> Government, acting in the best interest of their citizens, were trying to curb an addictive substance. CEO of generic tobacco / drug / oil / gambling company, realizing that this would hurt their profits, decided that the best way forward was to effectively bribe those in power to put their company's profits over the well-being of society.
If this is true, I'd like to thank the author for inadvertently pointing out the real source of the sports gambling problem: people like Jason Robins.
We don't have a sports gambling problem, we have a greedy CEO bribing lawmakers problem.
Personal responsibility is a good principle to live by but a dogshit principle for system design. It's a transparent but common ploy by the corrupt: "let's not fix the system and instead toss a few scapegoats to the plebs while we continue to rob them blind."
Besides, complaining about immoral people doesn't fix the problem. Changing the law might.
I sure wish I had perfect willpower to avoid bad foods. But, alas, I am imperfect in that regard so I create a system that prevents bad foods from being in my house. The end result is that my behavior trends toward more perfect than had that system not be in place.
Moral philosophical discussions are fine and we can lament about the moral shortcomings of ourselves and others, but I think the systems argument is more pragmatic in creating real changes in behavior and outcomes.
The system is people just like the CEO - it’s a people problem
The “system” enables any kind of behavior - people are free to attempt anything they can imagine, consequences are applied after the fact
These are not mutually exclusive.
> Since 2016, FanDuel and DraftKings alone have donated more than $2.6 million to state politicians and political parties, according to data maintained by OpenSecrets, a campaign finance watchdog. The companies have spent another $114 million to try to influence state ballot measures to legalize sports betting.
> Industry lobbyists, for example, dazzled lawmakers with projections about the billions of dollars that states could expect to collect in taxes from sports betting — projections that, at least so far, have often turned out to be wildly inflated, according to a Times analysis of state tax data.
> “It is time for your state to add iGaming,” Jason Robins, the chief executive of DraftKings, told lawmakers at a recent conference that his company sponsored. “Not in the future, but now.”
> “We needed a national strategy,” Mr. Kudon said in an interview, recalling his thought process at the time. “We need to go out there and pass 10, 15 bills and get ahead of this.”
> Mr. Kudon and his clients assembled an all-star team of lawyers and former government officials, including Martha Coakley, who had been the attorney general of Massachusetts.
> By the end of 2017, 19 states had passed bills legalizing fantasy sports. Almost all were written with help from Mr. Kudon’s team.
> Comments from the justices — including Chief Justice John G. Roberts, who in private practice had represented the American Gaming Association — suggested they were likely to overturn the federal ban.
And before you move the goal-posts, I'll note that this is just part of what is openly available. We recently found out about Clarence Thomas illegally accepting gifts from wealthy individuals. To assume that these lawsuits win or lose in a purely ethical, academic way without outside influence seems contrary to the evidence.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/business/sports-betting-l...
No, we didn’t.
See https://reason.com/volokh/2023/06/22/justice-alito-shouldnt-...
Fix the lawmakers and you stop all the bad faith influence.
One-sentence simple solutions to one of the most complicated problems humanity faces. How do you propose to do that? Lawmakers are in charge of their own rules. There is no incentive to change their own incentive structure from within.
Potential solutions could include direct democracy, line item veto, or maybe both?
I don't claim to have a solution, and that should be no reason to not address the topic of what problem society needs to solve.
Perhaps the problem is the system that makes such "bribes" legal.
Unless we want to make political donations illegal, how do you prove a donation to a politician as a bride instead of support for the politician whose politics you agree with?
One could make a claim that stuff like student loan forgiveness is unethical if it benefits those who voted for the party. Is it not illegal to use tax payer money to pay for votes? I think if any politician said, "anybody who votes for me will get a bonus in your tax refund this year" we would have no issue seeing how that is unethical.
>Unless we want to make political donations illegal
I think this is displaying dichotomous thinking. There's a lot of room between a political donation free-for-all and making political donations illegal. In between there are many proposals for a more mitigated approach. One being Lessig's idea of "Democracy Vouchers"[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic%2C_Lost#Democracy_vou...
These reforms are going to end up just changing to rules to help one side or the other. Whether or not the ideas were formulated originally with that intent, by the time they get implemented they will be bent for that intent.
Sure, and other systems would be needed to provide the necessary guardrails. At no point did I allude to the idea that one simple approach would be a panacea.
Seems to be called lobbying in the US.
And we can keep the overt cash payouts. We just launder the funds thru campaign chests and revolving-door, high salaried jobs (as a lobbyist, consultant, etc).
Instead of fantasizing a creative, insightful and genius solution, it shows a glimpse of how the real business world works.
The one-word problem here could be 'lobbyists' or 'lawmakers' or 'bribery' or 'exploitation'. It could even be just as the article said: 'relationships'... But it sure isn't this article, written after the fact, with no hint of actually condoning said behavior other than failing to pass moral judgment.
