This will likely be my least read newsletter this month, but we need a few days away from Trump-Harris between now and November 5th and this story is interesting: Legalizing online gambling is a mistake that needs to be fixed by the federal government at some point.
There’s a practical side to this debate: Why was it wrong? What happened? But there’s also an ideological side: How much freedom should people have to hurt themselves? And how much freedom should people have to take advantage of other people?
The point is, if the authoritarian crisis were over and we lived in a stable democratic world, I’d want to have these conversations almost every day.
So let’s imagine for a moment that we are in that position and have the space to talk about policy.
Because here’s the catch: robots are taking over online gambling, transferring wealth from the uneducated poor to corporations and wealthy con artists.
This is not something society should tolerate.
Let’s start with poker.
I linked to a Bloomberg article yesterday. Russian bot campaign grows to dominate the online poker worldIt’s quite long and some of you may not have read it, so here are the key points:
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When playing online poker, there is a high chance that your “human” opponents are bots.
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These bots are significantly better at poker than most top professionals.
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This means your money is being diverted in two directions: the bots (controlled by a third party) take most of your money, and the online poker site takes a cut of all the action (called the rake).
How prevalent is this dynamic? Vitaly Lunkin“I don’t think there’s any such thing as a clean game online,” the professional poker player told Bloomberg.
That’s a terrible story, right? Average, ignorant people come to play online poker only to find that the robots are tricking them and they can’t win.
But in reality, the situation is much worse.
As bots began to take over, online poker sites realized that real-world human players were losing too much money in too little time and quickly grew bored. This was bad for poker sites, because they make their money from rake – and they need players.
So these poker sites started hiring the companies that developed the bots as consultants, and these consultants were paid to optimize the robots’ behavior so that they could beat human players. Just often enough To get them to keep playing.
In other words, online poker websites were paying the robot owners to slow down the rate at which they siphoned off funds so that human targets wouldn’t realize they were being scammed.
The word you’re looking for is “predatory.”
Yesterday Atlantic Ocean It featured an article by Charles Fain Lehman. What happened after online sports betting was legalized in the United States.
Online sports betting is also plagued by bots. If you’re a regular person who pulls out your phone to bet on an NBA game, you’re not betting against other big names. You’re part of a school of fish being hunted by professionals who combine bots with big data and use it on an industrial level. And like online poker, betting sites make their money on transaction volume.
But unlike online poker, online sports betting sites have a much bigger appeal. Bhaskar Sunkara:
[W]We can bet seamlessly on our addictive smartphones, and not only can we bet before the match, but we can also bet on the outcome of every play, with AI models generating odds in real time.
Sports betting apps store dozens of data points on each customer, which means they know what you like to bet on, when to send you push notifications, what offers will re-engage you if you haven’t gambled in a while, and so on.
Lehman’s focus is Atlantic OceanBut the issue isn’t the corrupt nature of online sports betting, it’s its economic and sociological costs.
Because states legalized sports betting at different times, social scientists can compare various measures of well-being before and after legalization in states that did and did not legalize.
A worrying pattern is beginning to emerge: Two recent working papers explore the economic impacts of legalization. OneA study by Scott Baker of Northwestern University and his colleagues found that legal sports betting reduces household savings. Specifically, for every dollar spent on gambling, households deposit $2 less into investment accounts. In some states, it also significantly increases the risk of overdrafting bank accounts and maxing out credit cards. These effects are most pronounced for already unstable households.
a Second paperResearch by economists Brett Hollenbeck of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Poet Larsen and Davide Proserpio of the University of Southern California tells a similar story. online Studies of sports betting have found that legalization increases a household’s risk of bankruptcy by 25 to 30 percent and increases loan defaults. These problems appear to be concentrated among young men living in low-income counties — further evidence that it is the poorest people who are hurt the most by sports betting.
Not very good, Bob.
Putting it all together, a picture emerges of online gambling as a transfer of wealth from the young, poor and vulnerable to a small elite of the wealthy intellectual class.
And this transfer of wealth is facilitated by giant corporations that manipulate personal data and use mobile technology to target and repatriate their profits.
At least when you’re at a casino, you eventually have to get out. With online sports betting, the casino is in your pocket. All day, every day.
There is no reason why such predatory businesses should be allowed to exist.
Or should they?
Gambling, or game—Gambling was a conservative movement back then for two reasons. The first was purely transactional: the gambling industry was doling out a lot of money in conservative circles. The second was that the liberal wing of the conservative movement believed that people should be able to do whatever they wanted: guns, cigarettes, heroin, slot machines, whatever.
Nate Silver’s Village PeopleI’ve never really liked the libertarian arguments about gambling.
