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0 pointsbigbacaloa11mo ago0 comments

These percentages are similar to those that one sees for alcohol consumption or problematic gambling.

The business model of the casinos and the drug dealers and the alcohol venders is the same - you need a huge pool of unproblematic recreational users to find the problematic users who generate the bulk of your profits.

The same model works for video games and social media.

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potato373284211mo ago

I really hate this projecting of the software gaming industry's behavior back into the "original" vices.

The casino, liquor store and drug dealer all make the same margin regardless of who they're selling to. If anything the problem users are more likely to cause problems for them so they'd rather make the money on casual users and scale.

Having your whole operation be basically a wash except for all the money from a few people with problems is fairly unique to digital gaming and the software industry.

zeroonetwothree11mo ago

The top 10% of drinkers consume the majority of alcohol. Their average consumption is over 10 drinks per day, which I think clearly suggestions a problem. I think it's hard to imagine that losing >50% of revenue wouldn't matter to sellers.

Gambling is also very skewed. Studies place it something like 5% of in person gamblers accounting for 50% of profits or 1% for online gambling. I would guess for sports betting it's similar.

zeroonetwothree11mo ago

Of course it's not even really specific to vices, the top 10% of travelers take around 50% of flights, and you see similar effects in pretty much every area of consumption.

ViktorRay11mo ago

The issue is related to addiction.

People can’t get addicted to flying in the same manner as we have seen people get addicted to gambling or to some of these social media applications.

bigbacaloaOP11mo ago

While it may be true that margins are independent of the buyer at a given scale, margins certainly do depend on scale. If 15% of the population is buying 75% of the alcohol (these are not ridiculous numbers), cutting that 15% out would put many alcohol producers (in particular those who sell cheap) out of business.

ViktorRay11mo ago

I don’t think it would put them out of business. Rather they would have to increase costs to stay in business.

Essentially a disturbing way to look at it is that the people with alcohol addiction are allowing everyone else to be able to consume alcohol for cheaper than it would otherwise be.

Same phenomena exist for other addictive things like sugar in soda and free to play video games. (Although obviously soda and video games are nowhere close to alcohol in terms of destructive potential for those who develop an addiction).

safety1st11mo ago

If we want to go really wild with associations, I think the original discussion about the 90-9-1 in The Atlantic was looking at contributors to Wikipedia...!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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potato373284211mo ago

I really hate this projecting of the software gaming industry's behavior back into the "original" vices.

Having your whole operation be basically a wash except for all the money from a few people with problems is fairly unique to digital gaming and the software industry.

zeroonetwothree11mo ago

Gambling is also very skewed. Studies place it something like 5% of in person gamblers accounting for 50% of profits or 1% for online gambling. I would guess for sports betting it's similar.

zeroonetwothree11mo ago

Of course it's not even really specific to vices, the top 10% of travelers take around 50% of flights, and you see similar effects in pretty much every area of consumption.

ViktorRay11mo ago

The issue is related to addiction.

People can’t get addicted to flying in the same manner as we have seen people get addicted to gambling or to some of these social media applications.

bigbacaloaOP11mo ago

ViktorRay11mo ago

I don’t think it would put them out of business. Rather they would have to increase costs to stay in business.

Essentially a disturbing way to look at it is that the people with alcohol addiction are allowing everyone else to be able to consume alcohol for cheaper than it would otherwise be.

safety1st11mo ago

If we want to go really wild with associations, I think the original discussion about the 90-9-1 in The Atlantic was looking at contributors to Wikipedia...!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse