I would say gambling in itself isnt immoral. The problem is that a small % of people get addicted and end up spending all their money and more on betting. And that the industry makes almost all their profits on those that are addicted.
I would say gambling in itself isnt immoral. The problem is that a small % of people get addicted and end up spending all their money and more on betting. And that the industry makes almost all their profits on those that are addicted.
When Denmark liberalized gambling small "casinos" with slot machines and sports betting started to pop up everywhere. Those wouldn't be an issue if it was regular people popping Friday afternoon to get a coffee and spend $10 - $20 on the slot machines and perhaps put down a few bucks on this weekends big game, but you're right, it no.
The addicts and lonely line up waiting for these places to open, they spend everything they've got and the gambling places encourage it by providing them with free coffee, snacks and in some cases dinner.
No, gambling isn't immoral, but praying on the addicts, the mentally challenge and the lonely is. If you can't stay in business without exploiting the weak, you have no right to exist. The only negative consequence I see from banning gambling is the potential dangers of a black market.
And that is demonstrably very high.
Sure, we could get into a discussion on the morality of gambling itself, but if we look at pretty much every global ethical tradition (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc.) it is frowned upon strongly. It seems to me like widespread gambling = negative social effects is a pretty widespread, obvious conclusion that most civilizations have reached.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambling#Religious_views
Moreover, one simply needs to look at which games casinos select to see how not only does the house always win, but it chooses to win more and entertain less --- Faro was once a popular game, and by all accounts is a great deal of fun to play, but a Faro table does not make as much money for the house as Blackjack and other games, so one doesn't see them in casinos these days.
In the Abrahamic tradition, seeking benefit by avoiding labor is sinful. I don’t think it needs to be widespread to serve as an example. One data point that widespread gambling was eroding norms was that professional gamblers could not give testimony.
OK, so what is to be done when access to labor is gatekept? If you can't have a job, or can't benefit from a job beyond "give a man a fish, he eats for a day", are you not meant to look for an opportunity to generate income outside of working?
If you’re a bookie, and an adherent of these Iron Age religions, then you might be instructed to Render upon Caesar. If being a bookie means feeding your family, you can relax so long as you realize that your responsibility is to slightly nudge the right players to win.
> If being a bookie means feeding your family, you can relax
Am I reading correct that you are saying that in (at least) the Christian religion it is okay to provide gambling services?
Further supporting that the religion does not claim it immoral?
*note: it's stated as such, yet seems to have been ignored, in the linked wiki source above -- maybe your wording, if I understand it correctly, would be suitable for updating the wiki to make it more clear/understood that gambling is not immoral to those who adhere to the Christian bible
> OK, so what is to be done when access to labor is gatekept?
The unemployment rate in the US is 4.3%.
Before you say anything, the U-6 rate is 8.1%.
Okay, so 30 million people, or more conservatively 16 million people. Same question, and before you say anything, don't be condescending.
ETA: Maybe most conservatively, let's use only the % uniquely included in U-6 and excluded in standard, or 14.4 million people. I'll claim these 14m people are the "gatekept from full employment" in that they don't qualify as narrowly unemployed unless you include "all people marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons"(1)
Same question. 14m people who are being excluded from labor, are they not free to attempt to generate income via means other than labor, lest they suffer the judgement of Abraham?
In other words, is Abraham hiring? If not, are the people he refuses to employ meant to accept serfdom to preserve their soul?
(1):https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
>Same question. 14m people who are being excluded from labor, are they not free to attempt to generate income via means other than labor, lest they suffer the judgement of Abraham?
This makes no sense. Is it really your claim that 14 million people are kept from working? Do you know what the long term unemployment rate is in the US?
From the wiki page, Christianity from the bible's perspective doesn't have a problem with gambling itself:
> Although the bible does not condemn gambling, instead the desire to get rich is called to account numerous times in the New Testament.
And the Catholic's problem with it is the competition:
> Some parish pastors have also opposed casinos for the additional reason that they would take customers away from church bingo and annual festivals where games such as blackjack, roulette, craps, and poker are used for fundraising.
