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Legal sports betting linked to sharp increases in violent crime (rice.edu)
33 points by geox 7 hours ago | hide | past | favorite | 10 comments




Sports betting also makes a mockery of sport as a concept. There has yet to be a version that doesn't end up impacting the integrity of the sport.

> Assaults see the largest jump — up to 93% after unexpected home team outcomes.

Insane that assaults nearly double. And this is just sports betting. The real-world betting sites (like Kalshi) haven't taken off too quickly, but what about if/when they eventually do?


This has been a factoid as long as the super bowl. It's just now it's every game day. People are pissed about losing money so they've got a shorter fuse than everyone else in their household is used to them having on any given day.

From a libertarian perspective, I always thought betting should be legal. Trust people to know their limits and remove the organized crime aspect. People will find a way even if it is illegal. Turns out there may have been a reason this was illegal in the first place.

I tend towards libertarian defaults on social issues, but this completely breaks down for compulsive behaviours with severe externalities - gambling, smoking, etc.

And naturally there's no such thing as "libertarianism except for the addictive stuff", because then someone in power gets to decide what is addictive and therefore regulated, and in short order everything is defined in those terms.

This problem is the Achilles' Heel of libertarianism. It's still a better set of starting assumptions than the alternatives, but it's no comprehensive solution to politics in the way smart young people often want it to be.


Libertarianism works better than any other economic system for abstract agents. When you replace the abstract agents with mammals, however...

Whenever I hear libertarian economic theory I always picture my physics professor prefacing every problem with "assume a perfectly uniform sphere..."

Libertarianism has no answer for how to deal with finite resources (for example land) that will be snapped up by the first agents.

Tax the ever loving shit out of DraftKings and FanDuel

I don’t agree that the risk is okay as long as we make enough money from it. I don’t think that prop bets should be legal.



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