Unironically ban all gambling
Yeah. They spend a lot of money to make it addictive as they can, and people are bad at stats.
When you have a lottery ticket it feels like you have a shot at getting rich and living the good life. For most people who buy lottery tickets the abysmally small chance of winning is actually their best chance of getting rich.
Reminds me of that posts about an experiment with swimming/drowning rats
My brain which doesn't find gambling fun stays winning.
Also yes ban all gambling, if people want to gamble let them gamble with some friends in their homes.
Only fun gambling is gambling for who buys the next round or social poker with a $10-$20 buy in
My hatred of losing money outweighs my enjoyment of gambling. But if you make the cost something like pointless time instead of money, I’ll gamble all day long.
Minecraft enchantments? Just give me a little more exp this next one will be a winner.
Once for a company party they had two casino workers come and set up a blackjack and a roulette table. Everyone then got a stack of chips and we played the games for an hour or two. It was great fun but a huge part of the fun was how we were not playing with real money and could just laugh about how nobody had any chips left after two hours.
One of my coworkers is super into sports gambling and another is super into crypto. [Pam no difference dot gif] but at least the gambler isn’t trying to convince me to join him every single day.
let's get 98% of our people addicted to gambling that sounds like a good idea
Someone did a podcast about lotteries. Citations Needed maybe?
Made me feel like they were worse than casinos frankly. Evil shit, basically a tax on the poor and desperate.
AFAIK lotteries are not as addictive as faster games because of the delayed gratification from having to wait for the weekly draw. Things like slot machines or sports betting or poker is instant gratification and this more addictive. If you do it online or with an app it becomes ridiculously convenient and addictive.
I'm sure those things are more addictive, but people who can't even afford to GO to the casino are targeted by lotteries. Listen to the CN, Ho_Chi_Chungus linked it below.
It's very fucked up, IIRC, one of them put up a billboard explicitly advertising itself as the only way out of living and dieing in poverty at one point.
Legalized head injury spectacles and flag-humping propaganda ceremonies and gambling addiction combined sound like the most :joker-amerikkklap: experience possible.
God, its so disgusting how it looks like the only option is to ban all gambling.
Like, I think people should be allowed to gamble. Poker is fun. Lil bets with your buds are fun.
But the second it's legal, even only technically, the fucking pigs roll in and algorithmically induce addictions in everyone they can, and squeeze as much money as they can, with the help of lawmakers. I shouldn't be surprised to find out that the 'inducements' thing was made tax-free, but its no less disgusting. Not that 'just tax it!' is any kind of real solution, considering that just makes the state hungry to expand gambling.
And just, the fact the Slots are usually one of the most profitable machines, and also like, the least fun? Like, its just mindless capitalist hopium, "maybe a few more leverpulls and I can afford a house?" Bleh.
Does anywhere else have a row of slot machines at every supermarket, gas station and kiosk or is that just a Finnish thing
Not too many places in the US as far as I've seen, but that is everywhere even vaguely near Las Vegas.
Though you can buy those 'scratch offs' (I think) everywhere in the US, usually at supermarkets and gas stations.
You can get scratch offs at any Finnish supermarket and kiosk (think 7/11 but wayyyyyyy smaller and with a way smaller selection) :shrug-outta-hecks:
All gambling (with the exception of dubiously legal foreign online gambling) over here is run by a government-owned company
Denmark also have a government-owned gambling company that does lotto, scratch-offs and sports betting. They're present at every kiosk and supermarket and also run a sizable online casino. They used to have a monopoly on gambling but due to the EU's liberal orthodoxy the "gambling market" was "liberalised" opening up for predatory betting companies to suck money out of poor people.
I assume it's the same in Finland when it comes to online betting
In Denmark it's not that common but you'll find small depressing rooms with slot machines at some head stations or small convenience stores. I've never seen it at a supermarket.
lol, here they're just right there in the open at every supermarket
Edit: Apparently Lidl got rid of all slot machines in their stores last year
Gas station casinos exist but not everywhere. They're more visible in poor parts of the States, it's like a parasite on the ass of the nation's impoverished people.
I actually lost friends because they kept wasting their parents credit card money at casinos, Counter Strike and sports betting. Hard to respect some rich kid that does that.
A sign of a deeply broken society imo is that it allows you to do whatever you want to waste your money and has no safety net/guide rails
my gf works in a grocery store and the stories abt ppl addicted to the lottery and scratch off tickets are super depressing. ppl will ask how many scratch offs there are left on a roll as if theres some strategy for it. and ppl will buy a 40oz with a scratch off every single day :shrek-pixel-despair:
It reminds me of the usual confluence of betting shops and pubs (especially brand ones such as Wetherspoons) in the UK. You find a betting shop, there’s very often a pub adjacent. Just straight up predatory.
Betting shops or "casinos" in Denmark are often places in poor areas with many unemployed people and people on disability. These dimly lit dens reeking of depression and cigarette smoke are often staffed by moonlighting workers who can be paid very little and have no legal protection as they will get in trouble for "benefit fraud" if the authorities find out about them working there. It's predatory as fuck.
A bit reductionist, but I still like the quote "The lottery/gambling is a tax on people who don't understand statistics"
The fantasy football gambling stuff is so perfectly American because everyone thinks they're a super genius who, through the power of watching games on the TV, perfectly understands the sport and can use their genius masculine brain to come up with the perfect lineup, when in reality it's dominated by the 1% of guys who've written algorithms to constantly take in data and update their roster.
ty I always wondered how sports betting was overnight legal everywhere in the country.
lol my solution would be less like ban gambling and more like ban professional sports.
I would prefer it if MORE people were gambling on things where I actually want to know their opinions. Will Putin still be in power in 2024? Will Biden run again? OH wow 10-1 the Boston Goobers are going to beat the Kansas City Weasles, that interesting as fuck......