You left out the entire first half of the section on Catholicism, which is an extremely misleading move on your part:
The Catholic Church holds the position that there is no moral impediment to gambling, so long as it is fair, all bettors have a reasonable chance of winning, there is no fraud involved, and the parties involved do not have actual knowledge of the outcome of the bet (unless they have disclosed this knowledge),[33] and as long as the following conditions are met: the gambler can afford to lose the bet, and stops when the limit is reached, and the motivation is entertainment and not personal gain leading to the "love of money"[34] or making a living.
In general, Catholic bishops have opposed casino gambling on the grounds that it too often tempts people into problem gambling or addiction, and has particularly negative effects on poor people; they sometimes also cite secondary effects such as increases in loan sharking, prostitution, corruption, and general public immorality
> which is an extremely misleading move on your part
No, I was pointing out the hypocrisy with the Catholic view.
You are adding to what I pointing out about the wiki and Christianity generally not having a problem with gambling itself: "The Catholic Church holds the position that there is no moral impediment to gambling" -- again no moral issue with gambling itself. Your source to back up your argument is simply not what you made it out to be.
I think it’s fair to say that the Catholic opinion is very much against the type of widespread gambling that is prevalent today, especially in the sense of it having negative social effects.
I don’t think that is hypocritical, more just nuanced. Church bingos aren’t putting people into poverty.
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06375b.htm
Your critique of my initial comment seems to be hinging on the single phrase of gambling itself. I just meant the commonly used sense of the word, today, which IMO implies the aspects that the Catholics label as negative. (I.e. most people don’t call bingo a gambling activity.)
But sure, Catholicism has a nuanced view and it’s inaccurate to say they are against gambling in itself.
The post of your I replied to with the source says
> Sure, we could get into a discussion on the morality of gambling itself, but if we look at pretty much every global ethical tradition (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc.) it is frowned upon strongly.
Yes, that was how it reads to me, that gambling itself is frowned on; based on the post that reply was for where they stated "I would say gambling in itself isnt immoral." and that the problem is addiction and money. And I also agree with that. But gambling is gambling and while no part of it is immoral to me (I hold higher standards for that word), there are major issues with it due to greed.
Which is what your souce is saying Christians have a problem with, not it being widespread or happening at all -- simply the trying to get rich, the addiction to money -- thats the sin. Not gambling, gambling is fine; it's when it turn into a money issue, then there is a problem. And that can happen at your local bingo parlour or Macau, or Vegas or the back-room of a gas station or your buddy's poker game. The Christian bible/church have an issue when greed happens, not gambling (widespread or not).
I think this distinction is not actually useful in real life, where 99% of the money problems are from certain types of gambling and not from others. When people discuss gambling, they aren’t talking about bingo games and school raffles, they’re talking about the thing most people mean by the word gambling.
If the root problem is greed how is making that distinction not useful in real life?
What does the type of gambling matter? If we focus on the core issues: greed and money problems -- over trying to "protect" [my emphasis] others from the bad gambling -- we end up helping them with adjacent greed/money problems. Labeling outside things as the problem is the problem. Help the people learn to master the inner compulsion towards these things (and other skills to help pull themselves out of dire situations); the rest is just trying to find an enemy to blame because helping others in a real way is hard.
In the same way distinguishing between heroin and codeine is useful. You can get addicted to either, but one sure makes it a lot easier.
Not sure I understand your analogy; Neither heroin nor codeine is a root cause of problems arising from the other.
Greed (in a generous def of the word, as in the wanting/desire of as much of the thing as possible [money in this case] quickly and/or easily despite the cost) is a root cause of many of the issues people create for themselves with gambling.
> widespread gambling = negative social effects
Though this is conflating correlation for causation. As you note yourself in GP, dire social conditions is what makes people see gambling (or risk-taking more generally) as one of the only viable options to get out.
Just because the causation goes one way doesn't mean it cannot go the other way, too. We call those vicious cycles.
Yeah but those are separate claims. "Lead causes health problem, and vicious cycles are a thing, therefore health problems cause lead!" is not a valid shape for an argument. It may well be true, but both directions have to be established before calling it a vicious cycle.
In this case, I can agree bad social conditions cause gambling, but I don't think the data supports the opposite, at least not more than many other things we take for granted, such as
- alcohol,
- beauty/fashion industries,
- social media,
etc.