If you think about it some more, you might be glad that the author reminded us about this. Our lawmakers sell us out to fossil fuels, big banks, corporate media, telecomms, polluters, etc, and then tell us it's raining.
Democracy is hard. If participation is limited to voting in an election, the public interest will be ignored.
Fully true. The public is relegated to - at best - a veto vote on corruption, which they rarely use (and are rarely informed as to why they should. Thanks press!).
Everyone likes to rant about lobbyists and lobbying, which are strange names for something Thomas Jefferson chose instead to call "petitioning government for redress of grievances".
Is it that you just dislike it when other people exercise their rights? Is it that you don't bother to exercise those same rights yourself, and so they shouldn't be allowed to do so either? Or maybe it's just that they're better at it and that seems unfair to you?
These people -- the blogger, his friend, etc -- could easily 'exercise' their rights, as you say, in a good way, or a bad one. They choose a bad one, for greed. There's nothing better to dislike than "somebody did a bad thing on purpose."
Gambling prohibition only prevents gambling regulation. You don't get to regulate illegal things.
God save us from busybodies trying to protect us from ourselves.
You think there is no more gambling occurring in a world where you walk into a convenience store and there is a slot machine or whatever, or you watch a sporting event and 50% of the advertisements are for gambling, as opposed to a world where those things are not the case?
> You don't get to regulate illegal things.
Illegal things are regulated, these things are not allowed, do them and you will punished. The regulation is very clear.
> God save us from busybodies trying to protect us from ourselves.
I was once having a conversation with someone on this topic of gambling, and the problems it incurs to members of society, and by extension society as a whole. She had personal experience with a former spouse having a gambling problem.
She said something to the effect of “Well yeah, it’s not good, but you can’t legislate morality.“
I kind of nodded in agreement like, yeah, fair point.
But upon later reflection it occurred to me that what are laws if not the legislation of morality? That’s literally what laws are.
Should we not bother being busybodies having laws preventing theft and murder?
After all people still commit these acts should we not bother with regulations against them, attempting to protect people from themselves, and society from the negative downstream effects?
Ah but you say, it’s a victimless act. Let people have their big gulps, let people gamble. It is a victimless act until it isn’t, like speeding or drunk driving.
If a father downloads an app and blows through his families monthly resources with a few button presses that creates problems not just for him but the rest of his family and other people are going to have to pick up the slack.
These ventures being allowed into the system of capital creates incentives for as much of these problems in society as possible from the perspective of the proprietors of these ventures in order for them to extract the most capital profits that they can. (“Capital profits” meaning profit in the most narrowly defined sense in terms of numbers in a database. Is someone involved in this stuff profiting in anyway spiritually or emotionally in the way that comes from providing something of value to society?)
That is why it is de-generate. Nothing good is being created / generated.
It’s an extractive, predatory venture.
What is good for society?
It used to be a chicken in every pot.
Now a casino in every pocket?
Come on….
No. They're not regulated. Everyone knows where to get them anyway, or knows someone who knows where to get them. And they do.
But those things are more dangerous for everyone. You don't get to make them safe by demanding inspections. You don't get to make sure no one's cheating. It acts as a huge drain on revenue, instead of the taxable economic activity it should be.
Your "regulation" is some delusional DEA Czar talking about protecting kids from drugs and winning a war against an abstract concept. Meanwhile those kids buy dirty street shit mixed with rat poison and elephant tranquilizer.
I'm not a big fan of regulation, mind you, but I think I speak even for the pro-regulation folks when I say "that's not the kind of regulation anyone wants or that anyone means when they use the word".
> But upon later reflection it occurred to me that what are laws if not the legislation of morality? That’s literally what laws are.
That's not what laws are for. It seems like it to naive people. But then they try to prohibit things people are going to do anyway, even when those things won't harm others if done.
And, if any of this just rubs you the wrong way, you can go read up on the extensive real world experimentation where we discover just how awful those attempts go.
Laws are for "making things better". It may be that people who rape toddlers deserve to be executed, but if you make that a law you don't make the world better... you just end up with more dead toddlers. Laws drafted badly create perverse incentives.
> Ah but you say, it’s a victimless act. Let people have their big gulps, let people gamble. It is a victimless act until it isn’t, like speeding or drunk driving.
No one said you can't prohibit drunk driving. Though, even for that, there are limits to how intense this prohibition can be. The thing you can't do without it being lunacy, is outlawing the drinking itself.
> If a father downloads an app and blows through his families monthly resources with a few button presses that creates problems not just for him but the rest of his family and other people are going to have to pick up the slack.
The teatotalers would've loved you. But then we prohibit something, and we get mobsters having machine gun fights on Main Street about black markets. No thanks.
This isn't a gambling problem. It's a "why wasn't she a good enough judge of character to not have his kids". I'd like to solve that one too, but I don't know how. Not my problem. Not yours, feel free to not pick up their slack.
> These ventures being allowed into the system of capital creates incentives for as much of these problems in society as possible from the perspective of the proprietors of these ventures in order for them to extract the most capital profits that they can.
