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Discussion (90 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Losses can be redistributed and cover for the externalities of gambling. And we will be able to control the knob on how addictive we make them.
For profit companies have the target to maximize their profit, so of course they will ramp up any method that can bring in more revenue.
Gambling is a drug, and should be recognized as such.
However once you realize that gambling is not the drug, and merely something that triggers your body to create a rush... Then can you really call it a drug? At least any more then any other of those activities?
Eg Skydiving and basically any other extreme sports.
And once you're there, you should really realize that it's not worth the sacrifice.
This is a societal issue and should not be addressed with legislation.
The only thing that can be safely regulated are things like disallowing marketing.
GLP-1 drugs may fight addiction across every major substance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47280797 - March 2026
GLP-1 medications get at the heart of addiction: study - https://medicine.washu.edu/news/glp-1-medications-get-at-the... - March 4th, 2026
If it is bad and yet the government is allowed to use it to make money then is the government evil? Why does the government get to do it if we can't? It just makes the whole thing seem ridiculous and makes underground betting seem like I guess it isn't really that bad since the government is allowed to do it. The operators are just people fighting for their freedom to operate the same business the government operates.
Some things are just wholly harmful where no small amount provides any benefits, some are harmful in large doses, but not so harmful in small doses that they cannot provide other uses.
Governments (ideally) don't exist to maximize profit so they are (generally) not incentivized to increase the addictions of their populace.
On one side there's things with very little regulation required, private companies go crazy (and they will!:).
On the other hand, there's things I want high regulation on - use of violence (army / pokice / security), medicine, key infra utilities, alcohol/drugs/gambling, etc.
We can discuss whether we agree those things need regulation, and if so, what form that regulation takes.
(To me, some things I want so highly regulated there's no benefit in private ownership, just risk of runaway loop exploitation)
Some markets fail. If the government can step in and provide a service that doesn't end in a failed market, that's not an imposition on anyone's freedom.
* Outlaw gambling, and gamblers will just go towards shadier options, putting their own lives in even more risk.
* Allow private operators whose goal is to extract as much money from possible from gamblers as possible and ensure that you will inevitably have people abusing the system up to the limits to which it can go and testing out if they can go further, over and over again
* Government ran gambling organisations that can ensure they also offer proper systems to wean yourself off, offer healthcare, and make use of the money "made" from operating it to improve your health care systems.
Only one of those options is sensible.
>The operators are just people fighting for their freedom to operate the same business the government operates.
HAHAHAHAHA. No. Absolutely not. Some people are truly as caricatural as movies and books make them appear, and casino owners truly live up to it. I worked for them, for "betting rooms", anything you want: they are thieves, mafias, manipulators and bring nothing but misery on the world. They're not "fighting for their freedom", they have found a legal way to abuse human misery and addictions.
We live in really crazy/fascinating times, accelerating human problems at "internet scale".
The only difference now is the Internet both makes it frictionless and therefore so much easier to do, and the Internet also then let's us see into the lives being ruined in the process. But the problem remains exactly the same: if you, as a person, have no ethics and see no issue in causing misery at scale, you can make a LOT of fucking money in our society. And not only will you likely not be charged, now they'll probably call you an innovator and put you on a magazine.
And then we wonder why everything is getting worse all the time.
And before anyone tries the gotcha with me, no I do not work at any firm like this. No gambling, no social media, no recommendation algorithms. The company I work at comes by it honestly: we sell solutions to problems people actually have. And no we're not worth 66 trillion dollars but, we can all sleep at night. And that's not so bad.
There are people who play video games to excess or watch tv to excess and it is harmful to them, but that really needs to be balanced against the vast majority of users that exercise reasonable restraint. Its just not a fair justification to ban things that 99.9%+ of users are about to operate responsibly.
Truly astounding numbers. Without a doubt, online gambling is the most preventable public health crisis of our generation. None of this had any business getting legalized.
Ex: you bet 100 and win, bringing your holdings to 200. You bet another 100 and lose, back to 100. You’ve gambled $200 but have arrived at the same number you started with.
I have friends who gamble in excess of 100k/yr total. In general their net is +/- 3k. $3,000 is a lot to spend on a hobby, but the overall number can be misleading
No good can come of me having a gambling app, I already fool around too much with stocks.
Most people are living paycheck to paycheck. I've watched gambling destroy more than one family member's lives.
To put this number in context: estimate 1/3 of income for rent, so this is 1/3 of their rent?! Translating that to my own rent is an amount that would immediately lead me to quit forever.
Not that I am saying that this number is ok, gambling is a net negative on any society.
There's nothing else that delivers that level of harm directly to a device in your pocket.
Short of outright banning (which I would favor), we can at least make mobile wagers capped at say $100 and the same account can't wager more that $500 within a 24 hour period.
That would allow people to have their fun but seriously limit the blast radius when they inevitably lose big repeatedly.