Cause-and-effect relationships can be complicated and it is important not to jump to conclusions, but do you deny that there are millions of Americans who can correctly identify an addiction when they see it in someone they have some sort of ongoing relationshp with (either because they have training and experience in treating addiction or because they themselves or someone close to them were once addicted)?
Do you deny that those observers can correctly identify the substance or the activity that the addict is addicted to?
Do you deny that addiction is quite deleterious both to the addict and to the people with whom the addict is in some kind of relationship?
Many news stories claim that many Americans (young men particularly) are getting addicted to online sports betting. Do you dispute the accuracy of those news stories?
If so, can you guess as to the motivation for publishing these inaccurate news stories? Often a campaign to mislead the public is done because some group would gain something quite valuable if the campaign is successful. What would any group have to gain (aside from a slightly healthier country) from a successful campaign to make online sports betting illegal?
I do not dispute any of that. Many young Americans also get addicted to alcohol. Many young Americans self-harm over unrealistic ideals brought to them by the beauty/fashion industries. Many young Americans get depressed over social media.
We need to help these people, but we do not help them by driving their vices underground.
So, how should we help all the groups of young Americans you mention?
Strong, publically-funded social safety net is a good start, I think. Using vice taxes to contribute money to it is probably a decent idea.
You don't think gambling causes negative societal affects to any greater degree than the fashion industry?
I've not heard any convincing arguments in favour of that hypothesis, no. Have you met young women? They self-harm over unrealistic ideals.
The gambling industry has funneled a ton of cash into academic researchers producing papers that gave credence to the idea of "addictive personality," which in turn was massaged by PR experts into the notion that some people are just born addicts, and the gambling industry can't help it if they become addicted to gambling too. "Addictive personality" itself is on very shaky grounds statistically, and the derived PR messaging certainly is false. The gambling industry is likely more culpable in this mess than even a typical, generally well-informed person might be aware.
"Addictive personality", now there is a deprecated phrase!
In drug rehabilitation, the phrase is no longer used. Instead people have a bingo card of disease, conditions and syndromes to go with addiction. Once people have been pigeon-holed in a dozen ways then the die is cast, these conditions are no longer imaginary, you have to hold yourself up in life because X, Y and Z prohibit you from even giving it a go.
Regarding the article, I detest organised gambling, however, relatively few chronic gamblers end up homeless and destitute. You need a good dose of class A drugs and a smorgasbord of childhood trauma to guarantee the truly negative outcomes.
I don't object to gambling amongst friends, even if it is on a card game. I might bet someone that they can't beat me on Scrabble, but I would be getting the dopamine hits from laying some massive, high-scoring words on the board to devastate my fellow players, but winning that £10 just ups the stakes and my competitive drive. If I am just betting on a sport (or even a Scrabble game) played by others, then it isn't quite the same.
What does amaze me about modern day gambling is that you know it is rigged. I don't trust an app to honestly flip a coin for me. My version of the app would be 'if heads show tails and vice-versa most of the time'. Yet people pour their life savings and some more into apps that are black boxes with no way of peeking inside to see how it works. The seasoned gambler must know that every game is rigged and that the house always wins, but they still queue up for another spin.
In terms of negative outcomes - suicidality, etc. - problem gambling is roughly equivalent to an opioid abuse or meth.
> relatively few chronic gamblers end up homeless and destitute.
They rank up unpayable debts and their married partners end up being legally obligated to pay half of that even after divorce.
Getting life together after gambling is super hard to impossible. It is literally easier to get back on track as alcoholic, as those have much smaller debts.
And it is easier to avoid keep alcohol out of house then ... cell phone put of house.
I have wondered for a while what happens to the gamblers in the city where I live. They don't end up in homeless shelters or at the soup kitchen, which has got me curious. I appreciate that the money comes to an end and debts are a result of that. However, the gamblers are not pushing it to destitution, they might lose all their big ticket stuff but they don't end up in just the clothes they wear and nothing else.
I don't think generalisations about ease of giving up alcohol versus ease of giving up sports betting (or other gambling) is an apples to apples comparison.
The chicken farmer necessarily seeks out the chickens that lay the most eggs, because that's how he makes his living. In an economy that incentivizes the highest profit-margins, this exploitation becomes intrinsic to the operation of a gambling establishment sans regulations that prevent it.
