Thread ancestor was saying "Gambling thrives in contexts where a ladder to success doesn’t exist or is perceived as not existing". And I think that the problem here is that the people involved couldn't climb the ladder if you put their hands on it. To climb the ladder of success requires the grip of a rational actor. If someone is gambling then the #1 problem is not the system in itself, but the fact that for whatever reason they don't understand the concept of investment at a fundamental level. Can't help that person by changing gambling policies around. If they aren't going to invest themselves, then at the end of the day they are always going to be dependent on the charity of someone who will, whether they irrationally waste their money on gambling or some other vice.
You are not saving up to improve your life because the savings rate is too small to effectively matter. And all the savings you muster can be wiped out by, well, any extra expense. Car breaks down, medical copay, kid needs clothes due to a growth spurt, bank fees, etc.
If any chance event will break you, it is not entirely illogical to lean on chance to save you.
If you don't see light at the end of the tunnel, or you think that light is an oncoming train, you are not going to "act rationally" for arriving at the end of the tunnel.
I'm sorry but this comment is so out of touch with how poor people (or even people in general) actually function, I don't know what else to say.
I'd be impressed if you can link that back to something I said, I don't think my opinion is that at all. I haven't said anything about poor people, for example.
If someone has enough money that wasting it on gambling is a problem, then they clearly had no business giving up hope because "the system" doesn't have the ability to make their lives better. The system that makes their lives better is the money they just wasted, but invested in something productive.
Someone can't claim to be hopeless about the potential to improve their material comfort when the means to do so was just sitting in their bank account. They have money spare - start spending it to make life better.
I'm happy to accept that gamblers are irrational, but their problem isn't that the system is causing them to give up hope, their problem is that they are irrational gamblers. Sucks to be them, but it isn't anything to do with systemic external factors beyond casino advertising which is quite a specific thing and nothing to do with general hopefulness. Or the quite likely reality that they don't know what opportunity looks like despite it being right in front of them.
> If someone has enough money that wasting it on gambling is a problem
They don't have enough money, which is precisely the point. The link I shared shows how lower income people spend dramatically more of their money on lotteries and gambling.
> their problem is that they are irrational gamblers.
How do you think they got that problem? Why do you think they continue to have that problem? It seems to me, that you think it's because they aren't rational enough about managing the money they do have, which...is what you said before: poor people are poor because they're irrational.
You don't seem to factor in the idea that certain groups of people are taken advantage of by bad actors, and that these people become accustomed to this exploitation, and learn helplessness in the face of it.
I think the points I'm making here are pretty obvious truths to anyone that has interacted with / from a lower income background, where gambling, lottery tickets, and other "vices" are widespread. These aren't rational financial decisions, they're consequences of being exploited by more powerful forces.
A working class person addicted to gambling isn't going to suddenly go, "Oh, I should just invest this money into an index fund." That is entirely alien to that culture and group of people. It's not something they were taught, it's not something their friends do, and it's definitely not something the institutions around them are interested in doing.
Now, if you said that, "then the goal should be to educate people so they invest their money and don't just gamble it away," then sure, that's a noble one. But as you said:
> Sucks to be them
EDIT You'll notice I haven't disagreed with anything you've said so far this thread, apart from where you have mischaracterised my opinions and your attribution of the root cause to hopelessness and lack of opportunity.
> which...is what you said before: poor people are poor because they're irrational.
I didn't say that.
Alas, human beings sometimes have imperfections that leave them vulnerable to these predatory businesses. What’s more, the very irrationality of patronizing these businesses obviates any objection to restricting consumer freedoms by prohibiting and regulating these businesses.
If rent eats half your income and your car breaks down, you’re not choosing between “investing” and “consuming.” You’re choosing between keeping your job and getting evicted. Behavioral quirks exist, sure, but they’re downstream of scarcity, and scarcity itself warps decision-making.
We’ve got decades of data showing that when you remove the constant pressure (through cash transfers, healthcare, childcare, etc.), people generally make long-term, rational decisions. The idea that “the poor are poor because they’re irrational” mistakes the symptom for the cause.
It is propaganda to "other" the poor. It is much easier to blame irrationality for people being poor rather than the systems we choose to keep in place. Those who convinced you of this falsehood, what are they gaining?
I don't think this explains 100% of why poor people are poor, but it doesn't explain 0% of it either. And to bring it back to the original point, we need to recognize that certain economic decisions, like sports gambling, are virtually always irrational decisions, and there's virtually nothing to be gained by protecting the consumer's freedom to make those decisions.
You seem to have a load-bearing assumption that in order to care about the poor, we can't even entertain the notion that any of them could ever possibly have become poor as a consequence of their own imperfections. Why is that? It seems obvious to me that when people end up poorer as a consequence of their gambling addictions, the obvious solution is to prohibit or at least more strictly regulate gambling, not to just leave those people to their fate.
> It is propaganda to "other" the poor. It is much easier to blame irrationality for people being poor rather than the systems we choose to keep in place. Those who convinced you of this falsehood, what are they gaining?
That take feels lazy and a little bit like projection. I'm not "othering" the poor, I'm trying to understand at least one of the problems they face and what solutions are possible. And one of "the systems we choose to keep in place" is this recent innovation of allowing online gambling to proliferate and freely advertise on every platform, which directly contributes to gambling addictions, which can and do ruin people's lives. Who stands to gain? The bookies. Yet you're the one arguing that the addict who blows his kids' college fund betting on football is "making decisions that are locally rational given their options", and I'm the one arguing that we should make it harder for the gambling industry to exploit him.
