I don’t like gambling. I worry about regulation driving it underground, though. I’d rather just see winnings taxed heavily, immediately and without exception or deduction. Invest it in social safety nets and it’s effectively forcing the winners to share their loot with the most vulnerable of the people they’re victimizing.
That doesn’t really address people betting on horrible things and then making them happen.
Also “it will just go underground” is still kind of a win? The average person isn’t going to navigate sketchy underground arrangements, but they’ll find a slick website with good SEO.
Gambling, like a lot of other things, is a high dopamine reward behavior which can be fun recreationally but also lead to serious addictions. Prohibition-only approaches to things like this tend to just lead to it becoming a widespread source of funds for organized crime, and so I tend to favor a public health perspective which involves legalization with heavy regulation and taxation + behavioral health support as a part of a robust safety net.
That having been said, this to me is a strong indication that there are some things it should not be legal to bet on.
But also I’m also pretty sure that this is illegal under the Commodities Exchange Act already? So this feels like either a loophole in emphatic need of closing, or, more likely, the law just no longer fucking mattering under this administration because too many of the enforcers are corrupt.
Yeah, to a certain extent. The nice things about taxes is that they can be dialed up and down for effect. Complete, tax-free deregulation would obviously be crazy. 100% tax would pretty much be a ban and drive it all underground. Somewhere between 0 and 100, there’s an equilibrium point. Also, conflict of interest should be regulated. I don’t need police betting on how many gunshot victims there will be today.
This seems like a great argument to just never use the under-regulated betting markets.
When is any unregulated market for anything a good idea?
Simps gamble. No one has stopped that in 2000 years.
Unless you’re privy to some insider information you can make bets about. Then you absolutely should.
I don’t like gambling. I worry about regulation driving it underground, though. I’d rather just see winnings taxed heavily, immediately and without exception or deduction. Invest it in social safety nets and it’s effectively forcing the winners to share their loot with the most vulnerable of the people they’re victimizing.
That doesn’t really address people betting on horrible things and then making them happen.
Also “it will just go underground” is still kind of a win? The average person isn’t going to navigate sketchy underground arrangements, but they’ll find a slick website with good SEO.
Gambling, like a lot of other things, is a high dopamine reward behavior which can be fun recreationally but also lead to serious addictions. Prohibition-only approaches to things like this tend to just lead to it becoming a widespread source of funds for organized crime, and so I tend to favor a public health perspective which involves legalization with heavy regulation and taxation + behavioral health support as a part of a robust safety net.
That having been said, this to me is a strong indication that there are some things it should not be legal to bet on.
But also I’m also pretty sure that this is illegal under the Commodities Exchange Act already? So this feels like either a loophole in emphatic need of closing, or, more likely, the law just no longer fucking mattering under this administration because too many of the enforcers are corrupt.
Except these bets can actually drive behavior. And they’re betting on the murder of thousands. It’s Incentivizing the acts. They need to be stopped
won’t that still have the same effect of driving it underground though?
Yeah, to a certain extent. The nice things about taxes is that they can be dialed up and down for effect. Complete, tax-free deregulation would obviously be crazy. 100% tax would pretty much be a ban and drive it all underground. Somewhere between 0 and 100, there’s an equilibrium point. Also, conflict of interest should be regulated. I don’t need police betting on how many gunshot victims there will be today.