Games of chance and friendly wagers amongst friends may not, in themselves be immoral or harmful but gambling as an organized business activity is absolutely harmful
Gambling (without very strict rules) has a net negative outcome. You're not doing anything valuable, nor neutral, by gambling. So it could well be viewed as immoral.
Gambling is addictive because it gives you a dopamine rush. That’s why people gamble because it’s actually enjoyable.
I personally don’t see the argument for categorising it as immoral on the basis that’s it’s not useful. The same could be said about plenty of other enjoyable things.
However exploitation is clearly immoral. That’s where I have issue with gambling. Gambling operators don’t get rich thanks to the average users but because addicts give them much more than they should. That’s clearly immoral be it from a casino, a gambling website, or micro transactions in mobile game. Every companies which profit from that should be held accountable including Apple and Google which are clearly complicit.
> Gambling is addictive because it gives you a dopamine rush. That’s why people gamble because it’s actually enjoyable.
Cocaine also gives one pleasure when taking it, but at some point the enjoyable part is surrounding by suffering.
I agree and think cocaine should be legal.
That would allow us to better regulate it, treat addicts as they should, and end the networks currently profiteering from the flourishing black market and their exploitation of the addicts.
Prohibition just doesn’t work. We have tried dozen of times with various addictive substance from alcohol to tobacco. It’s nearly always a terrible solution.
It was more to provide an alternative to the parent's remark that it isn't. I fully agree that its exploitation is by far the greater evil.
I do not concur on the dopamine argument. There's no solid evidence for it. The underlying mechanism is probably much more complex. But since we're not discussing a signal path to addiction, it's an unnecessary complication of the argument that instills the belief that there's a medical cure.
Most Americans regard as immoral any substance or activity to which ordinary people become addicted at a significant rate.
Addiction breaks social ties. For example, when an addict starts to struggle to continue to pay for his addiction, he often starts to steal from friends and family members.
The average view on this on HN is quite different from the American average. Personality psychologists have observed that people who do well in software development and entrepreneurship tend to be high in a trait called "openness to experience". Maybe HNers are more tolerant of addictive substances and activities than the American average because addictive substances and activities tend to be interesting experiences.
(I am restricting my universe of discourse here to the US only because it is the country I know best.)
> Maybe HNers are more tolerant of addictive substances and activities than the American average because addictive substances and activities tend to be interesting experiences.
I think the more accurate lens would be that Hacker News likes money.
On the surface at least, it seems like running a gambling or sports betting company would be a dream job. You get to systemically rip off your customers through your house edge, you retain the right to back off skilled players that can bypass your house edge, your expenses go to infrastructure as opposed to creating anything of value, and you get to externalize the wider societal consequences by blaming nebulous mental illness.
"This guy wants to pay me for the privilege of gradually losing money to me, why should I stop him?"
I think this is hard to argue against because you haven't defined what you mean by strict rules, but here are some positive outcomes of gambling:
- Insurance prevents financial catastrophe by aggregating risk, yet it is nothing more than wagering you'll get into trouble.
- Market liquidity is provided by people willing to bet on price developments, which smoothes out fluctuations in availability.
- Large infrastructure projects and charity donations been financed through lotteries -- it's a way to raise money without a guarantee of return.
- If you want to sell something which a single buyer cannot afford, and it is difficult to share, it can be sold through a lottery which lets buyers buy a ticket's expected value rather than the full cost of the thing.
These benefits still exist when unregulated, but of course it seems to work even better under the appropriate regulation.
What I mean by strict rules is (but not limited to): no profit for the organizer, loss limit for everyone across all bets, etc. But I don't know what set of rules would qualify to make gambling neutral.
- Infrastructure is better off paid by taxation. That's much fairer, and more predictable.
- I don't see insurance as gambling. It has a chance element, but that's not enough to qualify something as gambling. You buy security against large losses at a moderate price (*), instead of building up large losses for nothing. It's also a step which you hope doesn't pay out (sickness, fire, theft).
- Selling through lottery is exploitation.
(*) YMMV
> taxation. That's much fairer
Extortion is more fair than voluntary contributions? Maybe on arguments from regression but it's not obvious.
