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hluska10/01/20240 repliesview on HN

I'm completely with you, my friend. I was in business school when I studied betting. All the stereotypes of business students are true - I could have suggested putting thalidomide into lollipops and nobody would have batted an eye.

Despite that, my class had a serious problem with legalized gambling. One of the most free market absolutists I have ever met even concluded that gambling should just be outlawed. He was (and I believe still is) completely in favour of all drugs being legalized, but legalized gambling bothered him in a way that legalized crack cocaine never could have. What pushed him over was how they fund legalization campaigns with all these promises for help for addicts - they'll usually even offer to put a portion of total book into rehabilitation. And then as soon as it is legalized, they will specifically target people who could become addicted.