[angarg12]

I left my home country over 10 years ago, and ever since I've travelled back once every 1 or 2 years.

Since 4-5 years ago I started to notice these betting houses cropping up where my family and friends live. They are impossible to miss, with big pictures of different sports and no windows.

The most important thing to notice is where these place are and are not. They proliferate in working class and less well off neighborhoods, while they tend to be absent from more affluent ones.

These places get a lot of foot traffic, all the locals barely making ends meet, blowing a few tens of euros here and there, with the eventual payoff. It's not difficult to hear stories of people getting into the deep end and developing a real addiction with devastating consequences.

And it's not only the business itself, but what they attract. All sort of sketchy characters frequent these places, and tend to attract drugs, violence...

Legal or not these places make the communities they inhabit worse, not better. I personally would be very happy if family didn't have to live exposed to them.

[darth_avocado]

> while they tend to be absent from more affluent ones.

It’s not that they don’t want to be, it’s that affluent neighborhoods tend to keep things that are considered “low class” out of them. The only Safeway in my city that doesn’t sell lottery tickets is the one in the most affluent neighborhood.

[331c8c71]

I bet the better off do gamble on the financial markets though

[foogazi]

> The only Safeway in my city that doesn’t sell lottery tickets is the one in the most affluent neighborhood.

Does the affluent community prohibit it or is Safeway self-policing?

[MandieD]

Well over a decade ago, when we were initially looking for a place to rent in Bavaria's second-largest city, which is otherwise one of the safest cities in the country and the world, the quickest way to screen neighborhoods was the presence (or absence) of those little casinos/sports betting offices.

[RataNova]

It's frustrating because technically it's all "legal" and marketed as harmless entertainment, but in practice it’s just another way to extract money from people who have the least to spare

[nine_k]

Maybe their having the least to spare is a consequence, and poor impulse control is the cause.

Anyway, it's like making money off other human deficiencies, say, poor vision or dyslexia, and mistakes made due to those. It feels unfair, it does not feel like a conscious choice. Hence the understandable backlash.

[xnx]

Aren't betting houses antiquated now? I assumed even senior citizen would be betting through their phones.

Being able to gamble privately, 24/7, with all the psychological/engagement "optimizations" is even more insidious.

[mrisoli]

I also left my home country about a decade ago.

I was already expecting a lot of gambling site ads, they took over the soccer tournament sponsorships almost completely anyway.

But what I found out when I came back in the last 3-4 years 100% shocked me. It wasn't just TV and soccer teams, I saw gambling ads in napkin holders at some restaurants, bus stops. I went to get a haircut and the barbershop had TV with gambling ads adorning their frames.

[mns]

I also left my country years ago and come back once or twice a year. This year the city hall introduced a new parking app that can't be installed on a phone with an app store registered outside Romania, because the freaking parking app has a gambling section and they decided to go with gambling instead of supporting a universal parking app (like the previous one that they had) available also for tourists from outside the country. I called them out on that and said that they can't make it available outside the country because of legal issues with the gambling section....

[GalaxyNova]

Romania?

[kriops]

Guilt by association: If, e.g., violence is a problem, then one needs to deal with the violence. In general, law-abiding citizens are—and should—be free to congregate and partake in their bad habits wherever they please. And even though gambling is generally immoral, it does not infringe on anyone else's God-given rights and has no business being made illegal.

Gambling is emphasized above to emphasize we are talking about individuals who are not sufficiently skilled to argue they are not essentially partaking in pure games of chance.

[daymanstep]

Sports betting is not a game of pure chance, but bookmaking is arguably ethically quite problematic.

Most individuals are going up against these very sophisticated statistical models created by teams of quants working with huge datasets that you have to pay substantial amounts to access. I think most bettors don't know what they're up against.

And the bookie business model is intrinsically anti-consumer: if you win too much then the bookies will ban you. Whereas bookies are quite happy to keep taking money from addicts even when said addicts have already lost their life savings.

[bawolff]

> And even though gambling is generally immoral, it does not infringe on anyone else's God-given rights and has no business being made illegal.

Neither does smoking, but we still limit the types of advertisements cigarette companies can make.

Gambling is ultimately a predatory business that serves to separate people susceptible to addiction from their money.

[Kudos]

> it does not infringe on anyone else's God-given rights

Gamblers have lost their homes as a result of their addiction, I think that impact on their families counts for something.

[soulofmischief]

This argument doesn't account for the inherent, drastic power imbalance between the average participant of gambling and the average owner of a gambling center.

Gambling between people, a basement poker game, that's fine, that's no one's business.

Handing your money over to rich people operating black boxes that are designed from ground up to mesmerize and mind control you into emptying your wallet is a totally other story. On the individual level, it ruins the lives of anyone who is unable to resist or understand the psychological tricks employed on them. Zooming out, it destroys families, communities and in effect, societies.

If we are going to base the legality of gambling on consent and human rights, we have to recognize the limit where consent is no longer valid, due to sickening engagement tactics.

Someone's freedom to make money off of my ignorance or weakness does not supersede my right to self-determination and well-being, neither of which are possible when being hoodwinked by exploitative capitalists.

If we are to continue allowing corporate gambling operations and 24/7 mobile sports betting, we need to place serious restrictions on how these companies are allowed to operate.

[Retric]

It’s not about the Gambling, it’s the fact these businesses are collecting a large number of easy victims in once place.

Imagine you’re a loan shark. Which of the following seems like a good place to look for customers: upscale restaurant, movie theater, random bar, theme park, baseball stadium, city park, or a sports betting venue.

[watwut]

Being somewhat skilled does not make it not hazard. And practices of books are purely predatory.