You got the meaning of "whale" wrong. The majority of the winnings / losings come from the "long tail" addicts.
> And then there are the degens that make $2,000, or $5,000 wagers on everything because [they are addicted]
I think my edit more accurately reflects what is going on.
You need to put more time into the proposal if you want to make it serious. How long would it take for people to learn they need "alt accounts" to gamble?
Suggestions:
1. Ban advertising of gambling.
2. Ban "remote" gambling including phone apps.
What would it take to make progress on this in the current regulatory environment? Post a link to someone who has thought about it.
Are Canadian ERs different than ERs in the U.S.? Why would one go to an emergency room, seek emergency treatment, for a gambling disorder?
but my skimming of the study itself is that something else occurs (mental episode of some sort, such as anxiety attacks or suicide attempts, etc.) and gambling is noted as a primary or contributing factor in the billing code. it does not appear like someone wakes up, realizes they have an addiction to gambling, and then walks into the ER.
also in the sense that you'll wait for a looong time to get treatment
A few years ago I thought I broke some ribs in a snowboarding accident (turns out it was just 3 cracked ribs). Got to the ER, was given some pain medication and help breathing and was waiting for treatment when someone ran over 2 elderly people in front of the hospital. Their need was greater than mine so they took priority while I spent about 6 hours waiting.
Last week I had my first heart attack. In this case I was the one that was immediately helped, stabilized, transferred to another hospital where they installed 2 stents and then back to my local hospital ICU all within 2 hours. If it weren’t for our system I would not be here today.
Most stories about hours in ER waiting rooms simply don't take the severity of the issue into account and just generalize.
Not saying that there are not issues, but I am so tired of the blanket anecdotal complaints
the pay vs. wait argument is a fun one, but im not super interested in hashing it out here
From there they can keep you safe until you’re stabilized (physically or mentally) and then refer you to specialists or hospitalize you.
Cryptocurrency, which turned into just another form of gambling, seems to have been the corrupting influence that allowed it to spread into people's homes. I hope we can reverse it somehow.
[0]: maybe this one: https://www.fast.ai/posts/2026-01-28-dark-flow/
I feel like I am walking around las vegas half the time.
Virtually every corner store has turned into those english sports betting pubs or whatever they have all over England.
It's disgusting.
... a betting shop, you mean?
Huh?
> "More than 70 per cent of gambling disorder emergency department visits involved another mental health condition or heavy substance use and almost one-third of the visits led to hospital admission."
Ok, so I assume they mean that these emergency visits were for things like drug overdoses and psychotic episodes in people led to by their gambling disorders, not for the gambling disorders themselves. What a strange way of writing this up. A gambling disorder is a chronic problem, not an acute one.
There's a difference between "emergency visit for X" where you treat X and "emergency visit (for Y) because of X" where you treat Y proximal to X, and people could learn to be more discerning in their use and interpretation of language.
from the study
> An ED visit for a gambling disorder was defined on the basis of the clinical judgement of the treating team and was identified when ICD-10 codes F63.0 (pathological gambling) or Z726 (gambling or betting problems) were coded as the main or contributing reason for the visit.
> In 29.3% of these ED visits, a gambling disorder was listed as the primary cause of the visit,
i guess if someone gets a meltdown (mental breakdown) after losing a lot of money
Maybe they also mean suicidality after ending up in a ton of debt? Or just other self-harm because of it?
Personally, I really don’t like the expansion of legalized gambling. I’m not surprised it’s causing serious issues.
I would at least be more OK if it happened but advertising was heavily restricted/banned in context. The fact that every professional sport seems to be nothing but a thin wrapper around gambling ads now can’t possibly be good for us as a society.
I wouldn't tempt fate to try to expose myself more, but it doesn't seem like I contain whatever is required to form these addictions.
Has it been studied if some people are just much more vulnerable than others, and are there predictive factors?
https://parkinsonsjournal.com/en/parkinsons-disease/gambling...
Going to a casino, which I've done a few times, is just wildly disinteresting.
But I know I'm prone to other sorts of addictions, so I guess gambling is somehow different.
Guys, it's predatory. Stop
I bought a few lottery tickets when the prize reaches astronomical proportions but it was always a case of going along and doing it with family/friends just for fun.
I guess I could understand the appeal if the chances to actually win something were pretty good but it’s a well known fact that the house always wins in the end.
that was a strange sentence to read! the whole point with empathy is being able to do it despite not sharing the same feelings or point of view. it's putting yourself in their shoes, and attempting to understand the things they would feel.
maybe you meant you can't "relate to" or "identify with" or something
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-millennials-would-rather-...
Makes sense. While we’re at it let’s kick the war on drugs back into high gear, reinstate prohibition, and make other higher risk behavior illegal.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/sports/opinion-sports-betting-morgan-camp...