SCOTUS: States can legalize sports betting (1 Viewer)

Societies typically institutionalize irrational people.
Your call it “addiction” but they call it a different way of life. Just because it’s different than yours, or they don’t act like you think they should, or they spend their money differently than you, or it even shortens their lives shouldnt give you the right to decide “what’s best” for them. Unless you are talking about institutionalizing them of course.

I am sure these people exist but I have never talked to them. Everyone I know that deals with addiction says it sucks and is not arguing for their "way of life". In other words, all the smokers I know hate it and wish they never started. Similarly my friends that struggled with alcohol abuse weren't arguing for a "way of life". They realized they needed to stop drinking or their family and marriage would probably be kaput.

I have only known 1 person with a gambling problem (not including myself lol) and ironically it is my cousin who is married to the gambling counselor... but yeah he basically had to tone it way down and doesn't gamble almost at all anymore. We still play poker for small stakes but I don't think he bets on sports anymore even when we go to Vegas. He blew a few thousand betting on NFL over a weekend and kept chasing his losses... It wasn't pretty.

Just curious where you draw the line. Do you think drugs like heroin or crack should be legal?
 
Apologies to the OP for the threadjack.

I think the unregulated abuse of sugar leads long term as much damage to the public as those two drugs you mention, yet look st the target audience - children, who can’t even formulate an informed decision on whether to eat candy or not. It’s shoved in their face by relentless marketers.

But let’s back your argument up a little. If sports betting is so dangerous to society, and you can’t stop it from happening behind closed doors and it sucks in hapless victims, shouldn’t we outlaw the playing of sports? Evidently it’s as dangerous as heroin or PCP. It takes its toll on society, injuring players, damaging work production, sucking in irrational gamblers - it’s a flat out menace to society.

If addicts can’t help themselves we must remove the source of their addiction is what your drug argument alludes to.

I do think it’s a bit ridiculous to say “your an addict, and can’t be held responsible for your actions”, but “this substance is bad for you” so if we catch you with it we send you to prison (not good for you) and force to to associate with other random criminals (worse for you) and when you get out you have a record that keeps you from getting ahead in life (even worse for you).

How well is making these substances illegal working out by the way? Maybe making them legal would get the real problem out in the open and dealt with, and no one would want them anyway.
 
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I look forward to seeing what happens. My guess is that states that allow it will just incorporate it into their lotteries, and they’ll take such an obscene amount of rake or vig or whatever you want to call it, that it won’t be worth playing.
 
My cousin's wife is a problem gambling counselor and I hear some pretty brutal stories. It is not just the poor, there are people with a predisposition to problem gambling, similar to alcoholism. The funny thing about it is my cousin's wife is actually paid by the BC Gaming Commission...it is their way of giving back and dealing with the collateral damage.

I forget the stat...but I remember hearing the percentage of profit the casinos get from problem gamblers vs. casual gamblers. The casino profit from problem gamblers was something insane like 80-90%

Trying to legalize gambling is just not a cause I would promote in the name of libertarian values.

Anything that makes you feel good can be addictive. Gambling, alcohol, cigarettes, pain killers, sex... you name it, there is someone addicted to it. All of them can be destructive to families/society.

We live in a society whose legislature is motivated by corporate profit. Not society, not morality, not the family. Sorry, but those are just levers the corporations use to move people in their profitable direction. Trust me, if there was a major corporation that was losing profits due to masturbation, that immoral, addictive activity would be illegal too. :eek:

I give Congress about zero chance to ban sports betting nationwide.

Would you have said that about online poker, at a time when poker was becoming so common and widespread in the US that it got primetime coverage on TV? Sheldon Adelson has the ear of the majority of congress. He has led the push to ban online poker, and continues the push to get it banned in states that have legalized it. I have no doubt that he will start a push to ban sports betting too. Not everywhere, of course. Something like "restrict it to established brick and mortar locations that have a history of working with sports leagues to prevent game fixing". Basically boil it down to the handful of casino currently in existence that currently have a presence in Nevada.
 
