legislation needs to target the industrialization of the delivery not the act itself." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45581785

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10087409/

YES.

Get your aggression out of my body.

> Well, it [bets] is theft

NO.

I know the government people will happily do anything to increase their domination, to do even more agression in future, that is all the story.

1. Punish the aggressive actor by another aggression

2. Make a monopoly of punishing and choosing what to punish.

[1] is the action which will be done anyway, if nobody punish my neighbour murderer/scammer I will do it anyway because he is my neighbour.

[2] is a sign of tyranny, lets remember what we are talking about - bets. Bets are not a scam, bets are not a steal. If you and me and the others permit some state to punish for bets, the governmont will see the ability to disallow something else by demagogic justification.

I do not see anything non-agressive in disallowing bets. I understand that proprietary software does a big work towards making people to bet, I understand that the proprietary bet software might be in a hands of some kid who can easily lost all the family's earnings.

But hear me please - agressive legislation of non-agressive behaviour is not just agression, it is an opener for even more agression. Killing some murderer is agression which closes the door for futurer murders. The responses in this comment tree compares betting with murdering - why they are spreading such a demagogy? Does anybody really want a nanny state?