On a somewhat related note, there seems to be a huge interest in vice policing on social media. Gambling, sex, drugs, these are some of humanity's oldest vices. Why has it become so popular on social media to highlight these, along with a narrative of social or cultural decline?
Think of it in terms of public health not morality. Heart disease is one of humanities oldest killers but we still want to fix it. We also dont want to ban deep friers as we value freedom. Similar for gambling. We do want to discuss what to do when vice becomes no longer nice.
This is actually a good example of what I mean. Heart disease is meticulously studied. Its incidence is tracked tracked. It has longitudinal studies. Its mechanisms are explored. It has peer reviewed studies discussing interventions. Doctors talk all the time about the tradeoffs their patients can make to decrease their chances of getting heart disease.
What it has a lot less of is random public policy influencers writing polemics about it. There's some, sure, and that's exactly where RFK and the MAHA coalition come from. But professionals don't treat MAHA and their blogs as coda. So why do we do the same for anything related to money?
vice != money. meticulous study lags behind facts on the ground. perhaps vice is super-charged today, and policy influencers are more akin to journalists.
(giving extreme benefit of the doubt, here)
I think part of it is just every change in something, there is strong push back until we establish good equilibrium as society.
With Sport Betting, throwing advertisements and having bets talked about by sports analysts during the game is starting to be seen as bad thing because it's seen as really bad habit, like smoking and maybe society should attempt to regulate it better.
Yeah I'm a fan of normalizing but regulating gambling more. Restrictions on bets for EV and variance. Disclosure limitations. Age verification. That kind of thing.
Moral panics are as old as the hills.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic>
And the fourth oldest vice is gossip, the original social media, talking trash while you pick bugs out of your friend's hair
1. People who have problems themselves love seeing others have more serious problems. Sex addicts think "at least I'm not a gambling addict". Gambling addicts think "at least I'm not a drug addict".
2. Fear is the emotion that's easiest to trigger because before modernity, life was indeed quite dangerous. You can make shitload of money by making people feel scared.
3. It is true that for many people, the society got worse, and they want to know why.
Standard bible thumping. You will notice that there is also an emphasis on traditional family values as well both in the media and in the positions of politicians.
I guess it's been interesting watching this become popular in secular, lefty circles rather than the historically religious right circles I see this from.
The mainstream left (really a centrist party) might be nominally secular but not really removed from conservative religious values. E.g. consider treatment of gay people in the media vs actual gay culture. In the media it is always a happy monogamous couple where one of the gays is clearly masculine and the other is clearly more effeminate. In reality gay culture is far more complicated than that, with many engaging in polyamorous relationships and/or routine clubbing for example that you won't ever see celebrated in this way in the mainstream media, which sees that sort of behavior as immoral just as a religious person might.
I'd hate to get all true scotsman but a true leftist would never preach for prohibition as a solution for vice.
> I'd hate to get all true scotsman but a true leftist would never preach for prohibition as a solution for vice.
That's what happens when you squash a multi-dimensional space of political beliefs down into a single dimension of left-right. You can't have a meaningful discussion about anything from this starting point.
Viewed from a 2-dimensional spectrum this problem lies on the social authoritarian-libertarian axis, not the economic left-right axis.
I'd consider myself a "true leftist" and while I don't think prohibition usually works, I also don't believe in absolutes of liberalism where everything goes - where corner shops can sell heroin and if you fall into addiction that's just your own moral failing.
I support individuals' freedom to use drugs in a controlled, responsible manner, but there need to be limits somewhere to protect naive individuals from getting themselves into something they'll regret and to protect society from collapsing.
I think the centrist vs leftist distinction isn't particularly interesting for me in this instance because that's a discussion that feels more relevant at a political party level for me. In the US, the Democrats as a party are center-left.
But the audience for these anti-vice takes seems to be "lefty" people. Both center-left folks and also leftists. I see plenty of folks on Bluesky who want a socialist revolution tomorrow that also want to ban gambling.
> In the US, the Democrats as a party are center-left.
The case of US Democrats is an example of how useless the 1-dimensional classification is. They can be very socially progressive which would seem to put them well into the "left-wing" territory, but economically they're in the right-wing territory.
Economically speaking, a candidate like Sanders (considered to be too radical even by the Democrats and painted as an extremist by the Republicans) would be considered centrist/centre-left in most of Europe. He supports single payer healthcare and policies that would strengthen worker protections and improve the social safety net, but he doesn't fundamentally oppose capitalism. That's the status quo in most of Europe.
Ok great, now do other continents? I'm not sure what the obsession I often read is comparing politics with other Continents, not countries.
There are some EU laws that are more conservative and some that are less, proponents of policies often cherry-pick the ones that match their ideology leaving out others. Even worse is they ignore the problems that the policies they agree with are causing those countries, but ends-justify-means.
We're not discussing whether policies are good or bad, just where they happen to sit on the political spectrum. If you feel like something material is missing, add it, I can't read your mind.
Did you read the article?