Slight tangent, but I am now of the view the state should not be allowed to tax legal vices. (Drugs, gambling, alcohol primarily). The reason is it keeps pushing amazing conflicts of interest, and the state ends up incentivized to maintain the behavior it supposedly does not want.
Either [vice] is wrong and should be illegal, or is tolerated and regulated but in no way profited from by those that do the regulation.
Some of the other games that state lotteries are adopting are almost as bad as sports betting in terms of their availability (look up instant-play gaming), but sports betting feels like a game of skill, which certainly makes it worse from a psychological perspective. I still think it should be legal if people are going to do it anyway. Maybe banning the "specials" on combo bets or requiring them to be labeled as "this is still a bad bet" could help.
For the record, I have a vested interest in sports gambling being banned because I sell products involved in instant-play and other forms of gaming that are not involved in sports betting.
Either gambling is bad or it's not, but in practice people like to be incredibly selective about it, as here, where as you point out sports betting lacks the positive externalities which for some part of the population offset the negative effects.
But this submission is about research showing that the legal market isn't just replacing the illegal market. It expands the market and the bad effects.
That is, they're able to track the deposits made to betting sites and other spending. Bets to illegal bookies are obviously not in that dataset. But if the legal gambling had replaced illegal gambling, the money going into legal gambling would appear to be coming from nowhere. Most likely a reduction in cash withdrawals? But that's not the effect they're observing. The money going into gambling is displacing other spending, including spending on +EV investments.
Given there is now evidence that the theory isn't correct, there's probably not much value in talking about it as if there really was a legitimate tradeoff here.
Having the TV blaring gambling commercials at you constantly and having the ability to place a bet from your phone at a moments notice is completely different. You’re comparing having a glass of wine on a special occasion with downing a fifth of whiskey every night.
A third theory is that the state shouldnt be in the position of playing nanny or parent, influencing behavior. If it is illegal, prevent it from happening. If it is legal, it shouldn't it shouldnt interfere.
No one pretends one of those isn’t drinking though, whereas everyone pretends raffles aren’t gambling, or churches could hardly go in for it so much.
> That is not going to lead to an addiction.
So while the public described by the person I was replying to consider positive externalities sufficient to get around the “gambling bad” label for you it is all about how addictive you think an individual form of it would be for other people?
There are people that think all drink is addictive, and some people for whom this is true, but suggest banning alcohol and you are considered a crackpot.
I have known people that worked in the gambling industry and their descriptions of the addicts are mind bending. For example, they would show up at the offices and demand to gamble in person because they couldn’t find enough in life to bet on. Such people would find board games problematic, let alone a raffle situation.
This sort of black-and-white position basically means either a complete ban (presumably with a harsh penalty for people who participate in the activity) or no regulation at all. A ban will just get circumvented if you don't penalize people for getting around it, so you're going to have to penalize addicts for illegal gambling, not just the people who enable that gambling. If you want to take the other extreme, are laws that force people to put lung cancer warnings on cigarettes "playing nanny"?
In real life, we usually take middle ground positions, and that means doing things that influence behavior, whether they are taxes or restrictions on labeling.
1. A prize
2. Consideration - you must pay to enter
3. A game of pure chance - this differentiates a lottery from a tournament or a silent auction, for example
A raffle fits these definitions, but nonprofits are often allowed to run them specifically because they get an exception to the rules. That is also why many "buy my shit to win a prize" promotions have a way to enter without buying something (getting around the consideration rule) and some of these have a short math test that you need to do to claim your prize (making it a game of not pure chance).
Labeling of side effects, calories, and similar topics fall into that category of empowering the citizen.
Sin taxes dont educate or empower, they simply punish and try to prevent individuals from acting on their own choices.
The two are very different.
Suggest reasonable restrictions on alcohol though and nearly everyone would agree that's a smart thing.
> I have known people that worked in the gambling industry and their descriptions of the addicts are mind bending... Such people would find board games problematic, let alone a raffle situation.
You can find equally horrific stories about alcoholics. We'd have to deal with greater numbers of "such people" if we didn't actively take steps to regulate addictive substances. Even with alcohol we have limits on where and when it can be used, and how it can be advertised. Gambling is available anywhere at anytime and ads are pushed right to addicts phones night and day to remind them to keep paying and broadcast to everyone during sporting events.
A lot of things are only able to be legal because they are regulated in some way. I absolutely want the state in the position of "playing nanny" when it comes to things like telling companies they can't dump a ton of toxic chemicals into the rivers or how much pollution they are able to spew into our air.
It's legal to sell tobacco, and it should be, but I'm very glad there are rules against selling cigarettes to children. It's legal to drink alcohol, but it's a very good thing when the state influences behavior like drunk driving.
Nobody wants arbitrary laws restricting private individuals for no reason, but communities should have the power to decide that some behaviors or actions are harmful to the group and are unacceptable. Communities have always done that in one way or another. We've just decided that rather than stick with mob justice we would put away the tar and feathers and allow the state, our public servants who are either elected by us or appointed by those we elect, to enforce the rules for us. I'm glad we did. I've already got a job and can't go around policing all day.
Drunk driving is illegal too, for good reasons.
Im not against laws.
What I am against is the state taking things that are explicitly legal, and making your life hard and penalizing you if you do them.
The role of the government should be enforcing law. Enforcing social judgement and incentives on legal behavior should be left to non-governmental society.
Sin taxes are a classic example of this.
I can see taxes and tariffs imposed on corporations being useful to limit the amount of certain harmful goods or to help offset the costs of externalities caused by those products. I'd still rather see companies regulated and held accountable for what they do more directly in most cases.
In my mind, the government is a heavy hammer, backed by lethal force. As such, it should be used sparingly to prevent concrete damages, enforce laws, and enforce property rights.
If a person or company is causing people real harm, that should be actionable by the government. If they are poisoning someone or killing their land, that is well within the remit.
Inversely, the government should not be a tool for optimizing society, or increasing the subjective efficiency or morality.
Government is a powerful tool, but that doesnt mean it the right tool for everything. Restraint and respecting other people's autononomy is a difficult skill to lean when you have the power to simply force compliance and "know" you are right.
Do you think sales of raw milk, which have been known to cause listeria outbreaks when people drink from an unsafe batch, should simply force labels of "this milk may be unsafe" or do you think that should be prohibited?
Do you think rhino horn should be legal to sell with the label of "this likely came from poached animals"?
I think raw milk should be legal, and the labeling requirement should depend on the actual risk level, not just a vague possibility.
rhino horn is a tricky one. Poaching animals is a form of stealing, so it is clearly illegal. Off the cuff, I think selling recently harvested rhino horn should be legal but required to have evidence that it was not poached.
Do you think think states should be able to ban the sale of meat or specific types of farmed meat?
The raffles I see have a token amount as a reward, compared to the money raised. I think that makes a big difference, both rationally and emotionally.
And? Should we legislate based on some peoples' belief that the rapture is imminent?
Economically, there are major differences in who pays them, There are differences in impact/cost. There are also huge moral differences between subsidizing desired behavior, and penalizing undesirable behavior.
It'd result in more people eating better though (instead of just eating slightly less worse, or eating worse differently while still not getting enough healthy food) and so there'd also be savings in the cost of health care and improvements in productivity.
Taxes and benefits are extremely unequal in their application.