> You buy security against large losses at a moderate price
Flood insurance is literally saying "I bet my house is going to be underwater" and winning the big cash price if it is.
Sure, you made an offsetting gamble when buying the house, but I don't see how you can claim a gamble is no longer a gamble when a partially offsetting gamble exists -- that's just two gambles, and indeed prudent risk management when it comes to big gambling.
> taxes are extortion
Then move to North Korea where there are no taxes.
> Flood insurance is literally saying "I bet my house is going to be underwater" and winning the big cash price if it is.
yeah the big prize of all your personal belongings being destroyed, being semi-homeless for an indefinite period of time, fighting insurance companies to get the full value of your home and all assets (glhf finding out what's secretly not covered or you can't prove you owned), searching for a new home in an inflated market, lost productivity, dead pets, etc.. What a prize! This is something you'd expect a 12 year old to try to argue.
Insurance is not legally classified as gambling for very obvious and practical reasons.
> no profit for the organizer
You’ve ruled out not just all gambling but all business. The examples the parent comment above you gave are all profit generating for the organizer.
Insurance in particular seems to be a clear societal win and is in fact gambling. You make a (relatively) small wager that pays out nothing if you don’t need it or potentially huge if you do.
We're clearly having different views on society. Yours seems through a strict financial lens, but correct me if I'm wrong.
> potentially huge if you do.
No, it isn't. You've just incurred a (probably larger) loss, elsewhere. There's no pay-off. Insurance makes large losses bearable for the individual and society. That's unlike gambling.
“I bet you $500 a month I’ll get cancer.”
Insurance absolutely has a societal benefit. It is also absolutely gambling.
When you walk across the street, you're taking a gamble that a large bear isn't going to come out of nowhere and attack you, for the huge prize payout of safely reaching the other side. Therefore, other things like dog walking and long strolls by the beach are also gambling.
If you made this bet, then got cancer, would you say "hooray, I'm rich!"?
No. But not the definition of gambling.
Insurance is hedging. Aka hedging your bets.
Appeal to definitions is rarely useful in such discussions. Insurance is not a central member of the category, since people rarely get addicted to filing insurance paperwork, but people very much do get addicted to sports betting.
“Is insurance gambling” is a question of definition.
You’re trying to argue that it’s not gambling because it’s beneficial. But that’s absurd because you’re trying to define gambling as specifically “bad” in a conversation of whether gambling is bad.
You can’t argue circularly and then gripe about clarifying definitions.
No, nobody's trying to argue that gambling is by definition bad – that is to say, nobody's defining the category boundaries of "gambling" contingent on possessing the property "is bad". Some people have constrained the definition of "gambling" such that it only contains things they view as bad, and then observed that all the things they consider "gambling" are bad, but that's not the vacuous, circular claim you make it out to be.
In lieu of re-quoting other parts of the thread, I'll instead ask you to please re-read the arguments people have made, more slowly.
Reread your own message.
> Some people have constrained the definition of "gambling" such that it only contains things they view as bad
If there is some internally consistent definition that excludes all the “good” stuff without excluding it specifically for being good, no one has shared that so far as I’ve seen.
The arguments about insurance so far have been “but it’s a good thing” and “you aren’t happy when your insurance pays out”. The former is exactly gambling==bad and the latter is just wrong. I could bet that a politician I despise will win and I won’t necessarily be happy that I won. I’ll be more happy that I got a payout than not, exactly the same as insurance. That’s what a hedge is.
Insurances are not hedges. Hedges are „investment position[s] intended to offset potential losses or gains that may be incurred by a companion investment“ (wikipedia) of which insurances can be a part of, while in an insurance „a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury“ (wikipedia).
Absolutely not the same thing. But even so there is still an interesting insight to be gained from common parlance:
Usually we talk of a bet in a situation where you take an event that is somewhat out of your control and irrelevant for your wellbeing and intentionally and actively make some kind of material outcome for yourself depend on it. In so far speculation at stock markets is „gambly“, you are right about that. And if you have measures in place that hedge the risks of those speculations you might be tempted to very loosely call those your insurance.
