But a much easier argument against sports betting is that it ruins the sports. Players throw. They get good at subtly cheating. The gambling apparatus latches itself to the sport, to the teams and players, the umpires and judges, the sporting organizations. With this much money on the line, it's not a matter of if but when games are thrown, cheated -- the bigger the game, the bigger the incentive. It's even easier now because of the amount of side/parlay betting that is available. It exhausts the spirit of competition.
Sports gambling is diametrically opposed to sport itself.
There's a false dichotomy between prohibition and laissez-faire, which the US seems particularly prone to. You've seen similar issues with the decriminalisation of cannabis, where many states seem to have switched abruptly from criminalisation to a fully-fledged commercial market. There is a broad spectrum of other options in between those points that tend to be under-discussed.
You can ban gambling advertising, as Italy did in 2019. You can set limits on maximum stakes or impose regulations to make gambling products less attractive to new customers and less risky for problem gamblers. You can have a single state-controlled parimutuel operator. Gambling does cause harm - whether it's legal or not - but it is within the purview of legislators to create a gambling market in which harm reduction is the main priority.
Where we fall on that spectrum is generally a matter of culture, rather than regulation. American culture is one of maximalism, especially when it comes to commercialization.
American culture is not one of maximalism. Going overseas I was surprised to see tobacco products and beer legal at 16 or 18, people drinking alcohol in the open at parks, soft-porn on late-night broadcast TV, and newsstands with uncovered porn magazines.
All of which are commercialization.
Further, a maximalism interpretation can't be used to understand American culture pre-1974, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited banks from preventing women from getting a bank account, nor pre-1964, when the Civil Rights Act prohibited most businesses from preventing blacks from exercising the same commercial maximalism as whites.
I don't think many other countries' private markets act as extreme in this regard.
>All of which are commercialization
I feel like those are just cultural norms as opposed to commercialization pressure.
> Further, a maximalism interpretation can't be used to understand American culture pre-1974, when the Equal Credit Opportunity Act prohibited banks from preventing women from getting a bank account, nor pre-1964, when the Civil Rights Act prohibited most businesses from preventing blacks from exercising the same commercial maximalism as whites.
I am failing to draw a line from your point to your argument here. I was referring to commercial maximalism, not sexual and racial equality maximalism.
How well do you know about what happens in other countries? To me it sounds like everywhere, once limitations to the flow of global capital are dropped.
> I feel like those are just cultural norms
My observation is that commercialization pressure is subordinate to cultural norms. The capital vultures did not swoop in to provide full services to women and blacks until the laws changed, even though providing those services was legal.
Commercialization can shape those norms, certainly, but that is not specifically American either.
Pretty well.
> To me it sounds like everywhere, once limitations to the flow of global capital are dropped.
Its a matter of degree, hence "maximalism". Just look at investment capital stats. There is a pretty objective way to confirm that money moves faster and in greater volume into new private industries in the U.S. The only foreign investment arms that come close are multinational conglomerates or authoritarian governments.
> The capital vultures did not swoop in to provide full services to women and blacks until the laws changed, even though providing those services was legal.
...how much profit do you think there was to be made off of people who were previously blocked from capital accumulation?
Is it fair to say that's part of American culture then? Very few people are involved in making new private industries, and the regulatory systems don't seem well aligned with the general culture.
> how much profit
How much profit would have been lost if a company was public about supporting blacks and upsetting the white supremacist culture of the time?
That's why I say you can't really disentangle culture and regulation.