The initial prohibition (and the naivete of the legislators) caused that. Rather than digging deep and becoming subject matter experts on the regulation of gambling (and we have quite alot of history and learning materials for this), they passed the buck until it managed to be legalized in a half-assed manner.
You elect bad legislators (so do I, there are no good candidates).
> What is good for society?
We're no longer in a "what is good for society" phase of civilization. Even if I agreed with you, I wouldn't waste political capital trying to be anti-gambling. It's just bad strategy.
That ship sailed by 1980 or so. I was a kid then, and largely unaware of it at the time. If you invent time travel though, don't show up in 1978 or whatever, it'd need to be the 1950s or 1960s to have any chance at all of fighting that battle. The seeds of universal gambling in the United States were sown way back when.
Long story short: undermining fundamental human rights to fight a war you lost before you started sounds like a fool's solution to a problem that doesn't even cause him any trouble.
I agree, in a vacuum, there is nothing wrong with the concept of lobbying. I would go out on a limb (well not quite a limb, I have family members that were lobbyists) and say the majority of lobbying that occurs in the US is actually good.
But where it's bad, it's really bad. The loudest and most influential voices are the ones with the most money, and sometimes that's good, but a lot of times thats bad. They promise golden parachutes and shower politicians with money so much so that even if the politician gets burned, they are promised a career at the lobbying firm or with one of the "hookups". Again this is bad, because now instead of being accountable to the constituency, our politicians are accountable to their benefactors.
There's a lot more reasons this is wrong, but this is the primary gist. I hope we can all agree this is an issue.
Here are some entire books written by people who studied this issue in great depth:
"The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate" by Lee Drutman: In this book, Drutman explains how and why corporations became so invested in influencing politics, and what that means for the future of American democracy.
"Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It" by Lawrence Lessig: This book by a prominent legal scholar and activist provides a comprehensive analysis of the influence of money on politics and proposes innovative solutions for reform.
"So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government" by Robert G. Kaiser: A detailed look at the rise of the lobbying industry in Washington and its impact on American democracy.
The lottery proceeds fund public schools.
Because a corresponding amount of general budget funds were diverted away from schools, the inference is untrue.
See, we can all play this shit game.
Yes, without doubt.
> who is disabled
Even worse.
> It taught them gambling pays, and makes them more likely to lose money in the future.
By definition gambling is losing money in long terms (otherwise it's investing, not gambling). A disabled is less likely to recover after a financial disaster.
Seems to me your definition is a bit lacking.
Frankly you come off as purposefully obtuse for the sake of arguing.
For the next time you cherry pick anecdotes to try and support some outlandish position, I suggest you at least be specific while doing so. Unless of course that lack of specificity was intentional and this was meant to be a “gotcha”.
How much has your cousin spent on lottery tickets, in her life?
People should be electing their representatives based on what they will do for them. Instead they choose who gets bought. As a result, I have one vote but Charlie McBucks Inc. has 10 million.
> Is it that you don't bother to exercise those same rights yourself,
It's a game only the extremely wealthy can play, and you can't lobby to abolish lobbying anyway.
Is that what paying others to do something makes me? Better at it?
So then it follows Stan Kroenke is the best multi-sport athlete the world has ever seen.
Do you think this works as well when you replace "exercise one's rights" with "bribe politicians"? Let's see:
"Is it that you just dislike it when other people bribe politicians? Is it that you don't bother to bribe politicians yourself?" Hmm, not as punchy.
Another way to put it is: "what's wrong with rich people having orders of magnitude more power than you? Is it that you don't bother to already be rich?"
Groups which don't have a lot of people in them, but do have a lot of money, and can't find anyone willing to voluntarily advocate for them.
Bribery ought to be illegal, but in practice it's legal - e.g. corporate donations.
True. Also if the money enriches the candidate thru means other than cash-in-hand, the bribery may be legal and is just as unethical.
Counterpoint: savvy populist candidates can get traction without spending nearly as much money as their well-lobbied counterparts.
There is a reading of this story where draftkings helped lawmakers make better laws. It doesn't take much sceptisism to read it differently admitedly, but the plain text doesn't state that.
Generally speaking, the major problem isn't that some people do this (though some do in bad faith). The larger problem is that most people don't (and even fewer do so as concrete problem solvers).
Let's delve into this "problem" of addictive behavior and think about root-cause-problems.
- people are unhappy in their lives and fall into addiction
* they have too many opportunities for abuse
* there's something really wrong in their lives that needs solving
- lawmakers fail to make laws that reduce addiction
* lawmakers are persuaded by lobbyists that act for profit, because the latter have good arguments or the former are easy to convince/bribe
* they don't understand addiction because they are ill positioned for that job
Above can be broken down further into core problems, that should be tackled. My point being, it's not necessarily a bad example.
Ah yes. "Here's a tip to make the world worse."
Not that they're wrong, but that's such a disappointing example.