If you look however at how the term insurance is typically used you can see a difference there: you insure against risks that are non-avoidable risks of your daily life or business. You do not intentionally and actively enter the cancer-lottery. And you do not actively take measures to win your „health-insurance-bet“ because the outcome is still considered catastrophic, even in case of „winning“ it.
And the way people tend to see things more as insurance vs. bets follows exactly these lines: is it about mitigating a devastating natural risk that is hard or impossible to avoid 100% or is it about something where you actively and intentionally attach your wellbeing to a random event. (We could separate this out in two questions: do you involve yourself actively and intentionally; and: is the outcome that you bet on inherently against your intrinsic interests. But that is a detail that I don‘t think we need to go into)
I think this explains the common parlance quite well: health-insurance: the risk is unavoidable, you do not willfully enter some kind of cancer-lottery on whose outcome you bet. Also you have an intrinsic interest in not „winning“ said „cancer-lottery“. -> no doubt it is insurance.
Legal expenses insurance: risks depend largely on your behaviour but you usually still have an intrinsic interest not having to use it. -> some people might see this as more gambling- or “bet-“ adjacent.
Speculating on one stock and hedging that bet. -> Totally not an insurance. Also not something insurances do. An insurance might be part of your hedge (maybe insurance of freight against loss) but insurers typically do not insure bets. Which makes sense, since part of their business-model is that the customer has an intrinsic interest that the payout case does not occur.
This whole thread started because someone essentially said “gambling is bad” and someone else said “not all gambling is bad; how about X, Y, and Z?” My point here is that if you sit down and define what gambling is in a principled and consistent way, you probably have to conclude that some good things are actually gambling. And that’s cool, because we can also then discuss what kinds of things that “maybe look like gambling” are actually a net positive vs net negative based on their impact rather than some division of “gambling” vs “not gambling” that is fairly arbitrary and leads to bias in how we think of them. You can’t have that kind of conversation if the definition of gambling includes “and it’s bad” because it’s tautological.
In specific response to your reply, I understand what you’re going for but you’re stretching definitions to meet your goals. The Wikipedia page you cite states clearly that insurance is a common hedge. And in your definition of a bet you state that it is “irrelevant for your wellbeing” as if a boxer wagers on their own fight wouldn’t be betting or gambling.
Your discussion of insurance vs bets is reasonable and I get what you’re going for, but I think the distinction is not as clear as it might seem at first. “I don’t want this payout” feels like a meaningful distinction but that Wikipedia page rears its ugly head and points out Hawking’s what-if-black-holes-aren’t-real bet that he wanted to lose. I wanted the Seahawks to win today. If I had put $50 on the Buccaneers would that have been a bet? Insurance? A hedge?
Regardless, back to my point. Maybe there is some criteria that disambiguates all the “good Things that look like gambling but aren’t” from the “bad things that are clearly gambling” but I haven’t seen it yet. I think it’s all some level of gambling. If I roll through life without health insurance, I’m betting I don’t need it. If I buy the insurance I’m betting that at some point I will, or at least that the odds are good enough that I will that I should hedge.
The words for this are hedging and speculation vs gambling.
Amusingly speculation is generally classified differently from investment in that speculation is considered gambling.
Hedging is a strategy for reducing risk in gambling (or investment).
Insurance is moral stewardship, and not unearned gain. In fact, refusing insurance when your neighbors are of the same religion is seen as gambling.
You don’t earn a payout for cancer treatment. It is definitely unearned.
The point goes like this: you and a neighbor start a business. You each make independent choices on health insurance. When he breaks a leg and can’t work for a while, it’s inconvenient but not burdensome for your shared business. But, you chose not to get health insurance. Your melanoma diagnosis looks like $80,000 which you don’t have. Your business partner has a choice: should he liquidate the business, or act in the long term?
I’m not disputing your “moral stewardship” claim. I’m saying that this doesn’t change the unearned nature of the payout.
If paying into insurance “earns” the payout, then everyone who pays in and doesn’t take a payout is being stolen from.
If you paid into the insurance pool, then how is the pay out unearned?
Did you choose to get cancer or fake it?
Paying into insurance does not earn a payout any more than paying into the lottery earns a payout. The payout is determined by random chance.
Selling a product or service to its addicts is immoral. Consumption isn't, its just stupid