zlacker

In my view, gambling should be a service provided directly by the government. And I'm not talking a "public-private partnership", but an actual DoG that will be taking bets, running gaming rooms in select cities etc. -- all with the explicit mandate to make of gambling available but boring. No bonuses, no ads, no promotions, no glitzy websites.

Gambling is inherently exploitative and no amount of regulation will align the incentives for commercial operators. You also don't want to ban it outright, as it may descend into the underground otherwise, so this looks like a reasonable area for the govt to take direct control.

>>mppm+(OP)
Well we do have that in some states of India, and guess what? It has the same effects. Moreover the government is incentivized to promote this as it's an alternate source of revenue. Roads are peppered with ads, and there's the constant infighting in the ruling government to see who gets the gambling and liquor sales portfolio (and usually it's a buddy or kid of the chief minister).

>>mppm+(OP)
That was how it worked in Sweden and it solved nothing.

>>mppm+(OP)
I think this used to be the case in (most of) Australia (it's still government run in Western Australia but that will change - they've already tried twice to privatise it but the first time was derailed by the pandemic and the second time no one was offering enough money).

I think privatisation happened quite a while ago (mid to late 1990s) but my vague memory is that there was some sort of deregulation in the mid 2000s (or at least that's when I remember the ads becoming incessant) and that seems to have coincided with the endless offers of bonus bets, deposit matches, bet returns etc.

>>mppm+(OP)
This sets up several conflicts of interest for the government. The money is just too good.

>>mppm+(OP)
I think the Netherlands has this and it sort of seems to work. In that I've never seen anyone really addicted to gambling, even if half the country provides the government some extra money in the 'national lottery' every month. We got a lot of random wins of boxes of ice cream and stuff growing up.

Casinos exist, but are basically a regulated service (possibly private, but as far as I know there's only a single operator).

>>mppm+(OP)
In the US that’s called the lottery. Go into any gas station in a poor neighborhood and there’s a line of people buying tickets.

>>mattma+ZB
They advertise government lotteries in the US though, which is fucked up.

>>mppm+(OP)
The UK sort of had this for a while via "The Tote" - set up in the 1920s by the UK government, it ran stores that took sports bets, had a presence at almost all horse races etc providing safe/legitimate services.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tote

It operated alongside other private operators, but was entirely State owned and operated until it was privatized in 2011. I forget the specifics of it, but the Tote uses (or at least used to) some kind of "pool betting" model that meant it didn't profit directly from customers losing bets, being agnostic about the results was meant to reduce predatory pressures etc.

I think this likely helped a lot to give those who wanted to gamble somewhere they could always trust to honor the arrangement and avoid "underground" operators, I don't know that it helped all that much in reducing the social harms etc though.