I personally don’t see the argument for categorising it as immoral on the basis that’s it’s not useful. The same could be said about plenty of other enjoyable things.
However exploitation is clearly immoral. That’s where I have issue with gambling. Gambling operators don’t get rich thanks to the average users but because addicts give them much more than they should. That’s clearly immoral be it from a casino, a gambling website, or micro transactions in mobile game. Every companies which profit from that should be held accountable including Apple and Google which are clearly complicit.
Cocaine also gives one pleasure when taking it, but at some point the enjoyable part is surrounding by suffering.
That would allow us to better regulate it, treat addicts as they should, and end the networks currently profiteering from the flourishing black market and their exploitation of the addicts.
Prohibition just doesn’t work. We have tried dozen of times with various addictive substance from alcohol to tobacco. It’s nearly always a terrible solution.
I do not concur on the dopamine argument. There's no solid evidence for it. The underlying mechanism is probably much more complex. But since we're not discussing a signal path to addiction, it's an unnecessary complication of the argument that instills the belief that there's a medical cure.
Addiction breaks social ties. For example, when an addict starts to struggle to continue to pay for his addiction, he often starts to steal from friends and family members.
The average view on this on HN is quite different from the American average. Personality psychologists have observed that people who do well in software development and entrepreneurship tend to be high in a trait called "openness to experience". Maybe HNers are more tolerant of addictive substances and activities than the American average because addictive substances and activities tend to be interesting experiences.
(I am restricting my universe of discourse here to the US only because it is the country I know best.)
I think the more accurate lens would be that Hacker News likes money.
On the surface at least, it seems like running a gambling or sports betting company would be a dream job. You get to systemically rip off your customers through your house edge, you retain the right to back off skilled players that can bypass your house edge, your expenses go to infrastructure as opposed to creating anything of value, and you get to externalize the wider societal consequences by blaming nebulous mental illness.
"This guy wants to pay me for the privilege of gradually losing money to me, why should I stop him?"
- Insurance prevents financial catastrophe by aggregating risk, yet it is nothing more than wagering you'll get into trouble.
- Market liquidity is provided by people willing to bet on price developments, which smoothes out fluctuations in availability.
- Large infrastructure projects and charity donations been financed through lotteries -- it's a way to raise money without a guarantee of return.
- If you want to sell something which a single buyer cannot afford, and it is difficult to share, it can be sold through a lottery which lets buyers buy a ticket's expected value rather than the full cost of the thing.
These benefits still exist when unregulated, but of course it seems to work even better under the appropriate regulation.
- Infrastructure is better off paid by taxation. That's much fairer, and more predictable.
- I don't see insurance as gambling. It has a chance element, but that's not enough to qualify something as gambling. You buy security against large losses at a moderate price (*), instead of building up large losses for nothing. It's also a step which you hope doesn't pay out (sickness, fire, theft).
- Selling through lottery is exploitation.
(*) YMMV
Extortion is more fair than voluntary contributions? Maybe on arguments from regression but it's not obvious.
> You buy security against large losses at a moderate price
Flood insurance is literally saying "I bet my house is going to be underwater" and winning the big cash price if it is.
Sure, you made an offsetting gamble when buying the house, but I don't see how you can claim a gamble is no longer a gamble when a partially offsetting gamble exists -- that's just two gambles, and indeed prudent risk management when it comes to big gambling.
You’ve ruled out not just all gambling but all business. The examples the parent comment above you gave are all profit generating for the organizer.
Insurance in particular seems to be a clear societal win and is in fact gambling. You make a (relatively) small wager that pays out nothing if you don’t need it or potentially huge if you do.
