Like it's def not a net positive, and nor am I for people being giant POSs, but I also don't know why you'd necessarily need to globally ban it. I am totally for making examples out the ass of these monsters. It's like drinking, I'm sure it's on the whole a negative to society and also leads to spikes in domestic violence, but I think banning it would cause as much if not more issues.
To be clear I only think online sports gambling should be banned. Just go back to the way it was before where you had to like go to vegas or a shitty horse racing track to do it. I don't think that is in any way worse than right now. Way fewer people got mixed up with bookies compared to draftkings or whatever. I also think there's something I especially don't like about the possibility of algorithms turning up the addiction and making it way way worse than someone who has to go to a physical location to gamble. It's like facebook on steroids designed to extract as much money as possible from you.
I was actually thinking about the negative effects on alcohol and if alcohol should be banned or not (when applying the same logic I was using to online sports gambling) but I think the ability of the algorithm to have an active influence makes it worse. (while alcohol is sorta passive). I don't know. I guess i would be curious to see the number of drinkers that get themselves into trouble compared to the number of gamblers.
And that's all fair, especially the online part but maybe (and it'd be somewhat hard to do this, tech would help and hurt here) you would have more establishments that you'd go to in order to gamble, kinda like a liquor license, but then again like alcohol 1) nothing against doing it at home and 2) even if you only made it be in a bar someone will find hooch or make it at home. Maybe the more responsible is based on a phone or IP address or any establishment only allows so many bets and so many $$$ to be bet at a time and based on income? Again not exactly free but idk.
I tend to think the "best" way while reactive and not proactive is maybe like smoking or drinking, where not only is the disclaimer about "getting help" with 1800BETSOFF, but like also having to fund commercials literally showing people going broke, or in trouble cause of being a shitty POS. Like I think about how far like culturally drinking and driving is now seen (and I get it's been going for a while) that will help put out there more the true negative downsides of it, not just "need gambling help". Public perception and that sort of peer pressure, while not able to solve it all, I think will help, as well as resources for spouses to feel open to talk before it becomes an issue on behalf of their significant other.
