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Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story (www.timesofisrael.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

Not sure if you read the article but it looks like organized crime is threatening to kill people on the “above board” platforms as well.

I also am against turning the state into the purveyor of gambling as it creates perverse incentive for the state to prioritize predating on problem gamblers and poor people in order to raise tax revenues. Money is fungible and as soon as the lottery becomes a funding vehicle for education it becomes the funding vehicle and you shift more of the burden off of the rich paying taxes and more on the poor to fund it.

I’m all for the state staying out of regulating vices but also the state shouldn’t be the one providing it to the populace.

Gambling is a moral issue, the prevalence of which is showing the degradation of the values of our society due to late stage capitalism. Unregulated capitalism places no value on values and only value in capital.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    it creates perverse incentive for the state to prioritize predating on problem gamblers and poor people in order to raise tax revenues

    Yeah but that incentive exists for any organization running gambling. It's just that the mob/companies will pursue that motive more ruthlessly because:

    1. The state is more accountable to the public and public opinion than a company. A company is only accountable to its shareholders who will almost always tell it to pursue profits at all costs. The state, at least in a democratic system, is accountable to the people. People can vote out a city council pushing gambling to increase revenue, they can't vote out the board of draft kings.

    2. The state bears some of the cost of addiction so they have some incentive to not let it get out of hand. A destitute gambler is more likely to use social services, to commit crime, abuse their family etc. which the state has to pay for in some way. Also there's lost sales tax revenue if they can't buy anything else and they're more likely to stop paying property tax or get their home foreclosed, sold for a lower price lowering the assessed value and the property tax you can charge. All of these costs are completely externalized for companies / the mob so they can, and usually do, ignore them.

    Also the money can go to actually good causes as opposed to the pocket of the draft king's CEO or the mob boss. You can even theoretically set a cap for revenue, say the state can only make $10 million off of gambling, and the rest is proportionally refunded to the gamblers, you'd never see that in a for-profit enterprise like a company or the mob.

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