Which isn't exactly wrong - if you're a retail investor who isn't using satellite footage of parking lots, picking individual stocks is closer to gambling.
Investing in the aggregate is less gambling.
Investing in the stock market as a whole is just betting the game will be played.
With individual stocks, you are just betting on horses.
With hedging, you are betting on economic sectors (which can be as large as the whole world economic system) growing infinitely.
And regarding systems growing infinitely in limited environments, I have some bad news for you. Some would call them cancerous.
Broadly, though sports in particular is something different bubbles care more or less about, I'd say your perspective is entirely foreign to me. My experience is that the more intelligent groups I'm around are vastly more interested in predicting things and putting money behind their predictions.
I think this is wrong. The most skilled poker player at the table has an edge and is likely to win over time. I don’t think there is a similar thing in sports betting.
Granted, cash poker is all about sitting at the right table. It’s really the poker tournament structure that legitimizes it.
Either that, or its because the race was fixed.+
My impression is that it’s a scoring system for competition with his (wealthy and successful) siblings; the dollar values are an afterthought.
I don't know anybody who gambles, on betting or crypto, and only a small number who even pick individual stocks. Some people play poker, but only for nominal sums, and it's usually presented as more of an intellectual exercise. I get the sense that if somebody said they like sports betting, it would produce a half-second awkward glitch in a conversation. I doubt anybody would moralize, but there might be an unspoken question like "[you gamble? don't you have more fulfilling things to do?]"
The simple answer here is probably that if you already have enough money then you don't need to gamble, but it's not like most people who gamble actually believe it's the path to profit, it seems like there's something else here where gambling is viewed as low-status (in my bubble).