First of all, libertarian views are bound to fade before they have any real impact. Yes, of course, libertarians say People should be allowed to hurt themselves and suffer the consequences, but that’s not how society works. Idea The flaw in modern liberal societies is that they have tried to create some kind of social security to protect people from terrible outcomes, whether self-inflicted or not.
The shortest rebuttal to libertarians is always this: If you smoke your whole life and get lung cancer, you won’t die alone in the street; Medicare will pay for your treatment. We are not going to make people experience the consequences of their actions under any circumstances – our world would be a much worse and sadder place if we did.
That is why in a free society it is appropriate for government to place reasonable limits on behavior.
By the way, isn’t this a good thing? We’re not talking about fascism or overturning elections. We’re not worried about the future of democracy. We’re talking about actual policy We will solve the problem together.
I really hope we can have this conversation. Bulwark That happens every day of America’s authoritarian era.
If this sounds like something to you, please join us. We are here to protect our democracy and get us back to the work of democracy.
When it comes to gambling, state lotteries used to be a big topic of discussion. These lotteries Taxing the poorIt’s a way for governments to raise money without being obligated to actually raise taxes on everyone.
But at least the lottery acts like a tax. The funds they raise will be used for social services in the state.
Online gambling isn’t even a tax – it’s a pure wealth transfer.
There is no productive economic activity associated with online gambling. No measurable value is created.
Online gambling is nothing less than a vampire industry that funnels money from ordinary citizens to elites and corporations, often under false or at least questionable pretenses, leaving a trail of economic hardship that society as a whole must then manage.
The good news is, Should Become a political coalition to repeal online sports betting.
Liberals have always been against gambling. At least some of the new populist Republicans should be open to this issue, since after all, it is primarily their voters (younger, less educated, males) who are being duped by online sports betting.
Surely someone like J.D. Vance, an ultra-populist Catholic integralist, should be a natural ally in such a policy area?
Of course, I understand that Adelson and Wynn’s money will continue to attract most Republicans, but not all of them.
This is the kind of targeted policy space where we can build bipartisan coalitions and make a real difference in the lives of specific groups of Americans.
But only if the Republican Party returns to being a normal, healthy organization.
As an aspiring thru-hiker, I’ve had my eye on Tara Dower the past few days because she just broke the Appalachian Trail speed record.
Tara Dower, a 31-year-old ultrarunner and long-distance hiker born in North Carolina and living in Virginia, has reached Spring Mountain in Georgia. Appalachian TrailAt 11:53 p.m., she completed the arduous trans-southern hike of the iconic trail in 40 days, 18 hours and five minutes, crossing 14 states and covering 2,197 miles, the fastest time on record to hike the iconic trail in either direction.
Her time was about 13 hours faster than the 2018 benchmark set by Belgian runner Karel Sabe, who walked the trail from south to north in 2018. She is the first woman to break the record since Scott Jurek broke it in 2015. Jennifer Davis’s records Sabe was beaten by just three hours. What’s even more impressive is that Dower, better known by her trail name “Candy Mama,” had to catch up to beat Sabe’s record after a particularly wet New England period slowed her pace.
“Before Tara, only 10 people had hiked the Appalachian Trail in less than 50 days, and only one of them was a woman,” explained Liz Durstin, who set the women’s record for the northbound hike in 51 days in 2020 and hiked part of the trail with Dower earlier this week.
“And Tara did it before everyone else, including the men,” Durstin added. “It’s one of the greatest feats of all time. It’s a big deal.”
Statistics aside, what’s most remarkable about Dower’s achievement may be his unexpected meteoric rise through the ranks of long-distance hikers and runners. Less than a decade ago, Dower was a student at East Carolina University when he casually watched a National Geographic documentary and became fascinated with the Appalachian Trail. He graduated in 2016 and set off north from Springer Mountain the following year, only making it 80 miles before his grandparents picked him up.
Appalachian Trail Pioneer Warren Doyle Doyle told me that one of the keys to Dower’s success has been her consistent speed on the trail. Most days, she walked at a slower pace than Sabeh, but Sabeh’s total miles were greater, he said. “She was working longer hours,” Doyle explained Friday, as Dower approached the North Carolina-Georgia border. “So you can see that it’s not about speed, it’s about endurance. It’s not about the fastest time, it’s about the fastest time.”
Dower and Wilmarth slept in a Ford Transit van nicknamed “Burley,” while Komlo followed them in a Dodge Durango. They worked tirelessly to ensure Komlo was in bed by 10 p.m. and waking up at 3 a.m., and they made sure she ate more than 10,000 calories a day. They also refilled Dower’s giant snack box, which, in Komlo’s words, “wasn’t very healthy,” with Rice Krispie Treats, Twizzlers and Gushers. Dower gulped down 320-calorie protein shakes four times a day.
