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Gamblers trying to win a bet on Polymarket are vowing to kill me if I don’t rewrite an Iran missile story
(www.timesofisrael.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
346 points (98.6% liked)
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Gambling needs to simply be made illegal
I don’t care what your arguments are gambling needs to be made illegal
Prohibition on vices never works, it just sends the money to criminal organizations that kill people instead of capitalist companies that kill less people.
The solution is to have it be state run, remove the profit motive, and send any money gained from it to education and social services.
Oohh yeah, let the state run the "gambling on genocide" and "gambling on child murder", that sounds awesome!
Not saying it's the best situation but if the choice is between the mob running it, capitalist corporations running it, and the state running it, I'd pick the state.
The state has an incentive to decrease problem gambling. Even if you ignore any democratic pressures from the people who don't like gambling being pushed, the state also has to bear the cost of addicts with social services so it's monetarily incentivized to reduce problem gambling.
Removing the profit motive of gambling is exactly prohibition, what????
Remove the profit motive from "the house" side. The house is taking a cut of every bet as profit, which encourages them to advertise and increase their market and market share to get more money. Which in the end means them trying to push gambling on those with a problem because they make them the most money.
If it's run by the state it's not beholden to share holders who want as much profit as possible, social costs be damned. The state is at least nominally beholden to the people in a democratic system and the people generally don't want gambling advertising to be pushed on gambling addicts.
Gambling addiction has one of the highest suicide rates out of any addiction, so I'm pretty sure the capitalist gambling companies right now cause more death than illegal organizations could.
No it can work just fine if the state doesn’t become captured by those criminal profit seeking elements and we properly provide for people along the way
Not buying it
I think it's fair for it to be legal, but only in specific locations and contexts. I think small scale gambling between friends and coworkers is fine. I think well regulated casinos are bad but serve as a deterrent to underground criminal gambling. I think having legal gambling through the internet and on your phone, advertised everywhere is a serious problem.
Nah this needs to be illegal period. Not taking questions
Find something else to do
Prohibition of vices doesn't work, it just pushes it into organized crime. I want harm reduction more than purity
You’re interested in solutions. The person you’re replying to is only interested in hearing his own voice.
Im cool with the state owning things. Its the oversize marketing budgets and no concern for harm that comes with private ownership that bugs me.
I’ve heard plenty of stories of destitute people burning all their money on state-run scratchers. It’s not a panacea.
It pushes them into organized crime because the state fails to provide for people’s needs not because the vice is prohibited
Next
"provide for their needs"...? What do you mean? Sure, many gamblers don't have a very stable economic situation, but you're implying that something like UBI would suddenly stop people from gambling or what?
I bet you one hundred dollars that you cannot enforce this.
Yes prohibition of alcohol worked so well in America, the 18th amendment, in the 1919 that 14 years later they repealed it, the 21st amendment.
They should adopt the same approach they use in Sweden to fight alcoholism: tax the hell out of it. You won a million by doing "insider trading" on the most recent dumb government decision? Congratulations, you owe the IRS half a mil.
Not talking about alcohol try again
Well what is the difference? A vice is a vice. Both are used to distracte us from the daily life of contant reminder that we are just a flesh bag being controlled by a mass of fat that will decay and die at some point. While we circle around a massive black hole. So why is this one vice so different that you think that prohibition would work?
different things being vices doesn’t make them magically interchangeable
Sorry
So what makes it so different that you think that prohibition would work in this one instance?
itt: 100 billion lemmings see the phrase "i'm not going to debate you" and immediately take up arms and move to debate positions, so as to maximize the insufferability of the platform writ large
Itt: the person saying "I'm not going to debate you" continues to respond.
Also: "I'm not going to debate you" is not some magic phrase that prevents your statement from being challenged.
In closing: I'm not going to debate you. So if you respond to this you're a hypocrite.
i don't know how i could have possibly been clearer that i don't want the disjointed ramblings of debatecreatures in my inbox, but i know things like "consent" might be a foreign concept to such folk
for you in particular, let's permanently rectify that situation
Thinking you can say something and avoid it being challenged by adding shit like "anything you can argue against it doesn't matter" is the insufferable thing on display here. Almost as insufferable as another person chiming in about how insufferable those who won't just take that at face value are.
"avoid it being challenged" dear lord. if only internet forum threads had some kind of button that would allow you to insert whatever half-baked disguised-as-a-policy-suggestion reaction one has directly into the thread. maybe then those that suffer the worst from Jubileebrain could utilize that to spew forth all their intellectual capabilities' worth without doing themselves the disgrace of demanding dissidents put up their dukes
but then it wouldn't be lemmy now would it
House always wins. It's literally just a way to steal people's money.
And in the city I live now, they passed a law for those stupid slot machines like 10 years ago.
Now they are everywhere.
You know who sits at slot machines?
Old people. Retired people.
People living off social security.
It's literally a way to steal money from people who need it most. And specifically, it was tax payers money.
So whenever I hear ,"but it creates revenue" I think. "Yeah by stealing it from the state and our seniors. Wtf. That's not real revenue."
And this whole idea of autonomy. Like people have to choose for themselves if they want to gamble.
We all know it's addictive. And it's designed to trick and manipulate people.
There is less autonomy there than you think.
I dunno, I find it hard to respect laws intending to protect people from their own choices, especially when the majority of people can enjoy the thing (or just ignore it on their own) without any problems.
Try to idiot-proof the world and the world just comes up with a better idiot.
I think the "argument" is that it's massively gray.
So much stuff can be considered gambling.
It needs to be handled. Idk how. But the term is too encompassing to just outright make illegal.
I can see why you'd want the state to regulate it. Gambling addicts have it really bad.
There will always be gambling since people can gamble points and fries
Halal moment.
Yeah unfortunately gamblers read that and just go…so what?
I’m ok with this simply being a religious principle
I'd vote for you to be dictator for a day to enact your policy.
If I were dictator for a day, I'd outlaw all overly loud personal vehicles. You'd be sentenced to 10 minutes strapped behind your vehicle while it's blaring full blast, and then anyone who wants can be given guns to just go nuts on your vehicle.