I think the fundamental problem is that yes, there are people with that innate tendency, but that is not in the slightest bit helped by creating huge incentives for a whole industry to put its massive resources into finding ways to make that tendency become as bad as possible. Imagine if we had entire companies that somehow profited from depressed people committing suicide and had dedicated teams of behavioural scientists and quants crunching data and designing new strategies to make anyone who already has the tendency maximally suicidal. I doubt we would consider that fine, right? Sports betting (really, most addiction-based industries) is like that. The problem isn’t just providing the activity, as some kind of relief valve. The problem is putting behind the activity a board of investors that wants to maximise profits and turns it into a full blown Torment Nexus. Capitalism is a terrible way of providing a service when the service is “self-inflicted misery”.
I think the fundamental problem is that yes, there are people with that innate tendency, but that is not in the slightest bit helped by creating huge incentives for a whole industry to put its massive resources into finding ways to make that tendency become as bad as possible. Imagine if we had entire companies that somehow profited from depressed people committing suicide and had dedicated teams of behavioural scientists and quants crunching data and designing new strategies to make anyone who already has the tendency maximally suicidal. I doubt we would consider that fine, right? Sports betting (really, most addiction-based industries) is like that. The problem isn’t just providing the activity, as some kind of relief valve. The problem is putting behind the activity a board of investors that wants to maximise profits and turns it into a full blown Torment Nexus. Capitalism is a terrible way of providing a service when the service is “self-inflicted misery”.