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0 pointsroenxi5mo ago0 comments

> Your opinion seems to be...

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.

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keiferski5mo ago

You pretty much just repeated the same thing back, so yes, I think that is your opinion.

> 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

roenxiOP5mo ago

Just putting it out there that I have a better grasp of my opinion than you do. Let me try this a different way. Which part of your comment do you think I don't know about/disagree with and, with reference to something I said, why? Let's just pick one thing that you think is clearest, but be specific.

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.

shkkmo5mo ago

> 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.

This seems to be pretty clearly saying that you think poor people only gamble with money they don't need and if they didn't gamble they would be able to stop being poor by investing that money. That seems a pretty clear statement that you think that poor people who gamble wouldn't be poor if they didn't irrationally gamble money that they should have invested in their future.

You say you have a "better grasp" of your opinion. I say you don't have a good enough grasp of it to present it in an understandable way since this "misinterpretation" of your view seems to match pretty well with what you've actually said.

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