alt Hacker NewsThe unprecedented era of gambling on literally everything everywhere is an absolute cancer on society, made completely legal by absolute greed and degeneracy at the highest levels of government. I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle (amongst many detrimental genies).
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It may take awhile, but it ends by voting in political candidates that actually care about combatting greed and corruption again
Society needs to rediscover the idea that not all moral judgements are religious in nature, and in many cases are just basic pragmatic ones.
The bans on gambling were often framed in Christian terms, so as society became more secular, they were undone. Now they probably need to be re-added with practical reasoning.
Feels like we’re the ones being put in a bottle as rational thinking, integrity, consideration of the greater good on all things big and small are interpreted as being weak and/or arresting people’s freedoms. When you forget hard learned lessons, they have a way of reminding you eventually.
I try to run YouTube in librewolf with adblockers stacked to the tits but every so often I have to use Chrome. The volume of gambling ads is repugnant.
Even something that should be as fun as collecting and trading cards (baseball, pokemon, etc.) revolves around "pull odds" for rare cards. There are people spending thousands of dollars monthly just to rip a desirable card they could flip for money that in most cases would never make up for how much they spent just buying packs and boxes of the product.
Adults should have the freedom to gamble if they feel like gambling. I don't like the government trying to daddy me. If I want to blow my money on some stupid bet that is my problem. As long as the rules are clear and fair then it should absolutely be legal. CNN not disclosing is bad, but that has nothing to do with gambling in general.
> I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle
Just ban or regulate it? It's only a form gambling after all.
Yeah, the prevailing fear (at least out loud) is that going after "outcome markets" would open Pandora's box on everything from options and futures to the very concept of insurance. Obviously there's a huge and easily definable difference, but people love their slippery slopes, and nuanced discussion would mean giving up an easy way for connected people to cash in on non-public knowledge.
there was a certain approach tried back in 1917 in Russia
isn't without its issues of course, but you know, desperate times call for desperate measures
"I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle"
laws, that's how. push it back down to the dark net where most people can't be bothered to get at it.
It's both a key driver and symptom of societal disintegration and ultimate downfall.
> I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle (amongst many detrimental genies).
You severely punish those involved with prison time for whatever you can find on them. And I'm not talking a few months at Club Fed.
I mean, it's instilled into society at every level in the US. If your company offers an FSA, it's asking to make a gamble on how much medical needs you'll have in the next 1 year. The "smart" way to write the tax law would be to just let taxpayers deduct whatever medical expenses they have at tax reporting time. But instead, they want you to make a bet because you're highly likely to either (a) not use all of it and lose it, or (b) realize you haven't spent all of it and spend it on random shit you wouldn't have otherwise bought, handing over profits to some suppliers who are in on the whole game, or (c) underestimate your medical needs and the tax man gets to tax some more of your money.
Stuff like this is all over the place in American life.
Here's an answer for you: we need a new temperance movement.
Sounds pretty ridiculous at first, but that's because people know little of the temperance and progressive movements of the late 19th and early 20th century besides "prohibition failed". There was a whole lot more to it than mere anti-alcohol push, it included labour rights and reform (Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, etc), Anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, anti-political corruption, consumer protection (food regulation), women's suffrage, etc. The 20th century progressives essentially saw a huge concentration of money and power turning society into a cruel, exploitative machine that ground people up and spat them out. Rampant alcoholism was only one part of it.
A modern version would be different in details but similar overall. Alcohol and cigarettes are not major problems, but corruption, monopoly, and engineered addiction are very real and very problematic. A new temperance movement would be about tackling rampant gabling and addiction (everything from gas station drugs to social media algorithms), political corruption, tech monopolies, misinformation etc.
Big problems need big solutions, but I suspect things will have to get worse before people realize the scale of the problem they're facing.
Its just another symptom of the silicon valley startup "do something illegal, scale fast, and dare the government to do something about it" business model. It is an absolute cancer to society, if there is such a thing as late stage capitalism that is it, and we need to vaporize companies that do it with fines and jail time.
On a broader scale it can be viewed as part of modern culture going towards "screw everyone else, I'm gonna do whatever to get ahead." Kids on tiktok are teaching each other how to scam people. At this rate we'll have scam call centers in the US by the end of the decade and nobody will do anything about it.
> > The unprecedented era of gambling on literally everything everywhere is an absolute cancer on society, made completely legal by absolute greed and degeneracy at the highest levels of government. I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle (amongst many detrimental genies).
It is just showing you in the clear what propaganda managed to hide from you with regards to the stock market and the bond market , and all the other markets for that matter.
Insiders do trade and it's impossible to stop them or catch them, and the further you are from the information (both geographically and socially) the harder it is to be first in line and more probably you are next to last in line and you gotta pray that you find some bigger fool to sell your bags to.
If anything there are some things on the prediction markets that really give the advantage to the small guy, for example some farmer whose family has been living there for many years could have a big advantage on weather forecasters and those who bet on them. Say they see the wind pick up or a particular cloud formation that gives an expert eye the idea that rain is gonna come whereas forecasters won't see it coming
It's really terrible. Gambling addiction is a serious issue that needs to be educated towards people first before any 'Kalshi' mention.
I suppose that's what those 'Gambling problem?'ads are for.
Well we don't need ads. We need responsible education against the effects of gambling addiction or we need to raise wages, which is it?
What I find almost as depressing is evidently the concerted push to normalize this practice.
We were all shocked by Polymarket, but meanwhile others just saw it as yet another emerging market - and now CNN is including it in news segments as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.