I’m not a sports better and have never had the inclination to do so. That said I don’t see how the Federal government under the US Constitution can prohibit individual States from allowing it within the confines of the state.

I think this could help Atlantic City as long as they don’t mismanage the revenue so I support it. People are responsible for their own actions.

I lost Amarillo Slim’s autobiography in a basement flood but I remember the opening of his chapter on sports betting. I’ll paraphrase from memory:
“ people always ask me for my advice about betting on sports. I always tell them don’t. There’s only five or six people in this world that have made money betting on sports and I’m one of them. “

He goes on to describe how most people are not willing to put the effort and research in to have an edge. Great book that I need to repurchase
 
He goes on to describe how most people are not willing to put the effort and research in to have an edge. Great book that I need to repurchase
This rings true for daily fantasy. I've had lots of success with fantasy football over the years, and I know it's all about preparation and paying close attention weekly - that (and a little luck) is all it takes to beat your average league. So when this daily fantasy thing started, I thought great, more money for me. I very quickly figured out that there were people making a living at that crap and I was never going to put a fraction of the effort and research into it that they were. So I stopped playing that crap rather quickly.
 
This rings true for daily fantasy. I've had lots of success with fantasy football over the years, and I know it's all about preparation and paying close attention weekly - that (and a little luck) is all it takes to beat your average league. So when this daily fantasy thing started, I thought great, more money for me. I very quickly figured out that there were people making a living at that crap and I was never going to put a fraction of the effort and research into it that they were. So I stopped playing that crap rather quickly.

Exactly

If I remember correctly he recommended focusing on a specific sport and betting on only that. I think he mostly bet on Texas college football because he had connections that could tell him about minor injuries in practice, if a QBs girlfriend dumped him, etc.
 
Would you have said that about online poker, at a time when poker was becoming so common and widespread in the US that it got primetime coverage on TV?
There was zero domestic online poker infrastructure to lobby otherwise, so no. All the online poker was overseas or in Canada, so they had no clout. The land-based US casinos had all the leverage.

SCOTUS told congress they either ban it everywhere or allow it everywhere, no piecemeal crap, which is why PASPA is now history. Since there is zero chance that congress shuts down Vegas bookmaking, they will simply leave sports betting alone and let states deal with it.
 
I wonder when NY (or Cincinnati) legalizes sports betting if MLB will absolve Pete Rose of said sports betting.
 
I wonder when NY (or Cincinnati) legalizes sports betting if MLB will absolve Pete Rose of said sports betting.
No way. MLB will always have a rule preventing current players/managers from betting on MLB outcomes, whether the betting is legal or not. It wasn't that Pete bet with a bookie, it was that he bet anywhere at all.
 
I’m not a sports better and have never had the inclination to do so. That said I don’t see how the Federal government under the US Constitution can prohibit individual States from allowing it within the confines of the state.

I think this could help Atlantic City as long as they don’t mismanage the revenue so I support it. People are responsible for their own actions.

I lost Amarillo Slim’s autobiography in a basement flood but I remember the opening of his chapter on sports betting. I’ll paraphrase from memory:
“ people always ask me for my advice about betting on sports. I always tell them don’t. There’s only five or six people in this world that have made money betting on sports and I’m one of them. “

He goes on to describe how most people are not willing to put the effort and research in to have an edge. Great book that I need to repurchase

I have to disagree with Slim then. Yes it takes an effort, but you only need an edge to be a winning bettor. The casinos take about 10% of that edge in the vig, so you only need to be 11% better than the masses. Sure, this is a ton of effort, and very difficult to make a living at it (unless you work for ESPN or something), but to bet sports and win... an objective view and some internet research can keep you informed enough to beat the gamblers that bet with their hearts

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Exactly

If I remember correctly he recommended focusing on a specific sport and betting on only that. I think he mostly bet on Texas college football because he had connections that could tell him about minor injuries in practice, if a QBs girlfriend dumped him, etc.

I think maybe Slim and I do think alike afterall.
 

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